Devlog #27 - Waypoint Animation System, Gamescom Recap & Patreon Insights

Hi together and welcome to the next devlog!

Today's devlog is about the new Waypoint Animation System, a recap from Gamescom and some insights how I used the Patreon earnings so far.

Waypoint Animation System

What is a Waypoint Animation System and why does it exist?

This self designed system allows me to create Work Cycle Animations for production buildings in a flexible and scalable way.

Work Cycle Animations are one of the key aspects of a Settlers-like game. They contribute to the "What you see is what you get" principle, because you can always see at which point the current production cycle is and it invites you to watch the lovely crafting animations.

What is special about this system?

The most important requirement for me was flexibility and easy scalability. It was necessary to have a system that works for all kind of production buildings, independent of the amount of input & output stacks or amount of processing steps needed for the work cycle.

For each production building I define waypoints and actions needed to depict the whole work cycle. I can adapt the craft animations and define interim product states like e.g. a glowing ingot and finally specify the production time.

It's crucial that the specified production time is adhered to and that the whole animation chain doesn't take longer or is quicker than the defined production time.

• This is where this new Waypoint Animation System really shines:
• It automatically adapts walking speeds and animation speeds depending on the available time budgets
• Pickup & Drop Animations are automatically taken into account based on the stack type
• Changes of production time lead to adapted animations automatically
• Particle effects & sound effects can be easily integrated such as an oven fired up on first production start

Working on this new system also allowed me to advance other areas as well. For example I was able to integrate dedicated pickup and drop animations for every settler, not only for workers in a work cycle. This means that all carriers now also pickup and drop goods accordingly which really helps with the immersion as well!

Here you can see the new system in action :)
Watch on YouTube

Gamescom Recap

Gamescom 2024 in Cologne was a blast for me. I was there on Wednesday and Thursday and used the time to connect with new people and meet old friends.

Here are some of my highlights:

• I met a couple of potential publishers to further discuss possible business cooperation possibilities
• Some content creators like Maurice Weber and Steinwallen played TFE for the very first time and they seemed to enjoy it a lot :)
• I talked to the developers of Pioneers of Pagonia and loved the exchange about Settler-like games. They are closely following TFE and it became clear once again that TFE and PoP will complement each other in a perfect way
• I also met Volker Wertich, the inventor of The Settlers, and talked with him about TFE and PoP. He remembered his solo dev time very well and gave me a few tips ;)

Patreon Insights

I run Patreon for a couple of months now and figured that it would be a good time to share some insights how I used the earnings so far to accelerate the development of TFE.

While it's not yet enough to substantially lower my working hours of my main job, I was able to invest the earnings into some crucial areas:

• To be able to add and test DLSS I needed to buy a NVIDIA gpu, since I had a AMD gpu before. This was only possible with the Patreon support.
• To make my life as a solo dev a bit easier I occasionally consider Unreal Engine Marketplace Plugins for certain things, which speed up development time. These tend to be pretty cost intensive, so this is another area where the earnings move things forward.
• To protect the IP around The First Explorers I registered the trademark for TFE in the European Union. The fees for the registration process was backed by the Patreon earnings.
• To run the infrastructure around the development I need to spend money for things like domains, website hosting or accounting & tax management. I'm glad that I can cover these running monthly costs with the Patreon earnings

Thanks a lot to all the Patreon supporters! As you can see your financial support really helps developing TFE and it makes TFE a better game in the end.

If you want to start supporting this game on Patreon, you can join here: Patreon - The First Explorers

And that's a wrap for today. Thanks a lot for stopping by and make sure to leave a comment what you think about the content of todays devlog! :)

Best,

Sebastian