Game Engine Work:
This week I continued working on the random generation of the 2D map for the game. Initially I was working on coding an edge checking system that would take each grid square of the map and determine if it was shallow water. Then it would check each of those grid squares neighbors “left, up, right, down” to determine if it had an edge with sand or not. Once I got those edge cases working for the shallow water and sand edge, I realized I would need to figure out a corner checking system because the map currently is missing edges in some cases. I still have not worked on that problem yet. It will be the next part I work on. The image below shows the corner cases being bugged currently. The program does not know yet to check the corner case and add a different tile to complete the edge.
From there I also worked on a sand and grass edge check. I was able to get that all set up to the same point as the prior. So, I just need to figure out the corner checks and add the sprites for that. I am confident that I will be able to figure out the corner cases soon and once I have them working, I will most likely move to complete all the edge cases for the different areas on the map.
Game Art Work:
Over the period of the week I worked a lot on trying to create the tile set for the water and sand edge. Each time I thought I was finished it would not line up correctly. I was not sure if I had an issue in my code or the art. It turned out I believe to be the art. After trying so many different looks I just stuck with a very basic one for now. The initial art I worked on had to many bends in it and looked very unnatural, so I scrapped it. I know in the future I want to animate the water and have the water look more like water.
After spending a lot of hours treading water on the art, I decided on focusing on getting the edge in the sprite to line up correctly. So, I worked only on the edges between colors. Most of the tiles are just the solid color from the map with the edge change. Once I had a pattern for the water tile, I created a simple tile set for the grass edge with the sand using the same technique. I am just using these for testing, and I will work more on the art later. I just decided I was spending to much time on the art, and I was not getting anywhere with the actual game work. So, for now I am creating basic art assets to use for testing the code. I can always modify the art later.
Thoughts:
I know this is a relatively short article for this week’s progress but not much progress was made on the game because I spent to much time on the art. I’m looking forward to getting back on track this week. I would like to have all the edge testing done by the end of the week including the corner cases. Then I will need to move into adding rivers, vegetation, and terrain height changes which I anticipate will be harder for me to figure out.
Let me know what you think of the work so far, and if you have any suggestions feel free to leave a comment.