Friday, June 20, 2008

Resource Rate

I made good progress with Dragon Siege, although I could not resist implementing more gold plating features! It is so easy to spend an hour or so on a nice to have feature: I added clouds to the weather system. The clouds do contribute a lot to the atmosphere. I also added animated water areas.

The resources now work with rates. Resource changes occur at a rate per gaming second. For instance a wheat field of a farm produces 2 food units per second. Units also consume resources at a particular rate.

The target of the player will thus be to maintain a positive resource rate. Constructing units and buildings will still require a once off resource cost, therefore the importance of keeping a positive resource rate. There are also penalties associated with having zero resources and a negative resource rate. Currently your units will indicate a food shortage and attack at a slower rate.

I plan to make certain areas more "fertile" for farms. Thus a farm will produce much more food in that area. Of course these fertile areas will be close to invaders and vandals!