Games A Struggle To Survive - A 2D Survival Game In Development

Hello Everyone,

I would like to post here with information regarding my game project titled A Struggle To Survive. It is a 2D survival game that focuses more on real-life survival techniques, crafting, building and essentially thriving in a random generated world. I will have a main story line, but there will be extensive tools to create custom worlds. I have been working on it about 9 months now and finally want to start letting people know what I am doing. I blog every week or two about the project, sharing what I am learning as I build this game using UNITY.

Dev Blog: https://astruggletosurvivedevblog.blogspot.com
Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2KPW_a0cmazj2OzyOBPM1w/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Eyesgood_

Thanks,
Eyesgood

 

Another post this week. This one deals with development tile workflow, random distribution of special tiles using a clustered technique, and a nice C# list randomizing extension method I use to change up the distribution of some tile types.

https://surviveandthrivegame.blogspot.com/2020/09/tile-workflow-and-sub-distributions.html

 

This week's post reflects on my recent development efforts to introduce water depth with swimming, animations, and sound effects. A short video is provided showing the testing of these new features to my game.

https://surviveandthrivegame.blogspot.com/2020/10/simulating-water-depth-with-animations.html

 

What happens when you buy an Asset Store product but later find out it doesn't have exactly what you needed? Find out in this week's blog.

https://surviveandthrivegame.blogspot.com/2020/10/sound-randomizations-and-asset-store.html

 

A new PC build and a new game update!
https://surviveandthrivegame.blogspot.com/2020/12/a-new-pc-and-new-game-features.html

 

My latest post marks the end of the first year of development. I am planning some videos soon which will show off some of the latest game features.

https://surviveandthrivegame.blogspot.com/2020/12/year-one-milestone-year-in-retrospect.html

 

Here is another post that delves into my vision for the game.

https://surviveandthrivegame.blogspot.com/2021/01/a-vision-for-survive-and-thrive.html

Also, at the bottom of the post and lined here is a video where I talk about the latest features and show some new content. I hope you find it interesting.

 

A short post this week regarding my current sprint, seasons and tree growth. Click the link to take a look at the Maple Tree!

https://surviveandthrivegame.blogspot.com/2021/01/a-peek-at-seasonal-tree-work.html

 

Due to the overwhelming popularity of the Survive And Thrive moniker, I have decided to rename my game to A Struggle To Survive. The blog can now be accessed here:

https://astruggletosurvivedevblog.blogspot.com

Please update your links if you are following along.

 

Here is a post I hope you will enjoy, where I discuss and illustrate a crafting approach.

https://astruggletosurvivedevblog.blogspot.com/2021/02/a-crafting-approach.html

 

Just a note to say the project is alive and well. I don't have any blog updates at this time, but I am working on seasonal tree sprites and the inventory system. Here's to progress!

 

I revisited my chunk engine and have a new post where I describe a fix to a design flaw I recently discovered. If you are developing a chunk engine for your 2d tilemap game, you might just find this post interesting and maybe even helpful.

https://astruggletosurvivedevblog.blogspot.com/2021/07/revisiting-chunking-engine.html

 

Hello Eyesgood,

I have been reading your post, and your progress and your criteria when optimizing the code flow is very interesting, I would like to ask your advice, I want to make a game like age empire, factorium (RTS), but after reviewing and testing with it unity tilemap system, leaves much to be desired when working with tiles above 64x 64, and if we add trees, plants for the setting using tiles, everything becomes very heavy. Based on your experience, how do you think it might work with a large tile map. You think it would be okay to use your same chunk loading approach for an RTS style game.

Thanks.

 

gato0429,

I don't have any experience making those kinds of games. At this point in my game, using ScriptableObjects, I am able to generate 25x25 tile map chunks multiplied by 9 chunks (5625 tiles) along with all the flora (trees, etc.) on those tiles in about .02 to .06 seconds per chunk. Chunk Unloading is handled by a coroutine in the background. I have generated test tilemaps as large as 4000x4000 (16 million tiles) and have rendered them in a single tilemap "world view" without much trouble. The initial generation of the perlin-based map takes a long time, but once each chunk has been saved to disk, the chunk engine seems to be handling the loading and offloading of the chunks blazingly fast when in the game. I tested that size because my game actually uses about 9 tilemaps, with each terrain type having its own tilemap in a layered approach. This layering even includes underground worlds several layers deep. In short, I don't think your bottleneck will be the tilemap if you can rely on ScriptableObjects to store your tile metadata and references to your tilemap sprites.

Hope this helps.

 

Thank you so much,
For your comments, I will start with my chunks manager, for field management, it is good to always have the opinion of someone else XD, success in your development, hopefully I will be on the right track. Maybe I will post like yours, to share XD advances, Thanks for the inspiration.

I hope you can continue with your development, and we can see the game finished.

Thanks

 

Another chunk engine-related post today. This one was really exciting. I figured out how to eliminate chunk edge tile issues without writing any new code! It's all in the technique! I also give the reader a method to handle scene fade-in and fade-out. Read all about it in the link below.

https://astruggletosurvivedevblog.blogspot.com/2021/07/eliminating-visible-chunk-edge-lines.html