Just been polishing up the meta I put in, works well I feel and gives a sense of progression. I also did a few minor things, like properly delineate aquatic creatures between cave creatures, freshwater creatures, and saltwater. Then I refactored a lot of my random beast selections, and tweaked cave generation. Amphibians and other creatures comfortable on water and land are now used in a more versatile way by the engine.
I also added the flute, which you can play to put all surrounding creatures to sleep (little bit OP), and the wizard. He fits in with the other humans, but spawns with one scroll that he can read. You know what that means? WIZARD BATTLES!
This gif actually ended up taking forever to make. First I had to tweak the rules so that my water scroll wouldn’t take out the enemy wizard’s fire scroll. Then I found this subtle deficiency of the renderer, when a terrain tile changes from one thing to another and back again without an off-screen cull. The grass tile between the wizard and my hero do this above, it goes grass, then swamp, then grass again.
Basically the unculled grass covered by the swamp was causing the new, replacement grass not to render over top of the swamp. I found a modification to the engine I won’t enable now but might be useful to keep in my back pocket, basically selectively collecting existing views on snapshot sync. Fun times. Night!
PS. I had a daughter! Baby Hera, January 6th, 2017. Big old 8lbs 4oz.