Greetings Founders, and welcome to the 60th CardLife DevBlog! We’ve been working on implementing a lot of changes ahead of the next major update to CardLife.
Going Underground
Up until now, the sub-surface world of CardLife has been a pretty safe place, but Cian’s been working on implementing a change which will make it a particularly dangerous environment. To get at the abundant resources below ground, you’ll have to dodge a few other residents - the Goblin, the Imp, and the Prototype Golem are all about to move in to the upper mantle, and they’re not willing to share. While we're on the subject of the Goblin, you may remember the idle animation we shared a few weeks back - it's had a little polish now, so here's the latest version;
This will have a marked effect on the gameplay, with precious stone and metal resources now guarded by powerful enemies. Getting lost in the subterranean dark has been the biggest danger up until now, but that’s going to change very soon.
New Animations
Speaking of the Goblin, Matt’s been fine-tuning this critter’s animation this week, with this cool new walking motion taking pride of place. There’s a lot of new movement coming to the creatures of CardLife, and with new sound effects inbound too, the wildlife in the game is getting much more dynamic for the next update.
Inventory Updates
Alessio’s been hard at work implementing the updates to the inventory system (The top left of the screenshot below). It’s been greyed out up until now, but as armor and other equippable items are brought in, it’s going to be needed. The left hand side of the screen will show your armor items - for the torso, arms, legs, etc. Along the right you will see other gear, so rings or charms for example. The bottom line is where you will equip creature souls.
Souls are dropped by special versions of wild creatures (denoted by visual effects). So for example, a defeated special version of the wolf might drop its soul, which will boost, say, attack power. A player character will eventually be able to use these to bring creature companions to life, or to bless items, but for the next update they’ll be used to boost stats.
We’re not planning on a leveling system as such, so this will be the primary way to alter your character’s abilities - it’s an important addition to the game for sure.
Optimization Work
Thor’s been on a mission to improve performance this week, and so far it’s proving fruitful. There’s still some testing to be done, but the early signs are very good indeed. We’ve always acknowledged that optimization issues are something which comes with the territory of early access, and hopefully we’ll see an improvement on this front in the coming release.
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Cheers,