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 14

With the completion of this sprint it finally feels like we have the production version of our prototype of Dredge, built way back in January. It’s funny that it took two weeks to build a prototype and eight months to build the production version but we’ve added in a whole lot of extra features, built it to support consoles as well as PC not to mention the PV’s are a whole lot higher these days.

New Item/Pursuits Quest Indicator

We noticed during playtests that our current small, static indicator wasn’t quite drawing the eye. Alex has updated the icon and added an animation so we’ll test that out.

Rain

The last thing from the prototype to make it into the production version of the game and this is something we really wanted! We now have three intensities of Rain that can form weather-wise; a gentle sunshower, a steady pour and torrential rain with accompanying sound effects. 

Crabs!

We also have two new crustaceans to introduce this sprint; the small common crab and the massive fiddler crab. Catchable in the Marrows currently.

Crab pot and Trawl net UI Art

Production art for three crab pots and two trawl nets, the awkward shapes are fun to play with in your cargo hold but poor Alex who has to figure out the details!

Crab pot animation & buoy

Visual feedback for when a player deploys a crab pot and the current state of the pot – solid light means functional, flashing light means it’s caught something, and a dead light means the crab pot is broken and in need of repair.

Trawl Net animation

Alex had a time figuring this out (and learned way more about actual Dredging ships than ever before), not only does a Trawl net awesomely fill out your boat, extending above your Dredging equipment, it also shows you dragging a net behind your boat when it is deployed. 

Convert music files to streaming oggs

This almost halved our build size without affecting the quality.

Optimise Tooltips

Streamlined the tooltip objects, no longer needing to make and destroy them each time, 

Convert currency data to decimals to avoid rounding errors

We now understand the Stack Overflow comment state that it is “unacceptable to store currency as floats”. It is now a decimal data type in Dredge.

Shipwright Stock System

Now that players can unlock new equipment via Research the Shipwright and other merchants in the game need to be able to support the stocking and replenishing of new equipment. Store owners will now restock every midnight, pulling from a pool of available equipment, and always making sure the latest items a player has researched are there to purchase, if they can afford them.

Fishmonger’s Store

With the introduction of crab pots you need a place to buy them. The fishmonger will start with a stock of basic crab pots and stock new ones that you complete the research for.

Swap simplified Island Colliders for LOD1 Island

Switch GPU, physics CPU side. Makes it easier for level and island creation in future!

Foghorn

Another playtest update — we noticed that a lot of players were using the “Wait” action on the ability bar to pass time, which we don’t really want them doing (it was just there to buff up the ability bar really). We’ve now replaced it with a Foghorn which might in future have some interesting interaction mechanics with monsters.

Shipyard Upgrades

Another sprint and another big feature for players; Ship upgrades! Players can Dredge up materials from shipwrecks and trade them to the Shipwright, once you build up enough resources you can trade those in for some boat upgrades; add additional rod or trawling slots in your hold, or space for additional equipment like engines and lights. At certain times players will have the opportunity to upgrade their boat completely, giving them much more cargo space and slightly different configurations. Boat visual updates still to come down the line.