Here we are, 2 days short of the planned end of 1c and the completion of Phase 1, and it turns out my previous devlog was correct, we're going into overtime!

The first thing is that story is still happening, but the intro cutscenes are getting pushed back for now. This has meant that I can concentrate on actual gameplay. Let's be honest, setting up the story is a good thing, but it's just windowdressing. On the story front though, the core quests are now in and working, and you can progress from entering Pineridge, through to starting the event itself. Currently, only the NPCs you need for quests are active, so more interactable ones need to be added to give more life to the town.

On the subject of giving the town more life, the NPCs got some updates. The main one is their dialog is now circular, so rather than exiting from dialog after a multiple choice response, it'll take you back to the choice. Next, I wanted to add NPCs roaming the town. so as a basic first step, I gave them AI and gave them a switch so they can be added to the game and be told if they are allowed to roam or have to stay still. The next step for them will be a switch to let them roam at random, or to visit set points in the town. So for example, there could be a list of shops, tavern, etc. The NPC would choose one from the list and visit it, stay there a short while then move to another location. As the game fleshes out, I'll start to see how many NPCs we can get in the town. It's currently running with a 1fps drop and 20 NPCs, but I think that can be optimised still.

Next, the actual Running of the Wolves can start. But how?

A level map.

This thing is pretty basic at the moment, but it's getting worked on as time progresses. When the game first starts, it generates the level types, so the map will be the same every time you load the game back up, but as soon as you do a new save, it'll be a brand new selection of levels.

At the moment, they all feed into dungeons, but as more level types get added, it'll start working as planned. The whole thing is set up so more worlds can be added, and it will load dungeons with the style specific to that world. You'll also notice that the first picture has wolf/enemy numbers.

When you start the first world, the player will move last. What this means is that by the time you load the world map, the wolves and competitors will have already made their move. This world has 3 potential paths to take from the start, so the competitors will start to move along those paths to the first level. Then the wolves will as well, potentially concentrating on the highest number of competitors. You then get to choose which level you want to go to.

That is of course in the future. At the moment, the levels get a random wolf and enemy number and generate the level seed. If you go to that level, it receives those things and generates a replicatable level with the correct wolf and enemy quantities inside.

So you go into the first level. It's a dungeon. You've probably all seen the dungeons in this game before?

Those are getting improved as well.

The plan is that each world will have it's own dungeon stylesets. There's also a couple more fancy things happening here. First one is swappable tiles. The old dungeon tiles had 1 wall, 1 floor/ceiling, 1 door, etc. The Forest styleset currently has 3 wall variations, 2 barricades and a wall-light. When the dungeon generates the walls, it does it tile by tile. The majority of the time, it'll pick the normal tile, but 5% of the time, it'll give a window wall and the other 5% gives a cracked wall. Every wall tile also has a chance to spawn a light feature. Similarly, the floor tiles have missing flagstones, but every floor piece rotates by 0,90,180 or 270 to give loads more variation. Then  the barricades could spawn crystals or a regular barricade. And so on.

The plan is to build the first basic tileset and give it enough variation to make nice looking dungeons, including more cosmetic stuff like vines, locked doors, rubble, etc. There's another 3 worlds which will each have their own set as well, and the beauty of this is that it can be expanded by adding a new tile into a datatable and importing it.

There are further plans for the dungeons as well. I'd like to change the entrance and exit so they are staircases in a wall. Then I'd also like to add multiple layers to dungeons. The dream is to get it so a room above another room would generate balconies and a taller room.

There's still a lot of work to be done, and I've now got someone helping me with modelling the buildings in Pineridge. I can't promise that the game will look amazing and all buildings will be finalised by the time Phase 1 ends, but the game will be playable to the end of the first world.