In our Developer Blog Updates we’ll talk about some of the work we’ve completed in the previous two weeks and explain our approaches. Through this you’ll get an understanding of our game development methods and tidbits on the features we’re planning for Dredge!

Sprint 5: 

It’s always an exciting time in a game when you start to get production UI and models in and you have parts of your game not only working properly but also looking swish af. We have also had to bang our heads against the technical brick wall this sprint too however — making sure our boat and its buoyancy interact correctly with the ocean and waves. Whose idea was it to make a game with a variable ocean again??

Characters & Dialogue

Last sprint we introduced you to our Fishmonger and now he talks to you! We’ve found Yarn Spinner from the team at Secret Lab (of Night in the Woods fame) just fantastic for implementing conversations/quests; here are the requirements we had for our in-game dialogue:

1. Conversations can have dialog options that lead to different branches.
2. Specific conversations can be triggered after an in-game condition has been met (e.g. days elapsed, quest completed, item found).
3. In certain situations the final line of dialogue should remain on-screen, in other situations however it shouldn’t.
4. Conversation text, dialog choices and character name can be localized.
5. Display character’s portrait when they are speaking.
   1. Handle situations where no character has been specified
6. Ability to specify whether a player needs to perform an action before the dialog is continued (e.g. mouse click) or if the dialog will automatically resolve itself. 

They’re also very responsive on their Discord, thanks Yarn Spinner!

Biome 1 – Land Masses Models

Not only is this modelling the group of isles (which we’ve named The Marrows) to give you a starting area for Dredge but also working with the colliders to make them feel good — remember that your boat and hull now take damage if you collide with a rock or land so it’s important that we get the models and colliders right so we’re not over-punishing our players.

Visible Boat Equipment

It’s nice to see the world respond to your actions and now if you install Fishing Rods or a Dredge on your vessel you’ll see them equipped on your boat:

Player Upgrade System

The beginning of the upgrade system! These skill-ups are learned over time and give you useful bonuses in the world of Dredge.

• Fishing Sustainability – Gives you a % chance to not deplete the fish stock when you catch a fish.

• Bartering – Adjusts the price at which you buy and sell items.

User Interface

• Exporting UI – You’ve made the art and now it goes into the game right? Wrong, there’s literally a couple of days taken up in just exporting that UI art so you can add it to the game! Hundreds of assets from button icons to backplates. Don’t forget to include exporting assets in your time estimates because this one can be a rude shock if you haven’t!

• Implementing UI –
  

  Production UI in Dredge

   

Misc

• Keyboard+Mouse Input Changes – Last sprint we had some playtesters come in and give us some awesome feedback on our PC control system, naturally there were some things they felt could improve and hopefully we have now done that with these changes! We’ll retest with the same players and see what they think!

Bug fixes

Our favourite bug of this sprint:

• Leaky Boat – This one was a doozy! Basically over time the waves and the player boat would de-synchronise creating the illusion that your boat was slowly sinking. The answer to everything, as it so often is, was pi. The physics calculations were using Mathf.Pi and the shaders were just using the simplified 3.14. The differences in these numbers created an offset which just became bigger and bigger over time. The solution? Use 3.14f in both places.