Naturemancer

Devlog

• The Fire Spreads
  April 10, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  Added a fire propagation system for the game. It will increase the heat that a plant takes when a plant is on fire near it. The more plants that are near the faster it burns. After 30 seconds the plan... Continue reading
• Wood Pile And Fire
  April 08, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  I added a wood pile and a fire that uses the wood from the wood pile. The wood also now has physics. It took me a minute to figure out that setting the physics to disable and enable wasn't working pro... Continue reading
• Tree Make Wood
  April 07, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  I changed the tree again and changes how the forest was procedurally generated so that the forest is more clumped. I also added destroying trees and turning them into branches. To be used later!... Continue reading
• Landscape Creation
  April 04, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  another attempt at a landscape... Continue reading
• Another Landscape
  March 28, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  Made a new landscape. I think I'm liking this one better... Continue reading
• Biomes Finally
  March 26, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  Finally figured out how to make the errant biomes hand drawn masks work. now the plants will go where I tell them to!... Continue reading
• Errant World
  March 24, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  Testing out the errant world plugin for making landscapes. I like this one better than gaea 2. It lets me shape the terrain a lot easier to what I want... Continue reading
• New Terrain Test
  March 22, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  Still messing around with the terrain... Continue reading
• New Gaea Map
  March 21, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  I made a new gaea map after following some tutorials. Next time i'll bring it into unreal. I'm not sure if I like the lake output or river one yet... Continue reading
• Landscape Material
  March 18, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  Added a new landscape material that has better settings for tweaking the dirt, rock, snow, etc. I think it looks decent. Also doubled the size of plants to have them standout from the grass... Continue reading
• Landscape Research
  March 18, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  Today I was looking up tutorials on how to make the landscape better. Found some map generators and I can use that to make an initial height map for gaea. I also found a tutorial that looks like it ha... Continue reading
• Adding Meteor Showers To Clouds
  March 17, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  I added meteor showers to the clouds. I'll probably swap it to lightning or something in the future. I just want it to make the forest catch fire and it was the only fire vfx i had at hand. I also upd... Continue reading
• Change How Possession Actions Work
  March 14, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  I changed how actions work. Before they were specific like setting the variable on the AI blackboard. Now it's an interface and is a generic action 1, 2, 3. The actor that is possessed will define the... Continue reading
• Add Nutrients
  March 12, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  Added a new class for nutrients and made one for dead plants and poop. This lets me exclude them from the plant eqs queries and let them behave differently then plants. I think it's a good move but we... Continue reading
• Blight VFX
  March 11, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  Added a VFX for blight to make it more noticeable. Also updated the tendrils to exclude plants that already have blight... Continue reading
• Astral Projection and Procedural Generation
  March 09, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  Fixed up the astral projection that had an issue where if you looked too vertically the forward vector of the camera wouldn't be on the nav mesh and would fail the eqs query. Also updated the PCG grap... Continue reading
• Adds Wolf
  March 08, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  Added a wolf today. To add a new behaviors for it next time... Continue reading
• Boar Hunting
  March 07, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  I added a boar. I bought a new asset set of creatures for the game of the unreal store. I also added sleeping and different movement modes so now they can wonder around in a circle and in a straight l... Continue reading
• Water Spirit
  March 06, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  I added a water spirit today. It flies around and grows plants quickly... Continue reading
• Fox Eating
  March 05, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  I added the ability to trigger eating on demand. I also switched eating to increase hunger rather than decrease as it made more sense logically. Apparently it's how the sims names things so I'm cool w... Continue reading
• Fox Pooping
  March 04, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  Added the ability to make the fox poop both on demand when you possess him and automatically when he is full... Continue reading
• Better Placement
  March 02, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  I changed the astral projection from using the foxes forward and right vectors to the camera's. This stops it from jumping all over the place as the fox moves... Continue reading
• Astral Projection
  March 01, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  I added an astral projection for controlling animals you're possessing. It will help direct the movement of the animals without directly controlling them. I did this by using an actor to be the center... Continue reading
• Spirit Possession
  February 28, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  Now the spirit can possess different things. I'm planning on it being where you don't have complete control over them but you can influence them. Right now you are just along for the ride... Continue reading
• Rain Rain Go Away
  February 27, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  Made the cloud rain... Continue reading
• Spirit Fox
  February 26, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  I made it to where when you stop you turn back into a fox. the idea is that you are the spirit of the forest and that is your spirit animal... Continue reading
• Clouds
  February 26, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  Added clouds and a cloud spawner... Continue reading
• Forest Spirit
  February 25, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  I decided the main protagonist is going to be a spirit of the forest. I made a little niagara guy to show off the first rendition of this idea... Continue reading
• Seed Ribbon And Dirt
  February 23, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  I added a ribbon to the seed so that it can be seen from a distance. Maybe I'll remove it later but for now it helps me a lot. I was going to do particles but I thought this looked better. I also adde... Continue reading
• Game Optimization
  February 22, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  Today I'm working on optimizing the game. I figured out that the main thing destroying my performance was some huge overlap spheres on the player that I was using to make the forest move but I'm not d... Continue reading
• Sun Movement And Shade
  February 17, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  Added in a test for shade, this lets me destroy plants underneath big plants like the tree. Right now I'm using a tag but I think I might change it to a actual check for shade. Need to ponder that a l... Continue reading
• Tree Health And Fox
  February 16, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  I added tree health so that I can kill trees over time for different reasons. I updated the fox's behavior tree to use it. So now instead of them attacking 10 times every time and then destroying the... Continue reading
• Death Tendrils
  February 15, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  Added death tendrils when a plant gets blighted. These will seek out other plants and if it touches them it will kill them. Works pretty well for a first draft... Continue reading
• Low Poly Forest
  February 11, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  I changed out the mega scan trees for low poly trees because it was crashing my frame rate. I was able to get 1600 plants before things started choking now instead of 150. I also added a debug overrid... Continue reading
• Blight
  February 10, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  Did some clean up today and deleted a lot of variables from past experiments. I also added a blight mushrooms that blights the plants. That's what the dead plants are that show up... Continue reading
• Let It Grow
  February 09, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  Made it where plants now don't delete themselves when they hit max growth because that was silly. Now the forest grows. I also turned off the timer when they hit max growth to help with perf and there... Continue reading
• Fox Attack
  February 07, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  So much better than last night. So i figured out that the move to was failing because I was giving it an actor that wasn't on the nav mesh. So I projected the actor location to the nav mesh and that f... Continue reading
• Move To Tree
  February 06, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  I got the fox to move to the plants. for some reason it keeps sitting there and not moving on. it says it's stuck on the movement node. it isn't completing. I don't know why. Also the montage sometime... Continue reading
• FoxyMovy
  February 04, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  I created the fox anim blueprint and made the blendspace. Slotted in the animations. Created the AI controller / behavior tree / black board / EQS query. Spent 40 minutes figuring out that my fox char... Continue reading
• Habitat
  February 03, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  I added the concept of a habitat. Right now it's really simple but the idea is you would need to get the right assortment of plants to make a good habitat for a group of animals. Right now it's just c... Continue reading
• Debug Speed
  January 24, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  I added the ability to speed of the growth of the plants by whatever amount I want. Turns out when you go x100 and too many plants grow I get an infinite loop. So that's fun... Continue reading
• Plant Nutrition
  January 23, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  I changed it so that instead of it just counting the number of plants it now has a nutrition that is per plant stage. this will let me control it more precisely by letting me change it per stage. I al... Continue reading
• Plant Refactor
  January 21, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  This one was a big clean up to make it cleaner for me going forward. Instead of defining all stages for all plants now the stages are in an array so that if one plant only has one stage it doesn't hav... Continue reading
• Plants Are Friends
  January 16, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  I changed it so that now plants are considered nutrients not food. So the tree isn't directly eating them. Also the concept that some plants need to get nutrients from others... Continue reading
• Tree Eat Plants
  January 11, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  I'm making it where plants can eat other plants. So the tree is eating the smaller shrubs. I also gave the trees different eating rates so now it's not so uniform... Continue reading
• Making Flowers
  January 10, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  Added the ability for player to spawn flowers. I think this will end up being the base thing needed for plants to grow in the game. Probably won't be a flower in the end... Continue reading
• Ruin VFX
  January 08, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  I added vfx when you get trees to the rock ruins and once you get all three the vfx on the door happens. This will give the player their first power. This also adds the logic to do the checking for th... Continue reading
• Moving Mushrooms
  January 06, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  Turned the plants into pawns so that they can have a behavior tree and easy movement. Added a new ruin that moves plants to designated actors. Using floating movement for now since the mushrooms don't... Continue reading
• Grab UI
  January 06, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  I added a grab UI on the tree so it's a little more clear what's happening. I also rescaled the landscape to what I think it's supposed to be... Continue reading
• Pick It Up
  January 04, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  Added the ability for the player to pick up plants. Will need to limit it eventually but for now i'm just letting anything go... Continue reading
• Clean Up Day
  January 04, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  After making the new landscape I added back the trees and start and ruins. Then I made a house and added a little fire... Continue reading
• Landscape Layer Masks
  January 03, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  Oh my gosh i finally figured out how to make landscape layers follow a mask. It was so easy but like everything it took me forever to figure out the right question to ask... Continue reading
• Gaea Landscape Island
  January 03, 2025 by Steven Cooney

  I've been trying to learn gaea for a bit. I tried making an island from mountains and from the island node. neither of which i liked that much. I was able to make it by drawing my own island and apply... Continue reading
• A Hud Exists
  December 31, 2024 by Steven Cooney

  ok now there is a hud for displaying some text so there can be a story and wut not... Continue reading
• Changeable Bubble
  December 30, 2024 by Steven Cooney

  Added the ability to change the scale curve on the timeline when the bubble spawns... Continue reading
• Alter Bubble
  December 30, 2024 by Steven Cooney

  Added a time bubble to the ruin alter. This will add some time pressure to the player. Also fixed the sign BP by making it a UMG widget instead of a text render. that made the text wrapping work... Continue reading
• Fixed Forest
  December 28, 2024 by Steven Cooney

  Fixed the forest trees going through the landscape by turning on sweep and also moving them forward then down. otherwise they got stuck in the landscape. I also added a sign so that I can start puttin... Continue reading
• Moving Forest
  December 28, 2024 by Steven Cooney

  Made the trees move to try to intercept the player. still a work in progress but it's almost working. I'm having some problems with where to place the tree as you can see with it floating... Continue reading
• Arch Ruin Take 1
  December 25, 2024 by Steven Cooney

  This is the initial set up for the first challenge in the game with some cool ruins... Continue reading
• Landscape Setup
  December 23, 2024 by Steven Cooney

  Got a real landscape in and set up the virtual textures... Continue reading
• Tree Bug Fixing
  December 23, 2024 by Steven Cooney

  Now that I have two trees I had some bugs to fix. First needed to make it where it spawned the correct tree according to type. Also my line cast wasn't hitting the tree because of collision so I just... Continue reading
• Upgrade to Unreal 5.5
  December 23, 2024 by Steven Cooney

  Upgrading from 5.4 to 5.5 to allow for some asset use... Continue reading
• New Tree And Bubble
  December 21, 2024 by Steven Cooney

  Added a timeline for the bubble growth, feels a lot more dynamic. Also figured out how to use the quixel trees. They look pretty nice. although they are a lot more expensive so i'll need to figure tha... Continue reading
• Bubble Spawner
  December 20, 2024 by Steven Cooney

  I realized the problem with my plant code is that I was handling too many different things at the same time. I separated out initialize (called at construction), begin play, and grow that stabalized i... Continue reading
• Magic Bubble
  December 19, 2024 by Steven Cooney

  I fixed the seed problem by telling the plant if it spawned as a seed or tree. Then i had much confusion with why the plants were floating and why the collision of the landscape doesn't seem to be wor... Continue reading
• Well Those Are Not Seeds
  December 18, 2024 by Steven Cooney

  I updated the seeds so that they now spawn with pcg. had to fix an annoying scaling issue. Then i updated it so that the physics keeps going until they are trees. Then I added a line cast to make sure... Continue reading
• Infinite Whoops
  December 17, 2024 by Steven Cooney

  I want to use a PCG graph to sample the surface of the static mesh to place the seeds on the tree. I seem to have hit a little infinite loop... maybe I shouldn't have picked the force generation butto... Continue reading
• Grow Around Player
  December 16, 2024 by Steven Cooney

  I changed the growing so that it happens around the player instead of everything universally. The forest looks much more varied now. To do that I had to add a can grow function to the plant interface... Continue reading
• The Forest Grows
  December 12, 2024 by Steven Cooney

  I updated the plant system to use a data table instead of an array so that the data won't just disappear on me. I also added seeds that can make more trees so now the forest can populate itself. I see... Continue reading
• Plant Stages
  December 10, 2024 by Steven Cooney

  I set it up so that there are 4 stages. Seed, Sapling, Mature, Decaying. They change the static mesh based on the stage and scale appropriately. To give the idea of growth... Continue reading
• Growing Fast
  December 08, 2024 by Steven Cooney

  Now they can scale up when you want them too. Took me way to long to figure out that the reason my inputs weren't working was because I wasn't spawning the character I thought I was... Continue reading
• Starting A New One
  December 08, 2024 by Steven Cooney

  I'm starting a new game. Stay tuned... Continue reading