Dev Blog
Hi, this is the Stranded III development blog (see also Forum Thread, Comment Thread).
Entry 112 - Brushes, Keys, Damage & States - May 7, 2023
Terrain Brushes
Someone asked for terrain brushes so I implemented them. Now you can simply use grayscale images as brushes for terrain sculpting and painting. Hooray! Just put your brush images into the right folder and they will become available as brushes in the map editor.
A rectangular brush used with the painting tool
Fun fact: Brushes use the same format as CS2D spraylogos. 32x32 pixel grayscale images. So you could use spraylogos as terrain brushes
Alternative Keys
You can now set a primary and a secondary alternative key for each action in the controls menu. This gives me and players more freedom and hopefully I can design a better default input config this way which works for more people. In-game input UI info boxes will still only show the primary key though. Otherwise there would be too much stuff on the screen.
Damage System
Stranded I and II just had one simple damage type and no armor/defense value at all. Just plain damage which is applied 1:1.
In Order to make the new clothing/equipment feature in Stranded III more interesting and also to give weapons and enemies more depth there will be different damage types and also different resistance (= armor) types. This means certain weapons will be strong against certain types of enemies and weak against others. The system also applies to other objects so for instance cutting trees by hitting them with arrows will take a while because piercing damage is weak against trees.
The system is entirely data driven and when you mod the game you can add as many damage types as you want. Right now the current damage types are planned but I may remove some or add new ones:
normal: Regular, unspecified damage
slash: Caused by sharp stuff like blades (axes, swords, ...)
piercing: Caused by pointed weapons/projectiles like arrows and spears
blunt: Hammers, rocks, ...
There are also some more special damage types:
poison: Poisonous stuff
fire: Hot stuff
water: Water. e.g. When hit by a high wave or an elephant spraying water at you
cold: Ice and other cold things
electric: Thunderbolts and other electric stuff
explosive: Caused by explosions
energy: Energy weapons like laser swords or phasers... 
falling: Only caused when falling from high heights
smashing: Only caused when hit by large & heavy physics simulation objects
For all these damage types there will be matching resistance and immunity types.
Objects can have multiple damage types and resistances at once. Poisonous arrows for example could cause piercing damage but also poison damage.
When calculating the resistance of the player, the resistance values of all equipped items (clothing) will be summed up and taken into account.
States
I also worked a lot on state (= status effects) logic and also painted some state icons.
Some of these icons look quite... well... "basic" but this is intended as they'll be quite tiny in-game.
Most of the states are actually bad and express that you have some kind of injury which affects you in a negative way.
States can be Lua scripted as well. They can run actions when they are inflicted, when they expire, when they are removed by something or over time while they are active.
Someone asked for terrain brushes so I implemented them. Now you can simply use grayscale images as brushes for terrain sculpting and painting. Hooray! Just put your brush images into the right folder and they will become available as brushes in the map editor.
A rectangular brush used with the painting toolFun fact: Brushes use the same format as CS2D spraylogos. 32x32 pixel grayscale images. So you could use spraylogos as terrain brushes
Alternative Keys
You can now set a primary and a secondary alternative key for each action in the controls menu. This gives me and players more freedom and hopefully I can design a better default input config this way which works for more people. In-game input UI info boxes will still only show the primary key though. Otherwise there would be too much stuff on the screen.
Damage System
Stranded I and II just had one simple damage type and no armor/defense value at all. Just plain damage which is applied 1:1.
In Order to make the new clothing/equipment feature in Stranded III more interesting and also to give weapons and enemies more depth there will be different damage types and also different resistance (= armor) types. This means certain weapons will be strong against certain types of enemies and weak against others. The system also applies to other objects so for instance cutting trees by hitting them with arrows will take a while because piercing damage is weak against trees.
The system is entirely data driven and when you mod the game you can add as many damage types as you want. Right now the current damage types are planned but I may remove some or add new ones:
normal: Regular, unspecified damage slash: Caused by sharp stuff like blades (axes, swords, ...) piercing: Caused by pointed weapons/projectiles like arrows and spears blunt: Hammers, rocks, ...There are also some more special damage types:
poison: Poisonous stuff fire: Hot stuff water: Water. e.g. When hit by a high wave or an elephant spraying water at you cold: Ice and other cold things electric: Thunderbolts and other electric stuff explosive: Caused by explosions energy: Energy weapons like laser swords or phasers... falling: Only caused when falling from high heights smashing: Only caused when hit by large & heavy physics simulation objectsFor all these damage types there will be matching resistance and immunity types.
Objects can have multiple damage types and resistances at once. Poisonous arrows for example could cause piercing damage but also poison damage.
When calculating the resistance of the player, the resistance values of all equipped items (clothing) will be summed up and taken into account.
States
I also worked a lot on state (= status effects) logic and also painted some state icons.
Some of these icons look quite... well... "basic" but this is intended as they'll be quite tiny in-game.
Most of the states are actually bad and express that you have some kind of injury which affects you in a negative way.
States can be Lua scripted as well. They can run actions when they are inflicted, when they expire, when they are removed by something or over time while they are active.