The next milestone of OctoberPeaks development is released: v1.0-pre4

This version adds models for blocks which aren't intended to be full blocks. Additionally, left-click on crafting recipe (in inventory or block) will cause the craft to run [...]

The next milestone of OctoberPeaks development is released: v1.0-pre3

This version adds support for entity orientation and free movement in arbitrary horizontal directions (no longer locked to cardinal directions). Additionally, some lighting bugs [...]

The next milestone of OctoberPeaks development is released: v1.0-pre2

This version builds on what was in pre1 by adding support for block and sky lighting and also improves water mesh generation.

Notable changes in the next milestones:
-pre3: [...]

The next milestone of OctoberPeaks development is released: v1.0-pre1

This version has the same functionality as pre0 but now has textures for blocks (including items on the ground) and models for entities.

Notable changes in the next milestones: [...]

Work on OctoberPeaks has now progressed to the point where there is something meaningful to discuss. While not yet very usable, it technically has the same interactive game mechanics as OctoberPlains (which has also been updated to v1.0.1 to fix [...]

OctoberPlains 1.0 released!

The 1.0-rc0 build had relatively few problems so I decided to declare it as the 1.0 release as to not block progress on OctoberPeaks (I once saw a subtle lighting glitch - not game-breaking - and some creative mode items can cause assertion failures [...]

This is to announce the release of the release candidate for OctoberPlains.

This has a few changes from pre6, including some additional sounds, some early-game tools, some bug fixes, a bed (to set spawn and reset the day), and general balancing of [...]

OctoberPlains v1.0-pre6

I just wanted to announce that v1.0-pre6 of OctoberPlains has been released on GitHub (link in the context).

This release is mostly just to add some in-game audio but also make some small bug fixes and client-side performance improvements.

This is [...]

Just wanted to post an announcement that OctoberPlains v1.0-pre5 has been released and posted to GitHub (link in the context).

This release is mostly about under-the hood performance considerations (tick rate is now 20/sec instead of 10/sec, for [...]

Re: Of Optimizations and Octrees

After spending some time looking into how to build this different representation on top of the existing lighting storage (and then realizing how much effort it would be to convert this format back into the octree), I decided to just bite the bullet [...]

Of Optimizations and Octrees

Given that the next release of OctoberProject is all about core logic loop optimizations, I have been playing with an integration stress test in order to fix a key issue. It turns out that lighting updates are currently extremely expensive within [...]

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 [...]