V1.004 released

Post date: Jul 30, 2014 4:26:00 PM

I've submitted 1.004 to the app store. So time to update the PC version....

BUILDVILLE V1.004

Just download the zip and extract and run. The music is now inside the data.rkv also.

I'd like to do an auto-update feature for the next release, which might require a separate launcher exe.

Crunching at work at the moment, so progress is super slow, but still pretty happy with this release.

it features:

- fairly aggressive mipmapping using a custom atlas mipping algorithm to smooth out those flickering distant pixels

- fire & smoke are now particle effects instead of tile fill types

- poison and mud have been added to replace the old Fire and Smoke

- actors can get poisoned and take damage over time

- actors can catch of fire (jump in water to put yourself out)

- new shader effects for water,lava,poison and mud

- liquid (water/lava/poison/mud) spreads like in minecraft now - the old spreading technique was killing the network play because it required massive amounts of tile changes per frame. The minecraft style means you can get nice water falls or walls-of-water.

- water flow now pushes the player around, so you can do water slides

- enemies now have selectable AI modes and do visibility checks against the player

-- timid - they wander around and will run away if they see you

-- passive - ignores the player. Runs away if hit

-- brave - ignores the player, but attacks if hit

-- aggressive - attacks the player on sight

- enemies can be given weapons (swords or guns) or even a default weapon which won't appear but is used for damage. Use this to emulate claw attacks/unarmed combat.

- new ingame options menu with:

-- autojump - hit a tile you can jump over and it will auto jump

-- draw distance - select up to 300m draw distance, depending on your graphics grunt

- online can now hide player tags

- having ALL actors fly in creative mode is now optional - we set up skins with specific super powers, so only superman can fly, but we like to use creative mode so we have access to editting and all items while playing. Also, combined with turning off the tags, can make for some more fun PVP.

- UI between Creative and Survival is the same now. You have left and right hand items (left/right mouse button) and you can hotswitch the left items.

- lots of bug fixes with the multi-threaded code. Generally more stable exiting/entering levels.

So yeah, reasonable amount of stuff in the build.

What's next?

Next build I'll probably ditch the left/right hand stuff. its overly complex and not super useful. I'll still support two handed gameplay, but you'll have to have 2 items of the same type (two non-sniper guns or two swords), and some items will be two-handed like blocks. Basically I'll move towards a more traditional RPG interface in the next build. I think this will improve accessibility and lend the game to more classic types of gameplay, and make it easier to do reticles for guns and projectile weapons.

Also, I'd like to get the airplanes and boats in. I started that with the car update, but haven't gotten back to it. Not expecting that to be a lot of work.

After all that, I've been looking at "Scratch" as a programming interface to allow people to write logic for their games. Its something thats being taught in schools now and is super easy to learn. Shouldn't be a lot of work to get something like that going... just gotta be careful about how it will work with multiplayer.