OctoberPlains v1.0-pre4

After what was a very short development cycle, I posted the v1.0-pre4 release, today. This release is mostly just under-the-hood changes to the network, work on stats collection, and some stress testing.

I suspect that more work will still be [...]

OctoberPlains v1.0-pre3

The requirements for the v1.0-pre3 release of OctoberPlains have been met so I posted the release to GitHub.

The most noteworthy change in this release is the introduction of a sky light mechanic and a day-night cycle. Some small tweaks to the [...]

Musings on sky light

I have been thinking about how to introduce "sky light" and "time of day" mechanics to OctoberProject.

Originally, I was thinking about making this part of the data model, first per "cuboid column", later directly per cuboid (and just merged at [...]

OctoberPlains v1.0-pre2

Just a quick note that the 1.0-pre2 release was posted today.

Noteworthy changes in this release:
-interactive console now honoured in single-player (just in the stdin/stdout console where you launched the game)
-more console commands (change world [...]

The work on world generation for the next OctoberProject pre-release seems to be going well.

I didn't go for the traditional noise approach (Perlin noise, for example), mostly just because I thought this would be more interesting to play with but I [...]

A quick look at the current state of OctoberProject development with the OctoberPlains v1.0-pre1 release.

New and noteworthy changes in this release:
-UI is now paginated if there are too many crafting recipes of inventory items
-there is a basic [...]

OctoberPlains v1.0-pre0

The first release in the pre-release series makes some small balancing changes and improves some of the AI path-finding and decision-making.

Work now begins on the pre1 release which will mostly focus on fleshing out the item inventory and crafting [...]

Constantly re-thinking motion in OctoberProject

Work on pre0 for OctoberProject is progressing well but I got snagged wanting to sort out how viscosity impacts the world before looking at some balancing. After a few attempts at changing how this is managed in order to make the impact more what I [...]

The Lunacy of "Forced Updates"

Today's large-scale software breakage across the world gives me hope that this may cause a broader push-back on the software update philosophies currently in use. I don't know if this one was "forced" (as businesses usually aggressively run [...]

OctoberPlains v0.0-demo10

The final release of the "tech demo" development cycle has been posted to GitHub (v0.0-demo10). This version includes swimming and drowning mechanics as well as the big under-the-hood change for vector-based movement.

While I am still not happy [...]

OctoberProject: Vector-based movement

The final release in the "tech demo" series for the OctoberPlains work under OctoberProject is nearly done and has been for a few days. The problem is that there are a few de-sync issues which are really making me uncomfortable.

This was a big [...]

I walk through the new demo9 release, showing the basic "logic wire" design which is now present.

In terms of logic-sensitive blocks added, this includes: Doors, switches, lamps, and the logic wire. In terms of further automation, a hopper has [...]

OctoberProject progress

I am finally at the point where 0.0-demo9 can be released but I do want to make a few non-essential changes before declaring the release build. This is mostly just to make play-testing less tedious.

The core features for this release were around [...]

OctoberProject: Redstone-like logic

A key feature for the 0.0-demo9 release is something I am referring to as "logic powder". This is essentially redstone-like functionality being added to the system.

The first cut of this is working with basic sink and source blocks where their [...]

Shifts in technical priorities, over time

Something I find kind of interesting is that I am old enough to have lived through, or seen the direct aftermath of, a few different iterations of software development culture. I was reminded of this when sighing at an OctoberProject stack trace [...]

I walk through the new demo8 release, showing the orcs and cows in the world.

Their AI is still very basic and the spawning rules need to be balanced but this at least demonstrates the functionality. The cows are spawned when new cuboids are [...]

I quick demo of the latest development in OctoberProject. This update includes tools, weapons, and armour. Additionally, the UI has been re-worked and inventory capacity and management have been changed.

Additionally, you may now see some tick [...]

Updates when stitching the world

The change to OctoberProject's item addressing is complete and, while I still don't like it (the addressing still feels "not quite right" in some way), it does do everything required and probably in about the most reasonable way possible.

Moving on [...]

Item versus tool management - stuck in the back-and-forth

For the past couple of days, I have been stuck in that frustrating mental trap of not being able to think up an elegant way of doing something, so you keep prototyping different ideas, using lots of time, and not coming up with something good while [...]

A quick demo of the new OctoberPlains build. This version introduces health, hunger, basic combat, some worldgen changes, fixes to intermittent network and persistence bugs, and a slight UI overhaul.

Note shown in the demo is the combat mechanic: [...]

A quick demo of the new OctoberPlains build. This version introduces lighting and basic farming, as well as the first steps toward declarative mechanics.

At this point, the lighting definitely improves the look and feel of the system and the [...]

Parallel light flooding

While thinking more about this new lighting mechanic and doing some research into the subject it looks like the common approach is a breadth-first flood-fill kind of approach. This makes sense and can be reversed when lighting is removed (and then [...]

A quick demo of the new OctoberPlains build. This version introduces falling item debris and flowing water, as well as some under-the-hood optimizations.

Looking forward to demo5, that build will include a farming mechanic, a lighting engine, and [...]

Synchronous or Redundant

I have been experimenting with different approaches for the "block update" mechanism in OctoberProject. This means that, for all blocks which somehow changed in a given tick, an event needs to be run on the adjacent 6 blocks in the following tick. [...]

Just a quick demo of the current state of OctoberProject. This is the v0.0-demo3 release of OctoberPlains.

The demo4 release will focus on things like falling block/inventory types, flowing water, and general "implicit block update" behaviour. [...]