Devlog #10 - Crafting System, Time Zones, and Visual Feedback

This week has been packed with major improvements in Wildborn. From a new need icon system and detailed player sprites, to a modular crafting system and realistic lighting based on time and location.

🧠 A More Intuitive and Readable Interface

I spent a lot of time refining the player need icons. They now dynamically reflect levels of hunger, thirst, fatigue, hypothermia, and hyperthermia, with color variations that make them much more readable while keeping them subtle.
After several tests, I removed the old text labels since they were now redundant.

🔨 Crafting Comes to Life

The crafting system is now functional, modular, and easily expandable.
I introduced a few basic items to test the first recipe:

• Flint (raw stone)

• Sharp flint (sharpened stone)

• Small stone
  Players can now turn a flint into a sharpened flint using a small stone—a first step toward realistic primitive tools.

🪨 Visual Polish: Stone Rework and Color Adjustments

To support this, I also updated the stone sprites and tweaked their color palettes.
The new visuals better match the game's overall art direction and improve consistency with other elements like the campfire.

👤 New Visual Feedback for Player Conditions

I finalized the player sprites for hypothermia and hyperthermia.
Each state has its own visual cues: bluish tints on extremities for cold, flushed areas for heat stress.
This subtle visual feedback enhances immersion—no intrusive UI alerts needed; the character’s condition is visible on their body.

🌍 More Realistic Time and Lighting

I implemented dynamic time zone management based on the player’s position on the world map and the current date in the year.
Each tile now has a time offset relative to a global reference, which allows sunrise and sunset times to vary smoothly across longitudes and seasons—just like in the real world.
Solar radiation now realistically depends on latitude and day of the year, making sunlight weaker in polar regions and stronger near the equator. This lays the foundation for a realistic seasonal system in the future.
To improve the player experience, I’ve also added a safeguard: the game avoids spawning the player in tiles with less than 4 hours of daylight, preventing frustrating starts during polar night scenarios.

🧱 New Custom Game Setup Scene

A new scene, GameCreator, allows players to choose their starting biome before launching the game.
This is a first step toward more personalized survival scenarios.

🎨 A Unique Visual Identity

Finally, I’ve switched the game’s typography to IM Fell DW Pica, a typeface with an organic, primitive feel that remains highly readable—perfectly matching Wildborn’s neolithic survival theme.

👉 This week was a strong mix of technical upgrades, visual polish, and core gameplay foundations. Every change makes the experience smoother, more immersive, and more aligned with the game’s vision.

See you next week for more progress! 🌿

Have feedback, ideas, or just want to follow the development more closely?
Come chat with us on the Wildborn Discord server:
👉 https://discord.gg/D4ppGu9F
Your thoughts help shape the game!