Plug In, Hitch Up, Stay Alive | Dev Log Week 39

This week had one thread running through it: what it takes to settle somewhere and keep going. That meant energy to keep things running and trailers to haul what you find, food from the garden, a small drone that comes along and a forest drawn from real data that has to stay affordable. None of this is in the public build.

Energy

Staying anywhere starts with keeping things running, and that takes energy. Vehicles now consume it according to the work they actually do. A fuel engine is refilled from a jerrycan by holding the action, with the tank and the can shown filling and emptying live, and an electric vehicle recharges when parked on a powered spot. A generator is one way to power it: the military trailer carries one that unfolds, unhitched and standing on its legs, and charges what is around it.

Trailers

Settling somewhere also means bringing things back, so any four-wheeled vehicle can now tow a trailer. It is built for play: you hitch it on foot or from the driver's seat, and what you load into it stays there, saved with the world. On the road it follows the physics, its load weighing on how the vehicle accelerates, turns and brakes, while staying under control.

Food from the garden

A place also has to feed the people in it. In the garden, plants now grow continuously in front of you, then wilt and dry when they lack water or care. Thirty-nine fruits and vegetables exist as adult plants, the first four have their whole growth, from young plant to harvest, ripe strawberries are picked a portion at a time, and a fruit tree is shaken by holding its trunk with both hands and giving it a shove, the ripe fruit falling around it.

Bubble comes along

You do not set out alone. Bubble, a small companion drone, rides on your backpack, wakes up to follow you, says hello and scans the ground with a soft holographic beam from its eye, then settles back onto the bag. Its eye is a little screen that blinks, looks around and dims when it rests, and its shell now carries the scuffs and scratches of a machine that has been around. It is designed to accompany you through several kinds of actions, which deserve a post of their own; the model and its animations are works in progress.

The world around it

All of this happens in a world that leans on real data. The forest of the test region now follows lidar measurements of real Oregon forest for the density and age of its stands, with natural edges, clearings and creeks, and the ground changes with the trees, from meadow to litter under closed stands.

A forest this dense has to stay affordable. It now carries on for kilometres into the distance in rings of large trees at no measurable cost, the wind only animates the vegetation around the player, and plants bend on the graphics card as you brush past them. The conifers also exist in a much lighter form that loads in about half the time and uses far less memory, with the same look and the same wind; switching the game to it is tied to a packaging check.

The ivy generator went further this week. It grows real stems and leaves over the actual walls of a house, climbing from the ground, wrapping around a corner and hanging from the upper floor while the windows and doors stay clear, and the video shows it covering one of the game's houses. For the places themselves, the office generator puts up whole buildings straight in the engine, and a first kit of dust and stains for interiors was approved on a test house; none of it is placed in the playable world.

Also this week

Underneath, what you build and store is kept safe: saves are written with a backup, items can no longer be copied or lost between containers, and the server checks what players claim instead of trusting them. Vehicles leave tracks where their tires slide, with dust on soft ground and smoke on hard ground that every player sees, and with a toolkit a vehicle can be taken apart for its parts, depending on your skill. Boots leave prints that depend on the ground, muddy near water, and the new movement system for the character took a major step forward: it stays in sync between players even with lag, and it is built to stay light with many players on a server, player-versus-player included.

That's the week from the development side.

Mat