Druid's Journey - Daylight, Squirrels, and Babies

Over the last few days I had an idea strike me. That idea was to create a game where instead of surviving and building you are restoring a forest. You play as a druid, a semi-ethereal being. Your role is to help guide the forest and those that would dwell in and beside it. You will restore the forests to their ancient glory. 

Here is some fluff I wrote for the druid:

"Druids are a very long lived species that is quasi mystical being. They are little pieces of the creation of this world made manifest. Guardian spirits that tie themselves to a small piece of the world. They are benevolent spirits that if abused can become wrathful exerting control over all creatures connected to their domain.

Life is sacred to the druid. This said they understand the balance that life must maintain. For the health of the world sometimes a creature must die, a tree must be removed, fire must spread. They will sculpt their pieces of the world to fit their liking. This could even mean allowing those that might be considered parasite to co-exist.

Druids are not judged by others, but are judged by the balance they maintain."

You as the druid awaken to a forest that has decreased mightily over the years. What once spanned what seemed like forever is now a major shadow of what it once was. With this start you have a few animals and one mystical creature that will help you start over. The first animals implemented are squirrels. I have added a couple foxes as well for other testing but the main focus has been getting the game play looks to work for the squirrels

The Squirrels

Baby Squirrels

I worked on the mechanics for the last couple of days between other tasks but I now have a pretty solid way forward for creating babies. Yes, I know how babies are made. It isn’t quite as easy though when those babies are just lines of code. Overall though the system is working. Mommy and Daddy squirrel meet, they do some code exchange, and mommy squirrel ends up with:

pregnant = true

From there there is a gestation period of a few days, much shorter than what you would normally see in a squirrel but time works differently in this world anyways. 

Once born right now the babies actually end up being a random age. I laughed uncontrollably when the first baby born put out a debug message that said it was an old male squirrel. Which in fact made it older than its mother. So because of how I have some of the random creation right now there is a chance you will welp old babies 😂. Goofing aside I am pretty sure I have a way forward for this. Might take a couple different solutions but hey… it is a work in progress. 

Small note on other animals

Once the more complex animal controls are worked out I will be able to apply all the different features to more animals and bring them in. Not all at once. That is actually part of the mechanics I have laid out. You will slowly as you restore the forests around you, you will attract new animals. Some will be predators and some will be their prey. 

This will be a balancing act. You want predators to keep the prey population down but you don’t want predators to explode either. So like in real life there will be a certain balance to maintain. Some predators will be territorial and maintain a range they occupy. Others will be smaller packs or loners that on their own don’t pose a danger.

Day light and seasons

 Using some lessons learned and utilizing some tutorials I actually was able to implement a day/night cycle that I don’t find too bad. This does lead into some further challenges for speeding or pausing events and I have added them to the road map to be figured out and implemented. While I am at the early stages that I am right now this is working out in my favor. 

I will need to play with exactly how long day time is. Also if I want to mess with it for seasons as well. Shorter day light hours in winter. Lots of things to consider. Do I really need to make it more complex? I don’t know for certain. I lean towards no. This isn’t a simulation. I am not trying for full on seasons and lifecycles. Just approximations.

What’s coming up

This is just some of the surface of getting these mechanics working. I have plans to expand further but I am setting near term goals and learning more about what I and the game engine can do. 

You can also check out what I keep thinking of and writing on my Codecks for the project here at Druid’s Journey Codecks