itch.io

Still alive!!! And hype to get to work here. I'm charging for this demo now. I believe the swedes are ripping off americans yet again.

I had a lot of other stuff going on. So sorry. I am working on Gaia Genesis in Unreal Engine for the past 6 months. It will blow y'all away, I hope.

Sincerely,

Andy aka OptimizerPrime aka DirtyYoda on SoundCloud

Thanks as always for your love and support!

Please please Stream Gaia Eternal in the meantime, thank you!

And check out Domino Playground! I made it to raise funds but only a few understood it I fear.

Still on track for an anniversary release. Originally, when I released this game a year ago, I wanted to do weekly releases. Then, instead of adding small features a bit at a time, I tried to design the whole town system. The scope of the whole town system is like creating the whole game of Banished. Since I did not succeed in breaking that goal down into smaller parts, it didn't happen, and neither did any releases.

The game still has a roadmap. This next release is all about the terrain engine, view distance, and performance. That's a good foundation to build on. The next priority after that is a basic narrative, and something a little more personal that tells you what you can do as the player. After that is building, which will probably not  work the way it works now. And the town system still has to get done! Even if it's in small parts at first. I also want to start working on multiplayer pretty soon. 

Longer-term, there's animals, role playing features, economics, and social things like how landmarks get named by people, and how people discover and share knowledge about the world.

The new 200km terrain engine is in the game now and working really well! Playing with some new terrain concepts. If things keep going this well, there should be an update sometime in April.

Pics of the very first real development build running on the new terrain engine. The previous video was from a slimmer prototype. These pictures are of the full game with 100-200km draw distance. Still some work to do before it is ready for release.

Oh yes and left click to throw rocks.

Do you have any specific questions?

W,A,S,D keys to move

Mouse to look around

Left mouse click to pick things up and do things

E to open the inventory and crafting screen

Numbers to select items on the action bar at the bottom of the screen

ESC to open the main menu

Mostly you can explore the world, pick up items, learn recipes, and craft things :)

Here is a preview of extreme view distance and large terrain features!

Thanks! I intended it to teach the basic logic and arithmetic circuits, in a way that’s fun for anyone. I do expect to continue development based on suggestions and bug reports.

Lately I've been working on the world generator. 1) It's much faster now, especially if you have a lot of processor cores. 2) I'm increasing the view distance from 2km to ... about 200km, possibly more. And it's still faster than the current version. The views from mountaintops are ok now, but they're going to be ridiculous. 3) Since you can see so much further, I'm increasing the overall scale of terrain features. Bigger mountains, more space between them, etc.

If I finish these improvements before the town system update (which is very likely) I'll release an update just for this.

It will rise again. You can check the time in the debug screen: press \ (back slash). I too always have a love/hate relationship with day/night cycles in games. I'll think about maybe adding an option to skip night-time.

I added the fire item, but there isn’t a use for it yet. The next update will have a communal bonfire, and in the future it might be used in smelting.

Glad you like the game so far! The next update is a major one, and probably still a few months away, but it is definitely coming in time!

I don't like to guess delivery dates, since the next update is very complex. What I can say is that I finished designing the rules and systems for the next update, and I'm writing the code now. The update will be all about towns and NPCs, and it should help the game to begin to seem like a game. At first, it will be limited to primitive technologies and basic jobs. Future updates will move gradually up the tech tree, towards modern times.

I'm working on this now. You can't currently get seeds from wheat. In the next update, you will get new seeds directly by harvesting wheat, and the wheat will go to the nearest town's food supply, instead of to your inventory.

I've settled on a design for the town system, which I'll outline briefly here:

Towns appear and grow based on local food production. There are rules for how neighboring towns interact, for example smaller towns become suburbs of larger hubs, and can be annexed if the hub overtakes them. Suburbs trade with their own hub city, and hubs trade with nearby hubs.

NPCs are assigned primary jobs based on the town's needs. Players can always do whatever they want. NPCs work in shifts: day job, home improvement, socializing, and sleeping. Jobs are assigned based on the town's needs, and generally focus on a specific type of gathering and/or crafting. For example a woodcutter finds trees, harvests wood, and brings it to a depot. A builder can take materials from a depot and construct someone else's blueprint.

I'm strongly leaning towards more free-form block-based building, instead of the current pre-defined structures. The idea is that structures are mainly decorative, not functional. People are functional. So a shop is a shop because there is a shopkeeper in it, not because it's a pre-defined building type.

Land is parceled out by the town on request, for various purposes. This allows the town to grow organically, but somewhat orderly. I've considered systems for discouraging players from being too greedy with land, but I'm not convinced it's necessary just yet. The game is still single player for the time being, so if you want to grief yourself and the town, why not :)

I think that's enough to get started on coding.

When I first started this project, the focus was on exploration and crafting. The current version of the game already does a pretty good job of showing how those aspects work.  Shortly before the first EA release, I became very interested in ways to simulate a global civilization in detail.

In the description, I wrote that the next update would include "improvements to the AI and town system." It turns out that this meant designing and coding a huge part of what the 'real game' will be. Rather than being a minor update, it was more like designing a whole game from scratch. So that's what I've been doing. I've made a lot of progress on designing the systems for towns/cities, jobs, and the economy.

can you craft seeds from the wheat in your inventory? I think that was the plan but I don't remember if it's in yet.

For now you can plant in dirt that's already dirt. Eventually there will be ways to till the ground.

I'm glad you like the game! Chests, hoes, and pickaxes will be in a future update. Workbenches are a maybe.

Hi, I'm really glad you like the game! Wheat is pretty rare. The best way to find it is to look in clearings where you can see a long way. It grows in clusters.

Other people show up when there's enough food to support them. Find wild wheat, get seeds, and plant enough of them in one area.

Click and hold on a wild wheat plant (they're rare). Anytime a meter appears below the cursor, that means hold the mouse button down for some time. 

Try planting more :)

Thanks! I agree a lot of updates are necessary, and they're on the way. My plan for buildings is that you'll eventually be able to go inside them, furnish and decorate them with a lot of details. I also have some ideas about eventually giving the player more control over the details of building. Not necessarily block building, but similar as far as fitting individual pieces together.