Hello everyone and welcome to our 7th Darfall update. It's me Lukas and we are going to look at what we have been up to since our last devlog and what are our future plans.
We also hope you enjoyed the last World Map Update, where we showed you some details about our continent of Aganor and how the survival mode plays on this map.
What We Have Been Up To?
Over the past few weeks, we've dedicated most of our efforts to preparing the demo for release by addressing bugs and enhancing the player experience with quality-of-life improvements. So if you haven't downloaded Darfall demo yet, don't hesitate and play it now yourself. In addition to development work, we've also been actively engaging in marketing efforts by participating in events like Steam Next Fest and Builder Fest. While these activities can be time-consuming, we recognize their importance in building awareness and excitement for the game. We're thrilled to have recently launched the public Steam Demo, which allows players to experience Darfall for themselves for up to six days (or even up to eight days for more experienced players). We hope that this demo will give players a taste of the exciting city-building and strategy gameplay that Darfall has to offer. (You can see the score of one of our Discord players, Pattat, quite impressive, right?)
You can compare your own score on our Discord as well!
We're thrilled with the positive feedback the demo has received from players. We're collecting and using valuable feedback via our in-game system to improve the game for our upcoming Early Access release later this year.
We've decided to keep the demo available to give players more time to try it out and provide additional feedback. We're excited to continue working on Darfall with the help of our community.
h the help of our community.
Backpacks - More, more and more items!
We've recently introduced a new feature to the game that allows players to craft backpacks at their Tailor building. These backpacks can be equipped on your hero, boosting their carrying capacity and reducing the need to return to base after a successful loot run.
With this new addition, players can now explore the game world more efficiently, collecting more resources and items without worrying about running out of inventory space.
We hope this feature will improve the overall gameplay experience and encourage players to venture further into the game's world.
Fishing
Fishing has been a highly requested feature, and we're excited to announce that it will be available in the next update. With the Fishing Hut building, players can catch fish for an alternate source of food, particularly useful on maps with reduced farm production.
Simply locate fishing schools in bodies of water, and employ a worker as a fisherman by building a Fishing Hut nearby. We can't wait to see how this new feature enhances gameplay.
Biomes - Desert and Swamp
The work is slowly starting on our 2 new biomes, Desert and Swamps, which will provide a refreshing change from the grassland biome. Our goal is to make each biome feel unique, with different strategies required to gather food, resources and fend off enemies. For example, on desert maps, food will be scarce, so players will need to collect special fruits or catch fish in rare oases to feed their units. However, stone and iron will be abundant, making it easier to mine, build, and craft.
We're excited to see how players will adapt to these new challenges and are looking forward to sharing more details about these biomes in the future.
More Technical Details
For developers and Unity3D enthusiasts, I'd like to share some technical details about our project. We've been working hard to rewrite and improve many background systems to increase performance and make the architecture more robust for the future.Terrain Generation
One of the changes we've made is to our terrain generation system, where we're generating chunks and meshes for the game. Part of the code is run through Unity's new job system, which has helped to improve performance. However, we've been revisiting this code as we believe that stuttering may have been caused by this system, particularly when corrupted tiles change into grass and the terrain needs to regenerate.
Overall, we're committed to delivering a high-quality gaming experience, and we'll continue to optimize our systems and code to ensure that players can enjoy the game without any issues.
User Interface Refactor
In addition to the technical updates, we've also made some improvements to the user interface. Previously, all of our UI was in a single scene, which was difficult to navigate due to the large number of objects. It was also a mess, which made it challenging to manage. (As you can see, all of the UI is in a single scene, bunched together)
To address this issue, I have refactored our UI and separated all of the UI parts into separate "widget" prefabs, such as the inventory, minimap, build section or top bar. This has significantly reduced the complexity of adding or changing UI elements, and has made the scene much faster to load.
(example of ability book widget)
Project Structure
We've also made some changes to the naming convention of the asset files we're using in the game. To improve organization and ease of use, we followed the guidelines outlined in the Unity Style Guide found here.
By using this guide, we were able to create clear asset prefixes and group similar assets together. For example, we now use "SM_" for static mesh and "T_" for texture. As a result, our assets are now much easier to find and access.
For instance, we've grouped all of the assets related to the Knight unit, such as its mesh, icon, blueprint, and prefab, into a single folder, making it more convenient for our team to locate them.
These changes may seem small, but they have greatly improved our development process, and we believe they will enhance the overall quality of the game.
