UI Improvements
Mini map has been re-added to help players navigate and to help prevent claustrophobia from the limited top down perspective. The compass is no longer necessary as it’s already included in the map.
The map was created using a plane spawned into the world that has the texture of the map. The map texture uses a mask that captures areas discovered by the player using a render target. I was able to get the map to have some satisfying effects when moving the camera.
Weather improvements
I made some significant improvements to the procedural weather system by adding more frequent weather changes and better progression from cloudy to rainy to thunder storming. There is also more rain interaction with the player, as blood can now wash off and rain will patter on the players hat depending on the type of hat worn.
Survival Mechanics
I incorporated a new mechanic for temperature that fluctuates based on wetness, time of day, temperature, and clothing worn. When working on thunderstorms during nighttime, I realized the player should get some type of de-buff when walking around naked, wet, and during a thunderstorm. I haven’t added all the functionality yet, but I may make this effect players mobility and health. It also adds more reasons for the player to equip clothing instead of running around naked. I also want hats like the umbrella style hat, to help reduce wetness on the player and be practical during the frequent summer rainstorms.
Logbook
Added a compendium for insects, fish, and plants/mushrooms found during the player’s travels. Discovered species are automatically added to the book. There is also a tab for katana sets and enemies encountered.
Improved procedural spawning
Bugs and mushrooms now spawn more reliably on trees (no more floating mushrooms). I also added optimizations for more spawned items by converting them to instanced hierarchical meshes, then swapping them out when the player is nearby.
Dialogue
Altered npc dialogue to be more immersive as a popup on the player, rather than a separate black overlay. Also made improvements to how various dialogue trees are structured, allowing for easy incorporation of saved data (so an npc can know anything from what bugs you’re holding or how many bosses you’ve defeated).
I wrote macros to make these trees easily writable in blueprints.
devpachi 