May 17 - Enemy Camps
This week was pretty much all about enemy camps and preparing the world for expansion. Greks have set up settlements along the beaches, and they very much don't want you to come visit. So much so they've set up lookout towers to protect their homes, and outfitted themselves with bows to shoot at you. If one of the lookouts spots you he'll alert the camp and start shooting at you. His aim is pretty good. He's been practicing during his downtime and he has a lot of downtime.
Since lookouts are always... looking out they can see a lot farther but have a narrower field of view, so they're easier to sneak up on from different angles. The Grek lookouts also work in shifts all day, so don't expect to be able to sneak up on a defenseless camp when they're all asleep. The others still sleep though, they're plenty defenseless.
Additionally there have been some graphical changes. There's a new indicator for stealth and detection, as well as continuing improvements to the look of skin.
The rest has been getting the world ready for expansion. Once complete, the world will be roughly 310 times larger, or an expansion of 31,000% if you like seeing the same number but bigger (I do). This requires completely reworking the way the engine stores and loads terrain, which is basically all the engine does, so it takes a liiiiittle bit of doing. I had planned for this eventuality though so it shouldn't take too long.
"So why not just infinite terrain?" I may add something like this if you decide to venture beyond the normal bounds, but I don't like infinite for the "core world" for several reasons. Number one being, there are no guarantees, and lesser quality/detail of the world. Having a defined space lets me ensure certain things like "there will always be X number of towns," "there will always be a capital city," "there will always be X number of dungeons," "you will always start in a town and have access to a vendor," "there will always be these certain biomes." With totally random and infinite generation none of those things are guarantees, and you may end up in a world where all the fun stuff is really far away. Declaring boundaries lets me tell the engine to MAKE SURE those things are always available within a certain radius, and be able to have actual setpieces and storylines that I know everyone will get to enjoy, rather than nothing but rolling hills forever.
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