Procedural Map Generation

So, I remember thinking back in January I really need to update this blog thing more often. So let's try and update this at least once a month. Let's see, what's today? April 6...last post was on Jan 3...I mean that's basically a month, right? Right?? Ok well let's at least get down to what I've been doing for the last, erm, "one" month.

Last time I wasn't satisfied with where the game was because it wasn't much fun at lower tech levels, and I wanted to try something a bit more "roguelike". Well, today I'm happy to announce that procedural map generation has been implemented! Let's all sit back and take a minute to appreciate the procedural map generator in action as it procedurally generates a map:

Pretty neat!

The way it works is (roughly) like this:

1. Divide the map up into a bunch of little triangles

2. Randomly plop down a bunch of bases, bridges, tech buildings, and ore fields

4. Connect the naval bases and bridges together with a wiggly water path

5. Connect all the bases and bridges together with a wiggly ground path

6. Randomly flood different parts of the map with various bits of terrain until it's filled in

7. Offset tiles on the X and Y axis to make the triangles less obvious

There's still some tweaks to be made (for example that bridge isn't really being useful in the map above), but I think this is pretty close to workable.

Now some of you are probably sitting there like, "Wait a minute, really? You've been silent for 3 months and that's all you've managed to do?? Is the planned release date of this game before or after the heat death of the universe?"

These are all fair questions, so I want to show off some of the other things I've been working on.

Tech Buildings

I mentioned this somewhat in my last blog post as something I wanted to do as part of the procedural map generation. The idea here is to sprinkle these randomly around the map, and then reward the player with special bonuses if they capture them. Here's a video of an airstrip that can be captured to grant airstrikes.

Infiltrators

These guys have been in the game forever, but never actually had any functionality. Welp, I finally got around to making them useful! You can infiltrate various enemy structures with them to get bonuses for your army. However the number you can build is severely limited so you can typically only build one or two per mission. Here's a video of one infiltrating a power plant which grants you the ability to shut down enemy defenses for a period of time.

Terraforming

A lot of the recent work I've done has been on adding various powers for you to use to more effectively defeat your enemies in battle. This has been one that I've wanted to see in more games and have been planning for a long time, and it's finally here! As the name implies, this lets you change the terrain to better suit your needs. You can throw up rock walls to block an enemy advance, flatten them to make your own assaults more effective, or flood an area to get ships through. Just be careful, the changes are temporary and will revert back after a short period!

Transport Choppers

While working on the procedural map generation and tech buildings, I decided it would be really cool if some tech buildings were on islands, requiring you to make a larger investment to obtain it. This of course meant that we needed transports. I hadn't wanted to put them in the game since I've always found them tedious to use in other games. Getting all your units in and out always took forever. So for Project 37, I've added a button that tells the units to just figure it out. Press "load all" with your transports and the units you want transported, and they'll take care of the rest! There's a similar button for unloading. Here's a video of them in action!

Finally, Adam has blessed us with a new track titled Command and has remastered Shadow Fang. Check it out over in the music section!