The current colonist model was already in the game over eight years ago, in early 2016. The workflow for producing it was horrible. The model has a bunch of surfaces that connect and disconnect in many different spots. To texture them, the model has to be “unwrapped” into a flat image that displays all these surfaces next to each other. But getting a feel for how the textures look on a 3D model from a flat image is very difficult.
When it looked semi-decent, I didn’t want to touch it anymore. The only difference between the colonists is currently the color of their shirt, which we can very easily adjust by putting a simple color code in a .JSON file.
When we added new monsters in 0.9.0, we used a different method to craft the models. Instead of texturing the model in a more traditional way, we made slightly more detailed 3D models and used vertex painting to color them. We had used the same method to generate for example the beds and torches at the very beginning of Colony Survival development, and later on we used it for jobblocks as well. We’re very happy with the results there.
Farmer / tinkerer / beekeeper
I had used it to make a new vertex-painted colonist model before the release of 0.9.0, but Zun never got around to implementing it. It was also a bit “flat”, undetailed and boring. In recent weeks, Zun did put it in an internal development build, and I gave it a bit more life and detail. We like the results a lot and are near-certain of adding this to the main branch.
Instead of merely having a different-coloured shirt for every job, it has now become possible to make much more custom designs for different jobs. I can quickly adjust how muscular colonists are, the color of not only their shirts but also of pants, shoes, bracelets and belts, I can roll shirt sleeves up or down, I can add tools to their belts or hats to their heads. I’ve been making a bunch of new models for different jobs and we believe it’s a big improvement!
Names and miscellaneous
That’s not all we’ve been working on. To make colonists feel even more personal, we’ve decided to generate names for them. We made a long list of first names and surnames and each colonist gets a random combination of them. Colonists recruited in quick succession of each other have a high chance of sharing the same surname. In our internal development build, they are only visible while wielding the command tool. Making sure they’re not blocked by headgear or crafting icons, and that they’re not floating in the middle of nowhere either, is a bit of a problem that we’re still working on.
Named colonists
Another change concerns the saplings. Saplings placed by players would always grow into the same very small tree. In the next big update, saplings will be able to grow into larger, more diverse and more natural shapes, like the trees that are in the world when you first launch the game.
Also, builders will be able to use a couple of extra items like roofs and rails, and crafting limits will become a bit more flexible. In the current live build, the number of the limit has to be a multiple of the amount of items produced in one recipe. So if a recipe results in 3 arrows, it has to be 3/6/9/etc. That will no longer be the case with the next release.
We hope you’ll enjoy these changes as much as we do! Let us know how you feel about the new colonists and names, and feel free to share your ideas for specific jobs in the comments or on Discord!
Bedankt voor het lezen :D