The last two months have been very, very quiet for the development of the game. Mostly, this is due to family holidays and spending time with the kids in the sunshine. It's also in part due to reducing the pressure I've been putting on myself to make progress, as this was starting to have an effect on my wellbeing. I needed to step back, re-focus, and remind myself that I'm doing this for fun, not for work!

All that said, I am back in the saddle and have made some significant decisions and changes in the game. The focus of my changes is to try to reduce the dependency on loads of Asset Store Assets, consolidate as much as possible to core systems, and focus on the gameplay.  I've also vastly reduced the size of the map, purely because of the amount of work it takes to populate the area. I'd much rather have a smaller map with interesting things going on than a huge map that's barren and boring.

As ever, I really appreciate any and all feedback!

Bug Fixes

• Fixed bug where mouse cursor doesn't appear in dialogue UI.
• Fixed bug where character model "catches" on paths and roads.
• Fixed issue with menu clicks not registering on the text of controls/buttons.
• Fixed issue with ammo display preventing buttons from being clickable.
• Fixed issue with Callum, where door and pickup prompts were intermittent.
• NPC characters will now resume patrolling/wandering, once a conversation is complete.

New Features / Enhancements

• Reduced the size of the map, significantly! This is a good thing, I promise!
• Added lots of behaviors to the Creature AIs, including grazing, howling / roaring, and sleeping, many driven by time of day or the weather.
• Added "noise", so creatures and animals can hear players' footsteps and react.
• New weather and time of day, dramatically changing the look and feel of the game.
• Added gameplay options to toggle blood and gore and the ability to hurt and kill animals. These are both turned off by default and are in place to make the game more accessible to younger players.

Internal

• Updated to Unity 2021.3.5f1.
• Updated Gaia and GeNa to 3.2.5 and 3.3.19 respectively.
• Updated Quest Machine and Dialogue System to 1.2.28 and 2.2.29 respectively.
• Replaced Enviro Sky and Weather with HDRP Time of Day - this removes a load of complexity and performance considerations and consolidates the "world" mechanics into a single, integrated asset.
• Replaced Emerald AI with Invector FSM AI - this again removes a load of complexity and doubling up of work, consolidating all AI (creature and human) into a single asset, integrated into the core player controller (Invector Third Person Shooter).
• Removed The Vegetation Engine - though I love this asset, the Gaia terrain systems (Flora) and foliage shaders work great, and removing this improves performance and reduces complexity.
• Added Crest Ocean and Water - while this goes against my "complexity" argument, the shader and solution is extremely performant, easy to set up, and independent of other systems. Plus, it looks great!
• Removed a load of other bits and pieces that were just getting in the way!

Known Issues

• Load and Save System doesn't work. I've put in place a UI framework and some backend code, but I need to build out what objects are saved and how they are re-loaded.
• Core Quality is not yet implemented in options, but this will apply some granular settings that should provide good baseline performance for all hardware tiers.
• Spawn fading is a bit odd, with ghostly creatures popping into existence.
• Weather ends very abruptly, though this should be fixed in an upcoming update to HDRP Time of Day.
• Probably loads more other things I've haven't spotted just yet!