During these past 2 weeks, I've been focusing on generating nice random environments underwater. I got rid of the 3 maps that are currently in Alpha 6 and made a whole new one.
As mentioned in the last blog, the underwater section is divided into 4 subsections based on depth: 100m, 400m, 700m and 1000m. Each depth level contains different kinds of stuff and you'll be unlocking each new section with new equipment you'll be decoding and crafting. The surface part of the map is now smaller in size than before, but still pretty huge. Gaia maps have an area of 64km^2 after all.
Now, there were about 150 types of unique objects that you could find in the game up until now. That includes rocks, resources and so on. These past 2 weeks, I've added 170 more objects that you can only find underwater. That includes corals, weeds, seashells, sponges, rocks and a whole new mushroom biome. It's kind of weird how this Alpha will bring more things into the game than any other Alpha + the base game combined has. And I haven't even implemented all the different types of fish and alien life yet!
Although I haven't gotten around to it, I also want to change the locations of a few items you can currently find on the surface. For example, diamonds should only spawn at the deepest level, between 700m and 1000m and not at all on the surface. The rest of the minerals can still be found on the surface, but also underwater.
That's about it for this blog. Sadly, I have no pictures for you, because I'm still working on creating those nice environments and mix everything nicely together. Plus I have no special effects yet, only a couple bubbles here and there. As I said before, this update is going to take a bit longer.
Merry Christmas everyone!