june 2, 2023

happy friday!

remember that limitation I talked about last time? the one where vines were sometimes not spawning near vents? well I implemented a solution to this, and what's more, it can generalize easily to more types of decorations that depend on nearby tiles! to give a super quick overview, the decoration algorithm now has two passes over every tile, rather than just one. the first pass places only vents, and marks their location. the second one places everything else, including vines. when a decorative tile is picked on the second pass, before it chooses vines, it makes sure that there is a vent nearby. simple enough! what's great about this though is that I can easily update what happens in each pass in the future. so, for example, if I need to place some other tiles that  should take priority, I can place them in the first pass. or, if there needs to be a third pass for even lower-priority sprites, that's easy too!

that reminds me... I think this game's new-feature-momentum is starting to slow down. meaning, I think I finally need to start turning this into a legit game instead of Cave Platformer Demo. I have some ideas for real gameplay, but in general, y'all can expect two things:

1) there will be no combat. the focus will be on easy-going exploration.

2) I'll keep the "gamifying" to a minimum. by that I mean I'll try to keep the cookie-cutter indie game tropes to a minimum. for those I do choose to use (like resource gathering), I'll aim to keep it interesting.

I do have some ideas on how to crank up the visuals even more, but I think at this point, gameplay needs to join the to-do list. but anyways, I hope y'all enjoy the little bits of visual polish!

~

new features:

- vines always grow near vents

- several more sprites, including small vents

- alternative vine "wall tiles"

- dust is rendered as a dither instead of solid black

- various tweaks to the decoration algorithm

todo:

- prototype resource gathering, inventory system, and general UI

- more decorations!