I wrote a devlog with all the things I would like to push a big step further:
https://humane-tiger.itch.io/9-dayz/devlog/561270/devlog-post-jam-jam-7
During battle, rats now steal food items from players inventory to increase their health. This can quickly get out of control - within 2 rounds, rats can become pretty strong (depending on what kind of food they steal). In my recording, I first craft some weapon and search the surrounding trees for items. Then I simulate a horde of rats via my internal game editor and attack them. The images below show my inventory before and after the fight - a lot of food got eaten and is gone.
Tape is an important game item that is needed for improvising an axe. Axes are the most versatile tool in game, as they can be used for breaking doors, windows and are a strong weapon in battles.
Game now makes sure, that players can find a tape early on - less RNG for a better start.
Also improved some visuals and fixed a nasty bug - some images didn't render only in the published version. Turned out, the itch.io CDN doesn't find images when their extension is in uppercase but game referes to it in lowercase. My local environment doesn't care about that difference at all.
Also published the todays version to the Jam, as it played pretty stable in my tests:
Ducks now spawn as separate cards, not only as loot items, like before.
This change will prepare a minigame for catching/hunting animals. For now, ducks are just spawning already being dead (ewww...!) and can be cut for harvesting meat and bones - like it can also be done with dead rats (ewwwewww...!).
Meat, once roasted tender and crispy over a campfire, doesn't ask where it is coming from. It is an excellent food for saturating the great hunger.
Started the in-card-cooking feature which will separate Cooking from Crafting. Both became a bigger thing of their own.
My plan is to allow players to cook in a card-based environment. Once a Fireplace is build, choosing the action "Cooking" will turn the Fireplace card into cook mode and this config-based selection of cooking options is coming up. Players can select one of the available results to start the cooking. Also added cooking glue out of water and bones. This will become useful as an alternative item for repairing the durability of weapons.
Recipes with unknown ingredients stay unknown until players find these ingredients.
Still working on the in-card-cooking feature. Removed the former "Roasting meat/pepper/mushrooms" option from the Crafting menu, as this is now covered by the cooking feature. I added a new config for all available recipes, and implemented the code rendering the cooking menu based on that config.
With the new empty space in the Crafting menu, I had the idea of a new crafting option: A sharp stick, carved out of a branch with a knife. This stick not only is a nice weapon with decent attack and defense values, but is also needed for cooking/roasting most stuff over the fireplace (it was a branch before, but a sharp stick makes more sense).
Also started implementing all the additional checks needed to limit the available cooking options to items in inventory.
The feature still needs some more work, but an end is in sight :-)
Finished the new in-game cooking! One thing turned out more complicated than I thought: Combined resources. In game players can find different kinds of mushrooms and different bottles of water. Some recipes combine these different items - any mushroom or water will do, so to speak. This made things pretty complicate, some future refactoring will be needed to treat such subtypes properly.
Other than that, everything went pretty smooth. I added some nice card turning animation, indicating the switch between "normal" card and cooking mode - an effect I will adapt for other cards as well.
The following recording shows the process of collecting the right resouces (mushrooms) for a recipe and cooking them into a more valuable type of food (roasted mushrooms). Have a look at the number in inventory bottom area when I hover the mushrooms to see the before-after values. I also craft a sharp stick from a branch with my knife, as this is the second item needed to roast the mushroom over fire.
(itch has many serious issues - one is embedded YT videos. When the vid doesn't start, hop over to YouTube by choosing the option at the bottom of the video)
I was using the Game Editor again to "cheat" a Fireplace next to the player. In a real game, some specific resources are needed to craft one, in particular a stump. This one you will only get when you cut down a tree with an axe. All of this isn't avaiable at the start of game, that's why I use the Editor to create quick test scenerios as I need them (psss... you can use it too, if you want - nobody is watching. Well, maybe some zombies, but they won't tell anybody...).
And 2nd thing I added is a "Touch Support" option in the start screen. It offers players touch-friendly movement controls as alternatives to WASD keyboard input. The game from now on isn't limited to big screens any more (and I can finally play it on my Windows Surface without connecting the keyboard - yay!).
