July 2024 Update - World Persistence

Hey! Welcome back again.

This month I went ahead and added in a handful of spooky new forest tiles into the village generation, as well as a bunch of little improvements and additions to the world and its immersion. Clouds, sleep, better flora, bucking – there's a lot to cover, so let's go ahead and get into it!

As a reminder, subscribing as a premium patron will not charge you until the release of the first playable milestone build, which is still at least a few months out. An announcement will be made when a release date has been selected.

New Forest's Edge Acres

Like the North side of the village being walled in by the train tracks, and the West side featuring a long cliff edge, the South side of your village will be contain you by way of a massive tree wall – and the bushes and thorns they shade. Also like the rest of the village, there are a few remnants of a society that has long since moved on, and these broken pieces tell a story of their own. Even now, the forest seems to reverberate with the low hum of dark magics from within...

Best you just stay in the sunny meadows for now. Speaking of –

Clouds

Clouds made an appearance in the original reveal trailer, but I'm gonna let you in on a little secret: I was faking it. I mean... they were there, but their code was incredibly simplistic, and I manually positioned each one before recording the footage.

Not the case, anymore. Clouds now spawn automatically, recycle themselves when they've gone off the map, and respawn (hopefully) without you ever noticing. I've noticed large transparencies like this are also taxing on the framerate, so extra care has been put into only rendering them when actually necessary, and staggering their movement so they don't all call code on the same exact frame. The result looks something like this: (note that this is sped up a great deal to exaggerate the effect)

Laying Down / Sleeping

All that running around sliding and jumping last month can make a mare tired! Now by holding the sit button, you can lay down completely and give your pony a well earned rest. You can still tap to toggle back to sitting, tap twice to stand up altogether – or for convenience's sake, just hit the jump button to break out of any resting stance. While you are resting though, a couple things start happening...

First, is that the game saves your position in the village. I mentioned last month how annoying it is to have to run from the train station every time I play test the game, especially as the village has gotten quite large at this point. Well, neither you or I will ever have to again, because by resting anywhere, your position data is saved, and you will be right in that exact spot again when you come back. (And don't worry, this save happens automatically occasionally too, in case you forget to rest.)

And look! After resting for a short while you'll notice the camera pull in, and your pony's eyes go drowsy. This serves no mechanical purpose, but does help sell the illusion that your pony is still in the village when you're not in the game – they're just sleeping! Once you boot the game back up, they'll be right where you left them, peacefully dreaming away.

Improved Bucking

As an anonymous user had pointed out, the bucking animation was a bit stiff. So, I took the time redraw the animation frames, and generally change the momentum of the kick in the new buck:

Not only are the frames changed, but you may notice ponies actually squint and stare at the thing behind them — which does make more sense, given how dangerous bucks would be to throw around without even looking!

Object State

And notice the leaves and branches falling there... like clouds, bucking trees made an appearance in the game's original reveal trailer, but by no means was it "game ready". Hilariously, you can even go back and watch that section of the trailer, and see the canopies just straight up break after the pony's buck, losing their rotation completely. Oops.

Well fast forward to today and I'm a more competent programmer, and it shows in these trees. Not only are the canopies much more stable in their animation, the leaves and sticks that fall actually absorbing the colors of said canopies and trunk respectively; but trees now have in a sense, their own memories. A freshly bucked tree has already dropped its branches for you to collect, and you can't just run back up to it for another load. It'll take about a literal 24 hours for its branches to grow back – and this is true whether you're in the game or not.

Like sleeping, this is a neat little system that is hopefully helping to start build the illusion that this world is always in existence. And of course, it is just an illusion – the tree makes its mind up the exact day, minute, and second it will regrow its branches after you down them the first time, and only knows to replenish its resources by checking that log the next time you buck its trunk. But still... if it works for Animal Crossing, it works for me.

And of course... this month as much as any involved fixing bugs, bugs, and bugs.

Coming Up...

The Milestone Build 1 village is nearing competition... only 5 acres remain for me to construct. Why I've put off making these acres in particular is for one reason: they all have bodies of water. This will mean new animations, particles, and mechanics – but I'm going to be bold and say that I think I can actually knock out all 5 next month. They'll still be more to do, obviously (I have not forgotten about night / day transitions, I promise). But having full, randomly generated villages will definitely be an achievement in its own right.

But that's for another day! Until then, I hope you've been well, I am of course as ever grateful of your support and excitement for the project. Somedays I wish I had started this game a lot sooner, but I also think it really benefits from being a story told in the fandom's twilight years. That's as in the later years of the fandom just to be clear, not like – you know...