"Some buildings (like Iron Smelters and Cow Fields) will pollute the ground around them"

What a crazy week this has been!  It feels like I haven't actually gotten all that much done 'on the game', but there's so much more to building an actual game product than just writing the code.  So this week I've:

  • Found an amazing artist who's agreed to work with me building far better art assets than I ever could.  
  • Had meetings with a marketing guru (He'd probably hate being described that way) and a programmer from another game dev company that showed me some excellent things I can do in Unity to make Before work much better under the hood.  
  • Implemented a lot of those Unity suggestions.  
  • Discovered that the Mysterious Benefactor decided to add a bit onto my funding so that I can go to GDC in San Francisco next year!!!  Kermit Flail!!!  So I've also booked accommodation and flights and started getting my passport renewed (I haven't been out of the country for a decade).  
  • Fixed a bunch of bugs in Before, including some that were either hard crashing or eating all the CPU.  
  • And finally, added a Pollution mechanic, where some buildings (like Iron Smelters and Cow Fields) will pollute the ground around them, and food production buildings will slow down and eventually stop working.  But trees help absorb the pollution, so you have to start balancing things like felling trees to build your villages with the need to keep them around to mop up your mess.
Ew, nasty dirty charcoal burner

Unfortunately, with all that going on, I didn't add the promised automatic shipping, but that'll happen soon!

I'm probably not going to blog over Christmas and New Year, so I'll see you all in 2019.  Have a wonderful holiday!