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Development news, release dates, changes and more

Hiya guys,

Today I thought I would post an update on the state of development, new core features and how the project has developed since my last update. Lets begin!

There have been a huge number of key changes in the past few weeks. Part of these are due to time limitations, some due to me loosing focus on the original ambition of a survival based game, and most are down to me trying to be too ambitious when it was coming down to the actual release! I have decided to take the game back to its original roots. Some of you may have seen a video of a prison section that I posted a few weeks back, this has been removed from the game. The game now solely revolves around the island.

I have been able to drastically improve the generation of the island to a much more efficient method. This change allows generation of an island 300% bigger than the original, and it does this in the same, or less time. This allows space for much more diverse environments and better game play.

I have also implemented a brand new character creation screen with over 9 different body types to choose from. The new character screen also included customisation of not only hair and body type, but also eyes, ears and noses too!

There is also now a GUI element for monitoring your limbs health and status, meaning you can choose exactly which limb you would like to heal depending on your current situation instead of it being completely random.

Most of the graphical glitches that where present in the game have been fixed, there are still a few floating around but the majority have been resolved due to a new method of sprite implementation that allows more to not only quickly add new sprites but manage them far more easily!

Performance wise the game should now run a steady 150-200fps across most medium-end android devices.

Finally the initial release date is now a firm April 30th, this will be considered our open Beta!

Thats it for today, if you have any questions please feel free to ask away!

– zero

We are back baby!

Hiya guys,

After a week offline for ‘renovations’ the site is now back up and running and better than ever! Along with the many visual changes I also went back and cleared out allot of the clutter that was slowing down the site significantly.

That is it for today!

– zero

Just rambling, and some updates too!

Hiya guys,

As I mentioned in a previous post the game had to go on the ‘backburner’ as such for a few weeks while I worked on other things. I’ve delayed the overall release of the game to late April, however this is a firm release date with no compromises!

Allot of the work I have been doing is more on the ‘back-end’ side of things. Understanding the constraints of the mobile platform and overcoming them has been a huge learning curve for me and I have learnt a lot of great new programming concepts along the way. In-turn I have learnt a few painful lessons about the scope of the game, limitations terms of time and resources and also how to and how not to manage a project!

All in all the game is now allot more stable than before. Performance has increased a noticeable amount across all my testing devices. With the new optimisations it has also allowed me to increase the world size to over 300% more without impeding on the games performance (although a little slower generation time). Also map items are now stored alongside the resource data which allows a near infinite amount of items to remain on the ground without slowing the game down significantly.

I have gone back and re-developed the character creation screen. There are now several new options including body type, hair, eyes and nose customisation. As-well as the original hair colours and world generation options.

The game now features over 100 unique items.DOT and HOT items with indicators. Fully randomised dungeons and dungeon entrances with unique items, enemies and loot.  Several armour sets. Several weapon types. Around 40 crafting recipes. 20 different enemy types.

My core focus at the moment is the finish up allot of the survival elements. Hunger and thirst need tweaking so that they are more meaningful to the gameplay. I need to implement some kind of ai for night time which makes specific enemies much more deadly and aggressive once the sun sets.

Okay that is my ramblings done for now!

Development update 19-1-14

It has been a while since I posted one of these! There has been allot of development going on in the last few weeks as I try to hit my goal of getting the game out there by the end of January, here is a quick list of some of the most notable changes and features that have been added –

  • . World items now randomly spawn on the ground when generating
  • . Re-wrote the way that tiles are managed and drawn in game. increasing overall game performance by around 200%
  • . Reduced weather particle effects for better performance
  • . Disabled permanently on v-sync (will be added to options menu)
  • . Completely re-wrote the entire source for all objects, npcs and map items for better performance and better save and load accuracy.
  • . Changed the games camera angle and zoom level, increasing performance levels and game experience
  • . Fixed android multi-touch joystick and action button issues
  • . Added several new tile types including lava, reeds and long grass
  • . Added several new map items, including leaves, sticks, flowers, tree branches, rocks and bones
  • . Added several new npc types, bunny’s, bats and bee’s
  • . Energy will now slowly decrease when moving and attacking
  • . Re-worked the map generation code to be much more pretty
  • . Sand is now generated as small islands in water as-well as near shore-lines
  • . Fixed many overlapping tile issues – Tiles now have several layers which they can fade into
  • . Added new battle theme music
  • . Npc’s will now stop chasing after a random distance
  • . Npc’s now have ‘homes’ and will return to them if they move too far
  • . The game no longer needs to re-load when changing the resolution
  • . Fixed up the water depth calculation to be more efficient and accurate

Music producer announced!

Mike Frank - All Hands Bury The Dead
Mike Frank – All Hands Bury The Dead

We have a music producer for our upcoming game A Tale Of Survival. It is with great pleasure that I announce that Mike Frank of All Hands Bury The Dead has agreed to work with us. You may have already noticed one track we have posted by Mike, the current main theme to the game. Working together so far we have created several main themes for the game and numerous unique sound effects, I look forward to showing you these in the not too distance future.

Development update 6-1-14

development_update
Fixed options displaying the close button even when not in game
Added several new resource types including blossom tree’s, jungle tree’s
Fixed issue with cacti graphic not displaying correctly
Added new house type, the tree-house!
Fixed map transition grid clear bug
fixed background tiles sometimes not clearing correctly bug
Fixed display bug where clouds sometimes would overlap the world alpha state (night time)
Added pumpkins, carrots and mushrooms to the world spawning script
Added resource crafting map item requirments, such as a furnace, cooking pot or stove

Doowd is currently in the process of being merged and more

Hiya guys,

Doowd has been offline for almost a week now! Far longer than I would of liked but slowly and surely everything is coming together to bring it back to life. If you have managed to find this site beforehand you will have noticed the on-going changes that are taking place, which I would like to briefly explain –

I have decided to take a new approach to the way that I manage and maintain my projects, thus DynamicZero is being born. This change not only makes a huge reduction in the monthly running costs of my various projects, as they all now spawn from this central site. But it also should allow me to be far more efficient at maintaining them all under this one central hub. Hopefully this new centralised design should be good for everyone!

 

So what changes are being made to Doowd? –

Doowd is very much changing for the better! I have stripped away almost all of the shell that surrounded the tool itself, and that is what Doowd is now is very much becoming, the tool itself and nothing more. You will still be able to save and load templates but user profiles and site integration are all being removed. I felt that these systems where very much unused, and often a barrier for people that just simply wanted to create a quick template and not have to worry about anything else. All the previous functionality of Doowd very much will remain in-tact, it will just be far more focused. As we speak I am uploading the core files to this server with the hope of having it all up and running within the next day or two.

That is all for now folks, I will continue to update the site and keep you guys updated on what’s happening!

– Zero.