Running, Tileset Editor, RAM consumption

0.4.0 tiles

The RAM consumption will be divided by at least 3, walk/run toggle implement, and new tiles and editor will be featured in next release. As I made some progress toward 0.4.0 today, I will detail here what's you can expect.

First and foremost, there's a run/walk toggle, it will allow to either:

• Move 2 squares 
• Shoot 2 times with a 35% accuracy penalty 
• Move 1 square and shoot 1 time (also with reduced accuracy) 

In "running mode" each action consumes Stamina.When it reaches zero, the player come back to walk mode. All I need to do now is to implement those things for the NPC, which is gonna take some time (not sure everything will be ready in next release). Technically, I am using an Action Point system (similar to a simplified XCom or UFO game): The player has 2 points, in "walking mode" everything cost 2 points while in "running mode" some actions like moving and shooting cost 1 point (single shot only, burst still costs 2) and some stamina. When the AP reaches zero or below, the player's turn is over. When it's his turn again he gets back 2 action points. Theoretically, once implemented correctly for the NPC, it could allow me to produce games using a combat system similar to X-Com (if I want to). 

I also added a tile editor, allowing to add new walls and floors to the game. I will probably also modify the zone editor to allow the selection of specific wall/floor for each zone (like that the hospitals could always have white walls and floors). I also altered the road and pavement tiles, a bit darker and detailed (imho).

And last but not least, I have dramatically reduced the memory consumption. A 10x10 city (2.800 citizen) was using around 250Mb of RAM, and a 20x20 (10.000 citizen) nearly a gigabyte. Now the respectively uses 75Mb and 170Mb. As a result the game is way more responsive, especially in very large cities.

Once I am done with those things, I will improve the faction part. Relations between them will change less suddenly and will be able to improve. They won't all invade sectors at the same time anymore as their frequency will depend on their aggressiveness setting. Also, the police faction will be able to take sectors and have its own HQ (I lack graphical assets for that, though).

Other little things are planned including rewritten suburbs and street generators, but it will depend on the time it takes me to implement and test all this.