Devlog june 13 - multiple characters

 Welcome to the first June devlog!

Last time we added a dialogue system. This time we've been focusing on adding NPCs (Non Player Characters, i.e. characters that are controlled by the game, not the player). This will give the player someone to talk with!

First off, we had to rework our animation system. This now allows us to re-use the animation setup we created for the walking animation for different characters.

Say hello to our second animated character: The chicken Calorius.

Calorius has four-directional movement, using the same animation system as the player. He moves in random directions but will not move out of an area that we have defined.

The chicken Calorius may seem like a not-so important character, but I wanted to give the starting farm a bit more life and I also deliberately wanted a small character for the following reason:

If you look closely at the above video, you can see that the player character can move into the tile that Calorius occupies (Calorius will move slightly to the side to avoid the two characters standing on top of each other. But he will stay in the tile)
In previous updates, we showed that it is possible for characters in combat to share tiles. We think this is going to be quite important for the player's tactical decisions. If we balance the game well, there should be situations where the player will want to group up in the same tiles, and other situations where the player will want to spread the characters out.

That's the reason we also wanted characters to be able to share tiles when exploring. A small bonus is that we can add more NPCs to an area and the player will be able to move through it without having their movement blocked.

Next up, we want to be able to talk with our new character. When we looked at this, we had a realisation:

We have made a system for interacting with things on the map: The player can start dialogues, find items, start combats, change the visual look of the area and travel to other areas.

However, we can imagine situations where all of these things happen through dialogue. Say the right thing and you might get an item. Say the wrong thing and you might get kicked out of the tavern or even start a brawl.
So we went though and reworked the interaction system so now all the types of interactions you can have on the map can also be added to dialogues.

And of course we had to give Calorius a line of dialogue

Cluck!

Changing topics, we also realised during this period that we were using a version of the Unity Editor from 2021. Updating editor versions always break a few things, but it wasn't too bad this time and it should be worth it. We've already benefitted from the new version because it fixed some jitters in the walking animation.

As a final teaser, here's another inhabitant of the farm:

Thanks for reading this update! I'm going to be on vacation in the last part of June, so the next update will be on July 11th. Talk to you then!