An awesome day today for progress. I had my moment where I was like “screw this, lets draw 8 bit platformer sprites” but then I smartened up and came out with some big improvements.

Map is now an island – I used a big collision mask to basically wrap the entire island in a shape, then just threw down some background elements. So the mask is shaped where the water will be, and no one can go in the water. There is still definitely room for water based things to happen though, such as fishing or a sea creature.

Locking camera – I added ability to lock the camera on any unit by middle clicking it. Doing so will not bring up the unit’s display, in case the player wanted to just follow the unit around and still mouseover other things.

Lot’s of hunger/ happiness changes – Happiness is now tied to hunger and HP, as well as if there are any dead villagers around. The villagers now get hungry. When they reach 50% they will start searching their own inventory and the stockpile for food. If there is something they will eat it, but they will only walk to the door of the townhall if there is food there. When a villager eats food, a small yellow plus sign “+” floats over their head

Desperately hungry – When the villagers reach 25% hunger, will take it upon themselves to search for food until they die or until you tell them to do something else (like point them to a food source). I’ve also coded into the “Find Food” task to be aware of dropped items that are food. In the event that they do find food just dropped on the ground, they pick it up and continue to look for a food source.

Now I’ll work on the villager bringing food to the townhall when they are not busy so that the rest of the town people can eat as well. Tomorrow I’ll do a few more necessary things; I need to make it possible to right click and drop an item from the villager inventory; maybe make a trinket or two that will alter the unit’s stats. We’re edging close to having a new “Job” for the villagers. We’re also closer to starting the build menu.

As always, thanks for reading and I’ll keep my twitter up to date with the latest!