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Monday Dev Update #6

Greetings,


To secure and speed up the release pace, and minimize the occurrence of such delays, you can support us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/winterfallgame


The past week was not an active dev week but rather what we'll call a "soft dev" week: most of the work focused on the level design/world building, as well as game design.


The current stage of Winterfall's existence involves a lot of cleaning up, rebuilding, restructuring and reassembling, after years and years of open-ended "research & development" where we built innovative or experimental systems to either make sure they were buildable, or to figure out if they worked gameplay-wise. As you can see on our public Trello, a lot was done.


In this current stage, as we proceed in very restricted conditions resources-wise, we gotta make sure we make smart, productive decisions and maintain practical focus. So every now and then, it's good to put the hard dev on hold and do a bit of thinking.

So let's address the three things that mostly received attention this week.


4x Mechanics

Winterfall is made of the blending of several game genres into one broader experience. One of those genres is the 4x Strategy genre, inasmuch as gameplay takes you to follow 4x objectives:

  • Explore an open world map

  • Expand your presence on that base by making land claims

  • Exploit the Resource Nodes you claim to build facilities and field units

  • all this to Exterminate any Hostile presence on the map.

Here is how it fits in the broader structure of the game's design:



So this past week, groundwork to be able to soon begin implementation of such mechanics was the focus.

First of all, we set off to rebuilding the world through a Demo map whose specifics and goals are:

  • 25x25km

  • Divided into 9 main areas (3x3)

  • Each Area divided into 100 (10x10) Cells

  • Cells procedurally populated with Resource Nodes or Empty

  • Resource Cells and Empty Cells randomly occupied by Obstacles, Perils

  • Cells must be Cleared of Obstacles & Perils to be Claimed


Initially, Exploration & Cell-Clearing gives you opportunity to scavenge your first resources and missing equipment.

From there, you will get to develop your base on one of the predetermined spots you selected through your initial exploration.


From there, it's pretty standard Base-building:

  • From Hideaway Camp to Fortress, through a total of 8 levels of Base Upgrade

  • New Visitors travel by your base periodically, and can be encountered in the Wild

  • Recruit those you like or those whose skills you need

  • Each Upgrade Level (based on Resource Requirements) unlocks new potential building options

  • Visitors you Recruit enable you to build those previously unlocked buildings

Work was also done determining specifics of the Resource system, how you go about Harvesting and Scavenging, what are the main items in the game, the professions/skills list and many such things.


We will address all this more thoroughly in a dedicated post as we make progress on implementation.


We also built lots of new modular construction parts for future use, by us and by players, to make nice, functional and visually appropriate buildings:


Example:

And finally, in keeping with its traditional uses, the Character Creator Prototype produced some nice as well as suitably demonic test characters. We love the range it offers, where even without spending a lot of time, it's very easy to get characters that are vastly dissimilar. Remember, PROTOTYPE FOOTAGE, VISUALS NOT FINAL:

That's all for now. All for this post at least, for as always there's much more going on, but can't address it all, the work won't do itself! So, we're going back to it, stay tuned for more material. And as usual, you can:

Thank you very much!

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