I just wanted to pop in and say that progress is still being made. It took some time, but the new plant system is working as I originally intended, it is much faster and I am now able to efficiently randomize plants at the start of the game, so that it doesn't look so barren. I started getting burnt out and feeling like I wasn't making as much progress as I wanted, but I took a bit of a break, started another project, focused on my job, and am feeling better about the pace of the game and the progress. This game is a marathon, and I have no one breathing down my neck. This is a hobby that is meant to be fun!

With the new tile height manipulation system that I wrote about previously, I have created some new types of houses, mounds. They are extremely important to the lore of the game, which is why a system was necessary to be put into place. This will serve as a way for the player to be introduced to building and manipulating the world with a new quest that I am working on. This quest will be an introduction to the characters' history, family, and way of life. It will also serve as a tutorial for digging and moving soil, which up until now have just left the character to figure it out themselves.

I have also started to understand a bit about the Godot engine itself, and have been manipulating the C++ code for the tile map node, along with starting to organize ways to add my custom nodes for tile information and plants to put directly into the engine as well. This will speed everything up and make it so that the player doesn't notice the plant operations. I was able to increase performance heavily by making them objects that told the tile map what designs to display for the plants, and giving the tile data information about what resources they currently have. Once this is directly in the engine as a C++ node, it will be lightning fast.


In summary, I want to focus on learning, improving my programming skills, writing the narrative I want to convey, and making this game something I am proud of. And it is worth the effort to me whether it is "successful" or not.