Update 217 - Gatherable Resources

Hi everyone,

I’ve used the few weeks since my last update to upgrade the gathering system and have started implementing linen as a construction resource, so I want to talk to you about that today.

First of all: My apologies for the time since the last update. Between various work streams, I have been using all my spare time for actual development, so it has once again taken me a little while to write this post - and it is far too easy to get into a habit of “adding just this one more thing” before writing the post.

In good news, I have made really good progress. As I’ve explained before, I am intending to change how resources and seeds work in 0.9, and I have implemented the biggest part of that change already. So far, 3 buildings largely fit into the category of “gathering” buildings: The sawmill (gathering trees), the stonemason (gathering rocks), and the gathering hut (gathering fruit). With a few changes, I have made this system far more generic, and each gathering building can be set to gather various types of resources.

I first implemented this with the gathering hut, which can now collect resource clusters of fruit, vegetables, wheat, flax, etc. This means that I can also implement more wild resource nodes in the world - so finding food nodes, spices, coffee plants, etc throughout the world will be random for each game, and will influence settlement locations, which type of goods to pursue, and more. For now, I have only implemented the 3 additional nodes (vegetables, wheat, flax - 2 of those in today’s image), but I will create more wild clusters in the next few weeks. Once the clusters are implemented, I will also create some kind of seed packaging building, where excess plants can be turned into a seed bag to create a field from. Ultimately, the stone mason will also be able to gather types of rock that contain iron or gold, making them a little more accessible earlier in the game, though with limited supply.

Finally, I have started separating flax from linen, so flax will have to be gathered or farmed, while the linen maker will create linen from that flax. Linen will also become a construction material for the later tier 1 buildings, so there will finally be a use for it beyond simply selling it. This is of course part of the new production chains, which I still have not written a post about - but will do so as soon as I find some time!

Until next time!