Dev Update - Fishing Integration with Cooking I've completed integrating the fishing system with the new cooking system, and I've turned my attention to preparing Antilia for a new round of play testing.

Next Development Milestone for Antilia

This time I'd like to start with an update on Antilia's next development milestones, and then we'll look at what's recently been added to Antilia.

With farming, fishing, and cooking all working together, along with crafting and a few others - Antilia finally has multiple gameplay systems working together that need play testing and community feedback. For the past month I've shifted my focus away from adding gameplay systems and instead I am prioritizing tasks to prepare Antilia for testing. There is still content I plan to add in the form of quests and future game systems (magic being high on that list), but I believe there is enough working now that testing and receiving feedback would benefit the project.

To that end I have a list of items that need attention before that can happen:
- Character Creation Fixes and Improvements - Review and improve the options in the Character Creator, bringing it up to date with what works in-game. I'd like to make the Character Creator available from the main menu and allow players to add/import characters from their local character library to new save games and servers. (This would make testing easier when staring from a new game state repeatedly.)
- Single Player Mode Fixes - Establish an "initial state" that the gameworld starts in, and get Single Player mode in good working order.
- Cleanup Resource Libraries - Reduce Antilia download/install size by removing temporary and commercial assets that are not referenced in the game. (Temporary weapons, furniture, etc.)
- Research Launcher Alternatives - Look into alternatives like Steam for an alternative to the Antilia Launcher for distribution.
- Fix Bug in GameObjects: - There is a long-standing bug in game objects that result in value overrides being saved that shouldn't. This could have a negative impact on save games in the future and need to be sorted out before players can make their own save games. (This item was completed in April.)

It can be a bit challenging to write updates following technical work like refactoring existing systems or cleaning up resources, but I'll do my best.

Now a look at what's been added to Antilia over the past few months.

Integrating Fishing with Cooking

For the past few months I have been revisiting Antilia's fishing system, with a focus of integrating the fishing and cooking systems together.

Fishing was among the very first gameplay systems added after basic movement, and thus one of the first things I had to do was bring it up-to-date with improvements to the CreatureState system. This involved taking apart the older logic and re-implementing it through the newer CreatureStates system. (CreatureStates are synchronized across server and clients, meaning that if an NPC or player is aiming or casting on the server, all the other players see it.)

The fishing system has been updated to use CreatureStates, and now NPCs and other players can be seen aiming and casting their fishing poles.

After refactoring the fishing system the next set of goals involved reworking how fish were caught and become cooking ingredients.

Catching Live Fish

The next change is to how fish behave in the inventory after being caught. When a fish is caught it now starts out alive in the inventory, but will begin to die. Fish can be used in more ways and are more valuable alive. Once a fish dies it will begin to spoil.

Fish are now alive when caught, but will soon start to die.

The player can transfer the fish into a suitable container or a Water Tray to keep the fish alive.

Butchering Workstation

Before a fish can be used in cooking it must be processed into meat at a Butchering Workstation or Drying Rack. The Butchering Station processes fish and koura parts into cooking ingredients. There are "common" cuts of fish that most fish will produce, as well as special cuts that are only produced by specific fish. The larger the fish is in length the more cuts it will produced when butchered or dried.

The new Butchering Workstation is used to process fish and koura parts into meat that can be used in cooking.

Iichii and Jidou will now drop limbs and parts when defeated. These can also be processed at a Butchering Workstation.

Drying Workstation

The Drying Rack is another workstation that can process fish and koura limbs into cooking ingredients. The ingredients produced by the drying rack tend to be salty but don't spoil.

The new Drying Rack can convert fish and koura parts into preserved meat.

New Cooking Ingredients

With the refactoring and new workstations complete fishing feels very well connected to the cooking system now.

Fish, rays, and eel can now be refined into a variety of new ingredients.

The new fish ingredients are fully integrated with cooking and the Design Workstation.

Composting Workstation

Both the Butchering Workstation and the Drying Rack use the same game logic under the hood, as well as a new Composting Workstation which can be used to produce fertilizer for use in planters for farming.

The composting workstation can be used to recycle spoiled food and other items into fertilizer for growing plants and crops.

That's all for this update, thanks for reading!