Procedural Gradients, Hotfixes, and the Power of QA

Hellu, and welcome back to another weekly update for A Wargame Without Compromise (WWC)! 👾

This sprint was a masterclass in time management and the iterative nature of game development. The beginning of my week started a bit slower than usual; balancing the heavy workload from my Rapid Games Prototyping (RGP) module and personal commitments meant I had to be highly strategic with my time once I jumped back into the WWC codebase.

Agile Rituals & Scope Management
We kicked off our weekly meeting with our now-standard "Rose, Bud, Thorn" retrospective, which continues to keep our team communication healthy and transparent.

First, we addressed an issue with the Unit Movement. We made a strict scope-management decision. Rather than rewriting the entire movement system in one day, which could introduce new bugs and block the team, we implemented an easy hotfix. This stabilised the build immediately and allowed us to keep moving forward without feature creep.

Technical Spotlight: Procedural Texturing & Animation Curves
My primary focus this week was bringing the map to life. I finished the core documentation for the map generation and moved directly into colour texturing.

To achieve a natural look, I researched Sebastian Lague's highly regarded procedural generation techniques and adapted them to fit our specific grid system.

• Animation Curves: Instead of relying on the Perlin Noise height values, I implemented an AnimationCurve in Unity. This exposes the data to the inspector, giving us visual, granular control over the terrain's height distribution without touching the script.
• Seamless Gradients: To prevent harsh lines between different biomes (e.g., sand transitioning abruptly to grass), I engineered a system to apply colour gradients. The colours now blend seamlessly based on the vertex height data, making the environment look significantly more organic.

The best moment of the week was seeing our QA in action. Allen did a phenomenal job pushing the map generator to its limits. He created some incredibly creative, complex maps that I hadn't even imagined were possible with my current implementation. Seeing the system's flexibility validated all the hard work; it was incredibly rewarding.

The rest of the team has been crushing it as well. The UI is now successfully integrating with character actions, and new mechanics, such as the die system, have been merged. The most exciting news? The game is currently in a playable state!

My kudos this week go to Mohamed. Despite having very limited time due to personal reasons, he improved his output tremendously and successfully delivered his tasks. Recognising and supporting teammates when they push through external challenges is what makes a great studio culture.

Reflective Practice: Research vs. Iteration
My biggest takeaway this week involves the balance between immediate implementation and technical research. When implementing the terrain colours, I realised that some of the foundational work I did in previous sprints could have been significantly enhanced had I studied resources like Lague's tutorials before writing the initial code.

While I simply didn't have the time to do that deep-dive research weeks ago, this experience reinforced a valuable lesson: taking the time to review existing industry solutions before building custom architecture almost always yields a more robust result. However, I also recognise that in Rapid Prototyping, getting a functional baseline first and iterating later (as I did this week) is a valid and necessary approach to keep a project moving.

Action Plan for Next Sprint
Looking ahead, my goals are:

1. Robust Refactoring: I will take my current terrain generation implementation and make the architecture more robust, applying the structural lessons I learned this week.
2. Standalone Repository: I plan to organise the code and move it into my own standalone repository to share my work and use it as a portfolio piece.

Thank you so much if you got here!

See you next week for another update! 🛼🤟🏽