"Later on, there'll be options where you can work with the Guardians and make peace, but it won't be easy!"

Apologies for missing the Monday post - I really didn't have anything to say, because I wasn't actually sure what I was going to do this week!

In the end I wound up doing heaps:

  • I fixed loading and saving.  This has been broken for ages because I don't use it much yet, but for GDC I want to take several save games to show different stages through a game, so that was important  
  • Found out nearly half my rendering was going into trees, so I got some simpler models, which sped things up a bit  
  • Made it so that buildings can occupy multiple tiles.  This really matters for things that just don't make sense being small, like warehouses and spaceship launch pads  
  • Added heaps more notifications, to help the player know when important stuff is happening  
  • Changed the game name to "Before We Leave" in the code!

But the main thing I added is gremlins!  These annoying little creatures will zip into your villages and steal stuff, unless you build guard towers to keep them at bay.  This is the first example of a Guardian creature, which protect the islands from your incursion.  Later on, there'll be options where you can work with the Guardians and make peace, but it won't be easy!

The plan for next week is to switch to GDC prep - making a simple trailer, gathering some save games to show the game off with and so on.  See you then!