Tidy Bush

Ok. I now think I'm getting somewhere with the rural countryside. A simple bush sprite has created a nice backdrop and make the terrain tiles appear more 'random'.

I think I now need to start focusing on the more urban areas. I think the biggest issue I can see is how to go about creating the transition tiles between rural areas and urban areas.

The Birds

Small details here, but I've added a new instance for a bird. The instance (initially on the ground) gets triggered after a proximity check with the rider. This allows the birds to take flight once the rider gets near giving a nice bit of interaction with the environment.

Windmill

I had a bit of a late night so I could tinker with the game. I'm still focusing on the environment, and I wanted to create more movement as it feels very dead at the moment. The cliche windmill. Very simple to program. Each instance of the windmill has a random rotation speed for the blades so no two are the same.

Cobbles

I have now got different surface types in the game. This was important so that I can have tarmac sections followed by sections on cobbles. Those into cycling will understand the relevance of this. At the moment there is simply a collision check to see what surface type each rider is on, which then sets a variable. At the moment, this variable is only used to create the particle effects for the dust seen in the screen-shots. However in the future, this variable can also be tied into the game engine affecting stamina, comfort etc for each rider in turn.