Busy, busy, busy this Summer, enjoying some time with the family and soaking up some sunshine and rest. Still time for tweaking though, so I have a new release with some tantalizing tidbits to see!

Lots of little bits and pieces in this release, as I push further towards a stable baseline on which to create actual game content. On that note, I'm maintaining a Trello board of all the outstanding platform bits and pieces, if you're interested:

https://trello.com/b/a8lnLPa5/hide-and-seek

Bug Fixes

• Absolutely, definitely fixed the bug where the mouse cursor doesn't appear in dialogue UI! Found the root cause (incorrect component parent) and fixed it for good!
• Weather now ends more gradually when change is triggered by a quest.
• Save and load are now working. See below for info.
• Fixed issue with background music not looping properly.
• Some performance fixes, specifically around shadow and object culling and terrain mesh optimization. With these changes, I'm seeing significantly higher FPS than before. Hopefully, I can continue to tune this more!

New Features / Enhancements

• Built out the "Main Map" functionality and I'm really pleased with how it's looking. Hit <M> to bring it up, and you'll see:
  • Zoom in and out that give you any level of detail you want.
  • Icons in place for Quest Givers, Home, and Quest Objectives.
  • Settlements now appear with their names on the map once they're discovered.
• Save system is now in place for many systems and objects. The following will be saved and restored on load, either from the main menu or in-game:
  • Selected character and position.
  • Inventory and quick access items, including items equipped.
  • Spawned quest items, either in inventory or spawned if not yet collected.
  • Quest and Dialogue states.
• Started to add some Quality settings under "Core Quality". I'll tweak these as I go, to try to give some options around performance and quality. I strongly recommend sticking to "Balanced" for now, that gives the nicest trade off of quality and performance.
• Added an "Unlock FPS" option under Video settings, though with current optimization I'm not sure how high this will go!
• Added a new settlement in the mountains, "Torr Haggard"
  • Added the Inn, the "Frozen Spitoon" and its loveable bar keep, Big Eddie.
  • Added some roads, houses and some decoration. Lots more to do here, but it's coming together.
• Added new Lake and Island Zones, with plans to build out more settlements and points of interest.
• Starting to flesh out the environment, with points of interest and content.
• AI - much more performant AI, with individual, tuned Finite State Machine models for each character. So far, we now have:
  • Deer and Stag - only come out in the daytime, graze randomly, deer will flee at the sight or sound of the player. Stag is more robust, and won't flee - in fact, he will defend himself if attacked.
  • Wolf - only comes out at night, and will randomly howl at the moon. Will not attack the player unless attacked itself.
  • Rabbit - this guy just hops along, grazes, and looks around. She'll flee is she hears the player or is attacked.
  • Fox - not shy, this guy, so will tolerate the player. Will flee if attacked.
• Enemy AI - creatures will only be spawned at night but are very aggressive to the player and animals. 

Internal

• Updated packages:
  • Unity: 2021.3.8f1.
  • GeNa: 3.3.21
  • Gaia: 3.2.6
  • HDRP Time of Day 1.1.0
  • Soul Link Spawner: 1.2.6
  • Quest Machine: 1.2.29
  • Dialog System: 2.2.30
• Added a "Debug Canvas", with buttons to trigger various things for testing. You can toggle this with the <5> key on the keypad.
  • Please use with caution, as some things may not like being triggered out of sequence.

Known Issues

• Still lots to be done with performance, as we're not getting anywhere near the FPS we should.
• Load and save can be "finicky" and will be tidied up over the coming releases.