Weekly Update #6 2018.03.03

Coming at you on a Saturday night, this week was a busy one as I implemented a vastly improved pathfinding system. There are several methods to chose from and then several ways to go about using each of the methods, I'm working with the latest and greatest from Unity called navmesh. Navmesh isn't a new concept, nor new to Unity, but procedural runtime navmesh has only been officially implemented in the past six months and is still largely undocumented. That means there were a lot of questions that I had to figure out for myself and with other developers online, but everything is working very well. I'll be looking for feedback on the performance as there are different ways to go about many of the steps going on behind the scenes.

Here we can see a monster that's gone up a ramp and two flights of stairs to get to our player.
This is important not only for general combat, animal pathing, and so forth, but also for town defence quests, and player summoned NPCs which I hope to be getting into next week.

The key binding system was also brought in since our last weekly update which is a big deal for player convenience. This is not a final solution for players in need of more controller support though and joystick axis are still on the todo list.

Coming in the next patch v0.1.06 alongside the new pathfinding we'll also be working with a very different mob and animal spawning system. Prior to v0.1.06 monsters just spawned continously around players and many made it clear it was very difficult to get things done in the higher levels. Solace Crafting is definitely aiming to become more of a building and crafting game than a fighting centered RPG, and the new system will certainly have monsters out and about but they won't be continously respawning for no reason. Next week I will try to reincorporate the first small "encounter," a small event with 1-3 monster guards that rewards light, experience, and possibly a reward.
Encounters of small, medium, and large sizes are intended to be the main sources of "combat" or adventure experience. Players can choose when to seek them out, and work on their adventuring abilities (the reason for the current tower placeholder system being important).

One subject we've been talking about on the forums this week is the way that rarities are handled in-game. Currently an uncommon tier 0 sword is better than a common tier 1 sword, giving reason for their existance, but all too quickly do they become backpack space-takers, out-classed by higher level materials. I'd like to propse a new system and get your opinion on it.
Say we still have rare nodes, but they do not drop readily usable rare resources. Instead the drop normal resources and a rarity essences. Say you've gather 25 uncommon essences mining teir 0 ore during your first few levels. You've just gathered and smelted your first 25 tier 1 ore and crafted a new breastplate to match your current level. Now you take you common breastplate to your enchanting table and you infuse it with your 25 uncommon essences (25 being required because it cost 25 ore to craft the breastplate) upgrading it from common tier 1 to uncommon tier 1. This would let you gather and hold onto your rare essences only using them when you are ready, on whatever level and tier you are able to.

Let me know what you think!

Thank you again for everyone participating in Early Access! Still only six weeks in and we've improved a lot of basic gameplay, graphics, and performance. There are still a lot of minor tweaks and options to be worked on, but I'm going to be trying to balance a mix of new content and general improvements starting next week now that the majority of serious problems have been dealt with.