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9:26am - Well now, I had my first almost proper night's sleep in a long time, and got up around 8am. Nice. Now I'm out at the McDonald's to work on my projects. Also nice.
So, I'm about 75/25 on working on my River Valley Game or working on Entity Framework. I might do both? But I want to start by looking at the River Valley Game.
First off, do I still want it to be a River Valley Game? I don't know why it didn't occur to me the other day but an island would work just as well. I think I might keep it as a river valley, but that's another option.
I'm thinking about building the valley from square sections of pre-generated terrain, but I could also try fully procgen, so it's a tough choice. I'm not sure how big I want it all to be.
Now that I think about it, I'll probably want to test different sizes to see what's sensible, so maybe I'll just start with plain meshes and valley wall meshes and see what I can handle.
The tricky thing will be making the 'hole' in the mesh when buildings are put on top of it. I'm not sure where to encode the hole. In the mesh? In the building? I should ask for advice I think. I'll load up Discord and do that.
9:57am - Okay so I'm thinking now that the hole shouldn't be part of the terrain mesh because it might span multiple terrain meshes. That leaves the hole attached to the building. I could also make the hole a seperate object and have the building contain a reference to it.
That said, there shouldn't ever be a hole without a building, so maybe they should have a strong relationship. Yeah, that makes sense.
So, I'll have a terrain mesh made up of a stitched together patchwork of meshes, and when a building is sited it'll have something like a dirt lump to hide the hole, and the townies will dig down if neccesary. Okay that sounds good.
Now, am I ready to make a prototype? Maybe...
I'll need to make an object for the terrain, which contains the stitched together mesh objects, and handles the stitching. Of course, I'll also have to make the mesh objects themselves, with the ability to selectively hide tris and verts to make the hole.
Hmm... This brings me back to the locality of the hole in code, because the terrain mesh needs to know where the hole is, in order to open itself and also recalculate the pathfinding or navmesh.
Well, there's never a hole without a building, so I suppose the mesh could keep a record of buildings penetrating it and use that to determine where to put the hole. Also, when a building is sited on a terrain mesh, it could tell the meshes under it to put a hole there, and remove the hole when it's taken out. The terrain mesh wouldn't be changed without a building being sited, so I could just take out the hole when the building is sited and put it back if the building is ever removed.
10:29am - Alright I'm going to try and make the ground mesh system first.
I'll want to make 16 patches to start. That is, four flat patches in the middle, and twelve edging patches of cliffsides.
Hmm... Should I make the patches? I was thinking procgen before but if I'm going to fit them together like a jigsaw puzzle, then I could use pregenerated meshes. I'd still have to make them deformable, for the holes, though.
I'd better do some research on that, modifying meshes that were generated outside of the editor...
10:55am - Alright I've confirmed with a simple test that I can in fact modify meshes on the fly even if they're pregenerated. So I guess it's back to Blender and Blender School to make the meshes for my first 'Test Valley'...
But if I'm going to spend a lot of time learning something new by watching videos, I'd rather spend it learning Entity Framework, so I guess I'll do that for a while.
12:21pm - Well the McDonalds is getting pretty busy for lunch, and I've finished the watching section of the Udemy lesson I was working on. So I'm going to go home and relax, at least for a while. Maybe I'll look at Blender later.
So, I'm about 75/25 on working on my River Valley Game or working on Entity Framework. I might do both? But I want to start by looking at the River Valley Game.
First off, do I still want it to be a River Valley Game? I don't know why it didn't occur to me the other day but an island would work just as well. I think I might keep it as a river valley, but that's another option.
I'm thinking about building the valley from square sections of pre-generated terrain, but I could also try fully procgen, so it's a tough choice. I'm not sure how big I want it all to be.
Now that I think about it, I'll probably want to test different sizes to see what's sensible, so maybe I'll just start with plain meshes and valley wall meshes and see what I can handle.
The tricky thing will be making the 'hole' in the mesh when buildings are put on top of it. I'm not sure where to encode the hole. In the mesh? In the building? I should ask for advice I think. I'll load up Discord and do that.
9:57am - Okay so I'm thinking now that the hole shouldn't be part of the terrain mesh because it might span multiple terrain meshes. That leaves the hole attached to the building. I could also make the hole a seperate object and have the building contain a reference to it.
That said, there shouldn't ever be a hole without a building, so maybe they should have a strong relationship. Yeah, that makes sense.
So, I'll have a terrain mesh made up of a stitched together patchwork of meshes, and when a building is sited it'll have something like a dirt lump to hide the hole, and the townies will dig down if neccesary. Okay that sounds good.
Now, am I ready to make a prototype? Maybe...
I'll need to make an object for the terrain, which contains the stitched together mesh objects, and handles the stitching. Of course, I'll also have to make the mesh objects themselves, with the ability to selectively hide tris and verts to make the hole.
Hmm... This brings me back to the locality of the hole in code, because the terrain mesh needs to know where the hole is, in order to open itself and also recalculate the pathfinding or navmesh.
Well, there's never a hole without a building, so I suppose the mesh could keep a record of buildings penetrating it and use that to determine where to put the hole. Also, when a building is sited on a terrain mesh, it could tell the meshes under it to put a hole there, and remove the hole when it's taken out. The terrain mesh wouldn't be changed without a building being sited, so I could just take out the hole when the building is sited and put it back if the building is ever removed.
10:29am - Alright I'm going to try and make the ground mesh system first.
I'll want to make 16 patches to start. That is, four flat patches in the middle, and twelve edging patches of cliffsides.
Hmm... Should I make the patches? I was thinking procgen before but if I'm going to fit them together like a jigsaw puzzle, then I could use pregenerated meshes. I'd still have to make them deformable, for the holes, though.
I'd better do some research on that, modifying meshes that were generated outside of the editor...
10:55am - Alright I've confirmed with a simple test that I can in fact modify meshes on the fly even if they're pregenerated. So I guess it's back to Blender and Blender School to make the meshes for my first 'Test Valley'...
But if I'm going to spend a lot of time learning something new by watching videos, I'd rather spend it learning Entity Framework, so I guess I'll do that for a while.
12:21pm - Well the McDonalds is getting pretty busy for lunch, and I've finished the watching section of the Udemy lesson I was working on. So I'm going to go home and relax, at least for a while. Maybe I'll look at Blender later.
