Building Paths and Adding Sound to Lumbermill! (Indie Game Devlog)

Wishlist Lumbermill on Steam here! store.steampowered.com/app/11...
Patreon: / bwdev
Marching Squares (Sebastian Lague): • [Unity] Procedural Cav...
As we're all locked down at the moment it's given me a bit more time to work on Lumbermill! Since last time I've added a paving system to build paths for employees to follow, started some work on sound effects and made the building and bulldozing feel a bit more substantial.
Join the discord here:
/ discord
Videos will be uploaded as development progresses so make sure to subscribe!
Let me know if you have any ideas or suggestions in the comments, I'd love to hear them.
First video: • Procedural Forests! In...
-- Social Media --
Instagram - / benwimsett
Twitter - / bwdev1
Trello - trello.com/b/M6rEUFrM/lumbermill

[@BWDev]

Before you comment about the screen shake: it can be turned off (see the next episode of the devlog), and I'm considering alternatives to keep it satisfying without making people dizzy! E.g. nearby trees shaking and dropping leaves. For those wondering why I'm not using Unity Tilemaps: I became aware of them about a month into the project (around march 2019), at which point all the world generation code was up and running and there wasn't much point in switching. For the paving tiles shown in this video, creating a custom solution gives me a lot more control than unity rule tiles would, and marching squares doesn't take long to implement at all (aside from the art!) I may switch to isometric tilemaps at some point, but for now there isn't much need.

[@jacobbellet401]

Cool!

[@dr_anjo]

Is it possible for you to adapt the shaking of the screen to the respective action? Shake less for paths and more for large buildings. This would feel more organic.

[@PeterFletcherDNADeliverer]

Lol and there is the comment, mental not for next time, check out pinned comments before commenting.

[@RavenclawNimbus]

@@dr_anjo Yeah, that would be nice!

[@RavenclawNimbus]

What if you made a shortcut to make the shake go away. So if you were planting a BUNCH of trees you wouldn’t get dizzy, but you could easily change it back by doing the shortcut. Maybe the shortcut could be Ctrl + Alt + S? (S for screen shake)

[@stal2496]

When trees are destroyed you could add some leaves and sticks falling off and then dissapearing

[@stasiu7205]

I would totally love to see this tents have their building animation with possibly something like a zipping sound or something like this you know what I mean Great work btw can't wait to play the game

[@philsburydoboy]

You should zoom in and out around the mouse instead of shaking the screen. The reason for this is that there will be less change around where the player is focusing (because they just clicked there and are probably looking at it), and more in the periphery. Edit: Make it so that there is a max zoom when you click, and that it resets slowly (maybe 50% per second or 1% per physics frame). Every time you click you add force towards the maximum zoom, then slowly reset back to normal zoom. This would handle all of the cases like clicking before the camera has reset, as well as soften the reset phase of the movement.

[@highfiveee5909]

Great video as always! I personally think the shaking is rather confusing. Maybe it's different if you play on your own, but watching the video gave me a bit of a headache.

[@BWDev]

Yeah not sure about it myself, thanks for the feedback!

[@rikdegraaff891]

@@BWDev Maybe you should make the intensity (and duration?) of the shake configurable? And while you're at it, also allow the player to turn it off entirely.

[@BWDev]

Rik de Graaff already added the ability to turn it off, and it will be off by default 😊

[@ChazAllenUK]

I find the shake jarring. Like the building sound :)

[@gmogames]

@@BWDev Just a quick 2 cents on this, have you thought about a "puff" quick smoke/dust animation on the bulldozed item instead of a full map shake?

[@isto_inc]

Just discovered the channel. The Marching Squares overlay/ explanation was top notch! Definitely getting my sub for this one :)

[@TonsOfHunStudios]

The paths look great from what I can tell! I'd imagine it was tedious making all those sprites, but it seems well worth it. The sounds are nice too! I think that's a really cool idea to randomize the sound fx and change their pitches. Also, cute dog :D 🐶

[@BWDev]

Cheers man 😁 Dog says thanks!

[@justingolden21]

Love all the progress and juicy visual and audio feedback. I'd personally reduce the shaking and crunchiness of the sound (for lack of better description on my part), but that's just me.

[@harrybairstow1978]

Love this series! Cant wait for the realease :D Enjoying the discord also, hope to chat soon ben!

[@chancepricee]

Following your progress is just so captivating

[@AvatarNickGames]

Good stuff on the tiles! I had a similar experience making mine, lots of variations!

[@code4broke]

A particle effect on tree destruction will be an easy win for satisfaction effect you're trying to get with the screen shake.

[@iplaymasta]

can't wait to play this game! get a beta out ASAP! :)

[@et3rn3ty46]

Dude i found this today but I'm already super exited to see the finished product!

[@nickniles1314]

This game has such an awesome concept, and I think the UI design is amazing, along with the art and new sounds. Great job!

[@mrdonehead]

very new to the concept of dev logs and just starting out with Unity, but have just smashed through this whole series. Awesome content and a great tool for motivation. Not sure if this has been requested before but I'd love to see how you got into game dev, a BWDev origins story of sorts. Keep up the stellar content bud

[@urgalten6203]

Hi, I've been checking out this devlog series for quite some time now. Looking forward to it being released :D

[@iankelley9302]

I'm so excited for when this is fully released! Love ur channel!

[@proxy1035]

yeeessss, more of the series about something that i'll never be able to achieve myself! keep up the good work man!

[@sebastianmontanoreyes297]

Hey! Don't be so hard on yourself, give it a shot and don't give up, keep trying until your project turns out

[@proxy1035]

@@sebastianmontanoreyes297 eh don't worry man, i got a lot of other projects i should finish.

[@sebastianmontanoreyes297]

Given the fact that you said projects, I'm gonna go ahead and assume that you haven't finished any of them... I think we all have been there, what you have to do is stick just with one of them and don't stop until it's fully fleshed and finished

[@GamerMickey87]

You are doing a great job! Getting there! It's looking more and more professional each time!

[@ImaginaryComposer]

Hey Ben! Love your channel! I've been binging the early videos the last few days and I'm thrilled to see Lumbermill getting developed!

[@nextProgram]

Great video, the game’s looking good!

[@kamski3070]

Finally a continuation! I randomly came across this series and i got so intooo... man keep the good work.

[@BWDev]

Hopefully more coming soon!

[@RugbugRedfern]

By the way, regarding your camera script, you shouldn't call GetComponent() every time you want to shake the screen. Just cache the CameraShake class as a variable in the Start method and call camera shake from that (maybe you did this later, I don't know, but it's just my two cents). Also those sounds are really nice :)

[@BWDev]

GetComponent is inefficient, but at the frequency it's being called here it has a negligible effect on performance. Agreed caching it would be good practice here though!

[@evs2895]

@@BWDev The Camera.main is worse, since it's like calling FindGameObjectsWithTag, which has to loop over every object in the scene until it finds the camera! Though you could say it too is called so infrequently that its effect is negligible.

[@BWDev]

I didn't know Camera.main did that 🤔 Will have a look at the profiling. Thanks!

[@bnuggg]

Hey man, I'm sure these videos take a shit ton of work and I appreciate that you do it so much. I follow ~20 devs on KZbin and by far you are the one I'm most excited for every single time.

[@Mestrix]

So glad you're back, I love these devlogs!

[@maasterr]

Nice to see Lumbermill back ! Also.... cute doggo :) (you're already with almost 20k subs dude, congrats!!!!!)

[@jojjan93]

Love the click after each sound bite :)

[@BWDev]

Thought I’d edited most of them out 😂

[@bred5904]

Great video loving the series

[@bennersftw2644]

This was fantastic !! Definitely looking forward to more, subbed, liked! Stay safe over there :)

[@sclexz]

For the camera shake, use tweeining, or instead of an idle and a shake state, simply add the shake animation to the controller and wherever you want to type "GetComponenet.Play("Shake", 0, 0)". This will make it so it only plays when trigger and does not play an idle animation all the time giving you some extra performance!

[@BWDev]

Was wondering if there was a way to avoid idle animations! Thanks very much, will give it a go 👍

[@kidkyle712]

there's a shake too when you place something? That seems so annoying in my opinion.

[@sclexz]

imaging that with a nice sound, that would be clean

[@MartinToernby]

Agreed - the shake on bulldozing would even be annoying to me. So a shake on building something, would be double annoying. Other than that: A cosy feel this game surely has.

[@marcelburdon9795]

If it’s done well, it really adds some proper oomph to the players actions, I think it’s good!

[@wphanoo]

people abusing screeenshake should end in jail

[@meteor0id]

It can be turned off.

[@cvmor]

I'm so pumped for when this game comes out

[@ukyo6195]

A Lumber Mill game in a time of "Waldsterben" in a flat environment. Good luck!

[@antihedra7955]

Looks like an awesome game so far!

[@interesting7215]

I hear you, here in England it's not easy to socialise, it is a bit harder for me to go walk my dog, as I live in Bromley, and there aren't very many woods. There also isn't any public transport to get around.

[@DecrareOld]

great video!

[@damonsly7753]

I'm excited for this to come together

[@Eniemay]

Looks really good, I can't wait to play it :D Just one thing, the shake can make some people dizzy (It happened to me while watching the video) and can make it tifficult for us to enjoy the game... you could reduce it or use it only with big structures that won't be placed many times

[@RavenclawNimbus]

“I couldn’t get close to any actual machines, so here’s some rusty barrels.” Exactly what I wanted. Rusty barrels! XD

[@pixstatic200]

for the paths you could have the basic shape without colours, and then for variations use a single set of sprites for the paths and use those a a mask for a pattern that matches the path type you actually want

[@gui_ch]

Hey there, I've been following your game development and it looks great, good job man! I noticed some points in this video (just my perspective, not bad critiques) which may help: - Tents' shadow looks small - when I looked fast to them, they seemed to be disconnected from the ground. Shadows are quite important in images in order to show where the objects stands. - The camera shake is a bit too strong, it may annoy after playing for a while. Hope it helps :) See you and keep the good work!

[@ytra1501]

The path placing sound reminds me of the stone placing sound in minecraft

[@djolex15]

When I'm watching you place stuff my head hearts from this shaking

[@BWDev]

Interesting to hear I'm not the only one - definitely thought that might be a problem with the bigger shake animation, but wasn't sure if it still happened after I made it smaller. Thanks for the feedback!

[@MartinvanZ]

Looks great. I Would tune down the shaking. Maybe only shake with larger objects like placing or destroying buildings. Shaking on every path placement seems to be a bit much. Other than that, great work. I'm currently also working with Unity on my first project and this gives me motivation to continue. :)

[@gary-huang]

Love the sound effects :D

[@dragonminz602]

It`s good to see you back :D

[@CatDevz]

This guy really reminds me of Thin Matrix's old devlog videos, I loved those...

[@ryanmccauleyfootball3258]

I’m excited to see more!

[@TheAnzurion]

Really want to play this!

[@AtamrarisTibia]

I did not watch a lot of your game devlogs, but I think Ive got an interesting idea. I think that at the beginning of the game, you should be a small company, and therefore your only product should be something like basic logs that are meant to be burned, cheap planks for building stuff (not in game, just like your products to export). After advancing your machinery you should be able to extract more stuff from the trees you chop down. For example, after some time your crew will be more experienced, your builders could extract more wood shavings from the logs you cut into the planks. What you can do with those wood shavings? Plywood! As you progress you could be making better planks, preferably using better trees (you could implement a mechanic where oak saplings and little oak forest need some care - a new possible type of worker). At the late stage of your company you really should be able to connect your streamlines with planks and logs and stuff into a factory (for example a 5x4 building that costs a lot of money). Factory isnt meant be a normal building but instead, after clicking at it, you would see a real space inside that building ( like a nice 8x10 space) where you could place special machines and streamlines that enchances planks, logs, saws them into separate parts of the furniture. Some machines could assemble those parts into packagings ready to export (of course some workes should be supervising those streamlines). This is the late game of the company. You could get contracts to sell those packagings to known furniture shops like Ikea, and BlackRedWhite, you can change those names a little just like devs of Game Dev Tycoon did. BUT the end goal should be having multiple factories that produce certain furniture sets (beds, chairs, tables, etc you get it) and having your own furniture selling company for real money. Seriously I would play the shit of that game if that came true!

[@BWDev]

You’ve basically just described the game 😂

[@AtamrarisTibia]

@@BWDev If that's true, I am looking forward to play it! It would be cool to also have some kind of mechanic of supply and demand, for example for short period of time something like basic planks, or firewood could be of higher price to sell. It could also be liked to some events. I don't know whether you played games from Paradox Interactive, but something similar could be awesome. Also, here is my cool (at least for me) idea for an achievement. Following the path of evil mage - have no trees in at least 9 chunks of your forest. That's reference to Saruman from Lord of the rings, if you haven't watched it. It could also be linked to some easter egg, in the moment you achieve it - a semi-loud yell could be heard (also reference to Lotr) edit: if you liked that achievement idea, I could think of a lot more easter eggs and ideas for achievements. Just add me on steam, my steamid is "hedwige", with wolf avatar.

[@reecegibson6102]

Instead of the camera shake you could try doing a very slight camera ripple effect at the point where the tree is removed. And make the ripple effect only cover the small area around the tree.

[@HiImKyle]

Loving this so far, I will say in my opinion the screen shake still seems rather aggressive for the overall feel of the game, or at least what you're going for anyway.

[@axeonaxolotl3274]

With the whole pitch and screen shake thing, you should make the lower the pitch the more screen shake and the higher the pitch the less. Otherwise, love the series, i just spent the last 3-5 hours watching all your devlogs lol

[@bobbyjoe4012]

There seems to be position issues with that building on the left, the tree is behind it when it should be in front. Also the shaking when placing things would irritate me if I was playing. Apart from that loving the progress, got the game on wish-list. Keep it up!

[@yoctometric]

Great video! Bear in mind that Camera.main() is actually calling ~GameObject.FindObjectWithTag("MainCamera").GetComponent() under the hood. It is pretty bad for performance if you use it too often.

[@BWDev]

Yeah I've had that pointed out - and it's been fixed. Was being called very infrequently here though, so negligible effect on performance.

[@yoctometric]

@@BWDev Nice, glad you caught it!

[@michaelrichards914]

I love the aesthetic of this game! I just wanted to make a suggestion; as someone who is colorblind, it is difficult to see the path against the grass. A lighter brown color would help. Keep up the great work!

[@TheFRealBoggieMan]

Saving neighbours as an 8 bit value blew my mind. Why have i not thought of this? i've made (bad) systems like this 10,20 times... Instead of scriptable objects, you could have 10 bits for each tile, the first 8 for neighbours and the last 2 for 4 different kinds of ground, and then change images depending on the value. I think that would have alot less cluttered files, but maybe less readable? It might be more performant.

[@RobLang]

Very neat update. Paths are ubiquitous and I totally understand how boring that must have been! Are you finding a productivity boost with the second monitor? Also love the woods shot, I'm in the middle of a town which is not an advantage during lockdown. Looking forward to the next one!

[@BWDev]

Thank you! Only had it a few days but it’s definitely nice to have a bit more screen space to work with 😁

[@depepf3514]

another devlog yay

[@thewaterleaf7929]

maybe you could add some particles to the build/bulldoze to give it more suptle oomph!

[@BWDev]

Dust effects are planned!

[@mulethedonkey2579]

you can walk your dog and stuff, simply stay 11 feet from other people (just in case, harder sneezes can travel 10 feet.)

[@LunaticEdit]

you get bonus points for using a JetBrains IDE :)

[@clemensulrich3102]

first :D Please keep making the devlogs! Already hyped for the game!

[@stonic6396]

omg omg omg

[@ReedHarston]

As soon as you said 'marching squares' I wondered if that was the video you were talking about. ;) I watched a bunch of his videos just the other day. :D This game really is looking amazing! Great art, the music we've heard so far was awesome, the company and bank names are perfect, and it is a great balance of the best of other games of the genre and its own unique mechanics. Looking forward to playing it when it is ready. :) Cheers!

[@kerkarraje]

Consider using a tween lib instead of using the in-build animation system, it's horribly inefficient in terms of performance. This is also and especially true for UI elements as you would basically refresh the animated UI 60 times a second. Otherwise, a cool project. Looking forward to seeing more.

[@elektra81516]

*mouse clicking sounds intensify*

[@chinacat1337]

Hi BWDev, I've been struggling with my own motivation with games projects, but watching these devlogs including your mistakes and fixes is really refreshing, it can be hard to realise that mistakes and getting stuck are part of the process, so thank you for uploading these devlogs! What audio editing software do you use by the way?

[@BWDev]

Glad you find the videos motivating! I use Ableton for pretty much everything 😊

[@chinacat1337]

@@BWDev Awesome, I'll have a look at it, do you have any tips and tricks to stay motivated,, and continue on projects?

[@Matthewgb204]

Awesome

[@iplayminecraft2248]

eyy this was posted on my birthday

[@ru31k32]

Hey man, really nice video. ^^ Take a look at Tilesetter on Steam, maybe it helps you to draw tiles. Regards!! :D

[@psyneur9182]

For the path sprites: What if you created one master set of masks defining the shape of each tile configuration (which you have already done, just colored in). Then you could create another sprite with the detail for each path tile (or a few for some variation), then in-game or in some pre-processing step, you combine the path detail with the mask to create each shape automatically. Then for every new type, it's just one new path detail drawing (or, again, a few for variation). About screenshake: I wrote a screenshake effect class for a 2D game I was working on. It's based on this talk: kzbin.info/www/bejne/qqaQgphsa6apqrs Here's a link to the gist with the code, feel free to use it/try it out: gist.github.com/craigmc08/d483ce0b03483e218a66811afb0b7212 To use it, add the script to any game object and assign the camera to the "cam" field. Then, call `CameraShake.AddTrauma(float from 0 to 1)` to add some shake. Doubling that float quadruples the shake amount, just a heads up. (You can also use `CameraShake.AtLeastTrauma(float from 0 to 1)` to make sure it's shaking some minimum amount, instead of adding more). A warning: it directly sets the localPosition of the camera object, so if it's position isn't centered around (0, 0, 0) with euler angles of (0, 0, 0), then you'll need to give it a parent to save that position.

[@BWDev]

Oh good idea! Wanted to use masks in the drawing process but Aseprite doesn't have them. Didn't occur to me to use the Unity masking system instead 🤔

[@daylen577]

You could even go further in this and generate the shapes by layering 8 different masks, which in turn can all be generated by rotating and/or flipping two masks (one for cardinal directions, one for top/left/bottom/right)

[@GrzegorzStyczen]

One advantage BWDev has here is that with his system you can include directionality and flow in the art, which is cool when you want to make eg. road tracks. Helps to break the 'tiling' look.

[@dyslexcii]

Maybe you can add a way to zoom in a bit (so we can see stuff such as the dirt texture)

[@MatthewRapati]

I think you should try shaking trees etc. that are close to the thing you are building/destroying instead of the whole world

[@LeBronJames-zd1zf]

oooo new devlog :D

[@raindiamond345]

@BWDev, you probably should move your camera script inside LateUpdate instead of Update, it would fix the moment when you kinda see tiles of ground you place not connecting properly. You welcome :)

[@BWDev]

It is in lateupdate...

[@andreasljkjel1610]

I like this game

[@code4broke]

Anytime you've got a situation where you manually have to make 46 different versions of something that might be a good time to consider creating a developer tool (or script) to do some of this work for you, depends on how many different types of paths you plan on adding but I will say there's no feeling of satisfaction in development like getting something like that right.

[@elijahjns81]

Maybe you should make a real lumber mill by your home. Looks like there's plenty of trees and a place to setup shop.

[@moinhauke]

Maybe the shake animation would be smoother, If it's goes slower downwards then upwards?

[@PeterFletcherDNADeliverer]

liking how the game is developing m8, not 100% sure if the shake is something that could get on some players nerves, might be a good idea to have the option to disable this feature within an options menu.

[@BWDev]

See the pinned comment 😊

[@PeterFletcherDNADeliverer]

@@BWDev didn't see it on my phone bud, I'm impressed that you stuck with your project, few of mine kinda fell due to other commitments, which was always frustrating. Looking like a good game you got there.

[@younlok1081]

ohhh i also worked on camera shaking today

[@sclexz]

You should make it so that the player needs to remove a tree before building a path!

[@BWDev]

This is planned :)

[@MarazLP]

I would like to know what technology you use to develop your game? I'm trying to develop my own game too but my toaster doesn't do much.

[@BWDev]

I'm using a Razer Blade at the moment. CPU: I7, GPU: 960m, 16GB RAM. More than enough to make games - 2D stuff like this doesn't require too much power!

[@bierzuip7169]

You dont need much, for a long time I used 4gb ram, core i5 8th gen + stock cpu cooler and a GT 1030

[@Mar_Ten]

I don't like the bobbing of the screen and I feel like the road tiles could have done in a more smart (programmaticly) way. Love these stories though so keep them coming.

[@benkallsen7593]

Your videos have inspired me to try my hand at unity game building, I'm a intermediate coder and I was wondering if you had any suggestions on how you started to make your game i.e. what helped you learn more about unity like videos or workshops? thank you!!

[@BWDev]

Awesome! Brackeys (youtube channel) is good for learning the ropes at Unity! Other than that, it helps if you've got some experience with a language similar to C# (like Java) just to help with the basics, but it's not a requirement

[@benkallsen7593]

@@BWDev Thanks for the quick response! I've watched some of Brackey's videos but I've never looked at his channel lol. I'll definitely check it out thanks!

[@WS-xd4sd]

Loving your work BWDEV???? Wow how do you find time to do this and also release a cyber security video game. Just done a search and seen on spotify you've filled in your time making some music . how the --- do you find to do all this I find it hard enough to make the bed

[@thecoolguy1233]

You should add the ability to drag and quickly create long roads

[@BWDev]

Planning on it!

[@adamc343]

@@BWDev I think this will really help with the issue some people have with the screen shake feature by making the effect less frequent (only happens after you place a long section of road / conveyor belt etc instead of after each individual tile). I really love the way it feels so I'd hate to see it go completely, but when it happens in quick succession I can definitely feel my skull caving in.

[@BWDev]

@@adamc343 I've made the screen shake an optional feature - will be off by default. There are alternatives to the shake which should be satisfying without the disorientation 👍 (E.g. nearby trees will drop some leaves/needles)

[@adamc343]

@@BWDev That sounds pretty cash actually, looking forward to seeing it :)

[@jasonskillman6274]

Great video, are you using some kind of plug in for visual studio and unity? I see "Set by Unity" text next to the variable name. What is that?

[@BWDev]

I'm using the JetBrains Rider IDE, which has a Unity plugin!

[@jasonskillman6274]

@@BWDev Well that would explain it. Thanks a bunch, ill have to check it out.

[@weareenigma2899]

reduce the shake by 50-70% ! This is getting ppl dizzy trust me

[@LtWittmann]

Stay safe and wash your hands

[@LampP0st]

I like the shake when bulldozing but having the shake when placing an object is a bit too distracting.

[@Bobjoris123]

Make a mobile version of that game because it's f*cking awesome

[@bravoechonovember1510]

Why not make the map infinite? It would allow those that want to to go nuts with the size of the factory. Maybe to balance it you could make the outer parts exponentially more expensive Loving the game so far!

[@MrPRECLIK]

He made this in previous videos, you can buy adjected land for increasing price

[@ContentMaker-no2hz]

are you planning are adding weeds later in the game?

[@FierceCross]

gg wp !

[@basherXxXxX]

Really nice, though I think the screen shake should be removed completely or be reserved for really special events. When you build a lot of roads its gonna feel like a salt shaker

[@BWDev]

Solved this in the last video 👍

[@Tudvari]

Why didn't you use RuleTiles? I think it supports isometric tilemaps as well. Anyway, good devlog! :)

[@BWDev]

The game doesn’t use isometric tilemaps, and writing the implementation myself just gives me more control (and links with the existing systems better) than using rule tiles. The code took no time at all, it’s just making the sprites that took a while!

[@Tudvari]

@@BWDev I see, thanks for the answer!

[@itsgunyt6293]

I think instead of bulldozing trees you should use tnt only to break them