I’m currently working on the inventory system for insert-game-name-here, hopefully there will be another video next week. In addition to the paper doll slots for armor/rings/sneakers/dentures(?), each numbered keyboard slot (0-9) has a left hand and right hand slot which you can assign items to independently. Swords, shields, spells and items only require a single slot, and thus you can dual wield. Left click uses the left hand item, right click uses the right hand item.
The same item can be assigned to multiple slots, so for example you could have the same sword in the left hand for both slot 1 and 2, a shield in the right hand for slot 1 and a torch in the right hand for slot 2. You could switch between throwing down torches and blocking with your shield, all the while attacking with your sword.
Raw building materials, digging tools and two-handed weapons will fill both hands. In these cases, the right mouse button will perform context based actions, such as selecting the shape to form when placing materials.
The items will be randomly generated (including the mesh to an extent) and will vary greatly in stats. Items can have passive boosts to your stats, as well as varied damage/armor values. Digging tools (your bare hands, pickaxes, chisels) will have their own properties such a digging speed and the materials they are capable of destroying. Items will be found in dungeons, which will be the primary focus of this game. Expect multi-level sprawling dungeons with puzzles, boss fights, secrets and loot.
I’ve made the decision to leave out any form of leveling and player attribute system. All attributes will be determined by the gear you have equipped. A magic user will wear rings and armor which adds to their magic stats, a warrior may opt for high armor and speed values in their gear. There will always be better gear than what you currently have equipped. This decision was made due to the nature of the world and the multiplayer experience. If you invite a friend to play in your world to help you tackle the next dungeon, you don’t want them to be levels behind and unable to assist. Instead, you would kit them out with a spare set of gear you’ve stashed at your base.
This is not just a building game!
Watch this space.
Ben
Here’s a video of a little wooden shack I’ve built. I’ve re-worked the sunlight to a point that I’m happy with it. Sunlight is capable of bouncing around interiors as is evident in the video - some natural light makes it down to the basement. Point lights (such as the torch I placed) rely on line of sight at present, so shadows form when geometry blocks the light. This needs some work.
The pine tree I trim at the start is made from the same block system as the rest of the world, with some leaf entities attached. These entities can exist on any floor, ceiling or wall surface and will be used to represent any static details in the world as well as player placed decorations.
The interface I use to dig holes in the world will be changing. I plan to release a free engine test in the not too distant future, so thanks for watching and please stay tuned!
The texture pack is the excellent PureBDCraft by Sphax, used with permission. It can be downloaded for Minecraft here: http://bdcraft.net/
Let there be light! I was getting a bit sick of the eternal day time in the world, so what better way is there to test the point lighting system than to destroy the sun itself! Eventually a day/night cycle will be implemented, and the ambient light from the sun/moon can be tinted a colour. In this shot, the moon is lighting the land with a low intensity blue light.
To test different coloured point-based lights, I added coloured mushrooms to the world generator and gave them some light emitting properties. The torch on the pole was player placed, as were the stone walls.
Light from the sun/moon bounces its way around corners and can light a house quite well through a few windows, where as point-based lights use line of sight only and will create more varied lighting.
Shaders have been implemented, so dynamic lighting will be possible. I’m really focusing on performance (currently getting a solid 60fps on my old macbook pro, and thats with the framerate cap on), so dynamic lights will only be used a few situations where it would not make sense bake the lighting data into the world geometry itself. Examples would be a light source carried in your hand, or temporary lighting from a spell or explosion.
Another video will be coming in the near future. Honest. Until then just convince yourself that the above screenshot is a video of infinitesimally short length.
A few re-writes later….
I’ve been rather quiet the last few weeks, so I’m here to say another video won’t be too far away. I’ve been working very hard over the last few months and it seems I can’t code fast enough. I’m more addicted to making this game than I have ever been to playing any other game. Which I suppose is good news!
Here’s a list of stuff I’ve been working on:
Implemented a listen server, you can host a game and play it at the same time. Dedicated servers are preferred, but it is nice to have this option.
Added a networked entity system, which can be used for anything from monsters through to items you drop on the floor.
You can now swim.
Re-wrote the geometry tessellation. When you add or remove geometry to the world, it updates much faster than before.
Re-wrote the lighting system. Lighting is smooth across all surfaces. Sunlight can bounce around corners, point based lights rely on line of sight.
Implemented shaders. Dynamic lighting will be possible.
Added a static entity class. These are light-weight entities that are baked into the world geometry. They can be placed on a floor, ceiling or wall of any angle. These can emit light. Tufts of grass, lanterns, etc could use this.
Modified the slope system so a corner slope doesn’t have to be square in shape. This gives much more flexibility for geometry.
My plan is to have a free public alpha released late in May. This will be more of an engine test than a game, but it will slowly evolve over time. Keep your eyes pointed this way!
In this video I am testing the new interface style. At present I am switching between shapes with the right-mouse button, but I think I will implement a pop up radial menu to make selections faster. I would also like to include a free-form mode which will behave in a similar manner to the interface in my previous videos. This will allow for more precise building control where required.
I haven’t redone the interface for destroying blocks yet, and am still working out the details for this. The building in the video was created using only the tools shown.
I will be re-writing some elements of the lighting and rendering modules soon which will allow for more realistic lighting, shader effects on surfaces, faster rendering and faster generation of render geometry data.
The texture pack is the excellent PureBDCraft by Sphax, used with permission. It can be downloaded for Minecraft here: http://bdcraft.net/
The ground goes forwardways, longways, squareways, sideways and now - yes Charlie - slantways. Much like the Wonkavator, floors and ceilings in Sandbox are now free to explore the Y axis.
Slopes can be formed out of any material and can be stretched up to 8 units long. Sloped ceilings are also possible. The incline of the surface must travel down one of the 4 cardinal axes, but the ability to place them and cut them up into arbitrary shapes should more than make up for this restriction. It also makes it much easier to align surfaces to one another.
Everything in the video was created in game using the block system, including the poles holding up the stone “handrails”. The block placing/cutting interface shown in the video does not represent the final product, I have planned an alternative which should make the game engine feel more like your character is building the structures, rather than feeling like you are using a 1st person CAD package. It will also make creating different shapes more intutive and natural.
The texture pack shown in the video is the excellent PureBDCraft by Sphax, used with permission. It can be downloaded for Minecraft here: http://bdcraft.net/
Let the water flow! This video demonstrates the basics of the fluid system. In the final product the flowing water and puddles will look nothing like this, this video merely serves to demonstrate how water will move “behind the scenes”. The fluid in this video is also flowing at a slower rate than it will in the game.
I am using a high res minecraft texture pack available here:
This is the first released footage of Sandbox in action. I had loaded up the minecraft textures in the engine to see what it looked like and was so impressed with the results that I had to make a quick video demonstrating some of the engine’s features.
This will NOT be the final interface for building/carving the world. Something similiar may be available in the late game, but for now this is more of a debug interface.
Features shown:
Terrain generation
Terrain deformation
Player movement
Dynamic sun light
Player placed coloured point lights (could be lanterns, glowing mushrooms, whatever)
Hellooo internet!
Hello to all of you who have stumbled upon this blog. I will be using this page to detail my progress on a new game I am creating.
Who am I? I’m Ben, I live on a massive island somewhere on the bottom of this big ball called Australia and I am 25 years old. I’ve always had an interest in games programming, ever since I was a young lad. My first introduction to any kind of programming or scripting language was through a little game called ZZT. It took a while for it all to sink in, but before long I was creating all sorts of 2D ASCII based adventures. Adventures which I would later play by myself. We didn’t have the internet.
While I was still a child my folks gave me a copy of The Games Factory as a gift. If I recall correctly, The Games Factory is a cut down version of Clickteam’s flagship product Klik & Play. I can’t remember if I had requested it, or they just knew it would be something I would love, but from that day on I could not be torn away from the computer. I spent more hours than I’d like to admit creating the most terrible, poor excuses for games you could imagine. I think the vast majority of these games were set in the Star Wars universe. I only wish I could find a copy of all these… shall we say… works of art. A few of my friends also liked to make games with this software and we would often play each other’s half-finished creations. So I guess there is hope of finding them yet.
I am now in my twenties and have learned grown up languages like C++. My most recent projects were a few games for the iPad and iPhone. The latest one and also the one I am most proud of is called Juice Belts. Check it out here:
My current project, and the focus of this blog, is a new untitled game. Sandbox is what it is referred to around these parts, but this will be changing. What is the game? Sandbox is an open world building and adventuring game. The world is randomly generated and infinite in size. Anything and everything be built and destroyed. To describe it in terms of other games, it is elements of Minecraft meets Zelda meets Diablo.
Rather than post pages and pages of planned features, I will stick to posting a list of features that have been completed so far:
Randomly generated world
100% deformable world- Walls can be at any angle
Infinite sized worlds
Flowing volume based fluid/puddle system
Coloured lighting
Multiplayer
VBO chunks
Multi-threaded (world generation and render data generation offloaded)
Dynamic visibility (don’t draw sections of the world/caves/etc that are obscured)
Extremely high sky limit / dig depth
I don’t plan for this blog to be overly technical, but as this is still an engine in development there will no doubt be some techno jibberish from time to time. Soon to follow will be some videos of the engine in action, because a video speaks a thousand pictures (a million words?).
