Messages

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Games / Re: Block Party (Terrain Ex. Pg.124 - 2Million Blocks)

« on: August 19, 2019, 10:23:50 AM »

Alright. Here's a challenge. Make a googol of bricks. That's 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bricks. If it can atleast run, I'll be amazed

That might be just a tad bit difficult. =/

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Games / Re: Block Party (Terrain Example Pg.124)

« on: August 18, 2019, 06:53:49 PM »

Another procedural terrain generation test, consisting of over 2 million blocks (2,050,267 to be exact). Still some glitches to work out though, regarding holes in generation and repeating terrain. Overall maintained a decent framerate, with occasional lag spikes.

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Games / Re: Block Party (Terrain Example Pg.124)

« on: August 18, 2019, 06:04:07 PM »

bro why are there studs on the sides of the bricks

That's just temporary. Bricks are undergoing frequent changes right now, and it's easier to use the same texture for each face for the time being. I'll fix that later once the brick and build systems are closer to being finalized.

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Games / Re: Block Party (Update Pg.123 - 912k Blocks)

« on: August 18, 2019, 04:36:36 PM »

Someone asked on Discord how an area of terrain would perform, using the new build optimizations. I tried procedurally generating terrain using 691,900 1x1 blocks, and the framerate was decent. Although, I could feel some lag (it performed better up close). With the final techniques that will be added, I'm hoping to improve performance even further.

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Games / Re: Block Party (Update Pg.123 - 912k Blocks)

« on: August 18, 2019, 04:31:47 PM »

will it have plugin based mod support? its pretty easy with assembly loading

I would like to add that in the future. Importing models and textures should be no problem, but support for third-party scripts might be a challenge.

I do have something in mind though, just encase support for custom scripts wouldn't be feasible.

what yo pc specs tho

My laptop used for the test has 8 gigs of ram, and a 1.70 GHz Intel processor. It's not designed for gaming, but can handle 912k blocks loaded in a compact array quite nicely. Although, performance will vary, based on how blocks are arranged, and if transparent colors are used.

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Games / Re: Block Party (Update Pg.123 - 912k Blocks)

« on: August 16, 2019, 09:47:21 PM »

what was the framerate during the 912k block test

It was about 30 to 40fps iirc. That was while recording a video of the entire build being rendered in realtime, posted in the message above.

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Games / Re: Block Party (Update Pg.123 - 912K+ Blocks)

« on: August 16, 2019, 08:24:23 PM »

Update: 8/16/19

Quick overview of recent progress:
- New, simplified system for handling bricks. Everything is being rewritten.
- .json format for storing bricks, which makes importing them much easier. The revised Blender exporter is close to being completely finished, and is capable of exporting entire packs of blocks all at once (or a single, selected brick, if desired instead).
- Brick grid condition checks are much faster, and avoid unnecessary calculations.
- Adjacent Face Occlusion is fully implemented, and is also designed to work as efficiently as possible. There is a significant increase in the amount of bricks that can be rendered on screen at the same time.
- A new shader editor has been purchased, and a basic, custom shader is now being used. I no longer have to rely on glitchy third-party shaders. Although, the custom shader and brick textures still need a lot of work and are not finished.
- Better management of allocated memory and garbage collection, which effects brick performance once planted. There is a noticeable improvement in performance with the changes, and more improvements are planned in the short and long term.
- Was able to render over 912,000 blocks on screen at the same time, using the recent improvements to blocks and builds (in contrast to a mere 10,000 blocks from before). The game still maintained an excellent framerate, and could possibly handle even more.

What's planned for the near future:
- A new building system will be started on soon (possibly featuring two new building methods)
- Saving / loading builds (not hard to pull off)
- More performance tweaks for builds
- Finalize block textures (they're still somewhat temporary side textures especially)
- Old features will be brought back later on

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Games / Re: Block Party

« on: July 01, 2019, 11:35:33 AM »

Bumpity bump bump.

Nice; im well aware that Block Party is still in an early phase but do you have any plan of trying to advertise it a bit so you can get a following outside of the blockland community formed?

Not that I disagree with you but isn't it still a little to early for that?

Yeah, it is still really early in development. Once the game enters beta, that might be the right time to start advertising.

But will there be mod support?

I haven't worked out how exactly mods support will work, but they will definitely be a major focus of the game.

So bricks can now be placed on slanted hillsides? Would you be able to build them slanted with the hill, or would it have to be upright like Blockland?

Bricks will support being rotated 90 degrees on multiple axis - X, Y and Z, rather than just on Y like in Blockland. Although, I haven't considered adding support for slanted surfaces.

However, due to how bricks are handled in the game, rotating at various degrees could be possible. Maybe later on I can look into that, once I get the main features in place.

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Games / Re: Block Party (Minor Update: pg. 122)

« on: January 09, 2019, 12:03:55 PM »

Quintuple Bump

Resuming work on Block Party today; still addressing some issues with revisions to how bricks are handled, especially regarding brick rotation.

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Games / Re: Block Party

« on: November 15, 2018, 11:09:06 AM »

Minor Update:

New bricks are now being added to BP! Many more are on the way, and various types of bricks will be included such as plates, 1x tall bricks, 5x tall, ramps, rounds, decorative, interior, exterior and more. I'm also experimenting with new brick textures, which are very easy to make.

Added support for planting bricks on various flat surfaces for maps, not just the floor grid.

A brick selection menu has finally been included! I'll be showing if off soon, once support for dynamically adding brick icons is added.

The way bricks and brick textures are handled has been completely rewritten. Bricks can now support prints as well.

Free camera support has been added, useful for building.

The Blender exporter now supports exporting multiple bricks at one time - meant for handling entire packs of bricks.

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Games / Re: Block Party

« on: November 09, 2018, 10:23:47 PM »

i know this is block party thread but i figured id say what i think here cuz i have no itchio profile

youve made picross with the added depth of colors and the added constraint of set piece shapes. one of the major strategies of picross (the optimal strategy) is process of elimination which helps guide you through the puzzle because its easier to eliminate what you know is impossible than it is to immediately guess the solution. pixik doesn't really have that except for the puzzle checker which is kinda damaging in its own right. i dont know if pixik has this but it'd be a good feature to be able to eliminate boxes where it would be impossible for that color to occupy. maybe like a menu on the side that lists all the colors and you can check one of the colors and it singles out all of that color and allows you to mark some spaces as eliminated.

its an interesting game and its totally viable to expand upon it. i feel that its a little more complex to handle than the standard picross due to the amount of colors. but really its just 3d picross with each color representing a layer, and constraint selection sizes. i feel that some of that complexity has to be handled in order for it to be better (at least in my opinion)

I appreciate the feedback. It does seem too complex, and I like the idea of being able to choose which layers / colors to show. I may resume work on Pixik later on, as I catch up on development with BP.

I was working on a physics-based version of the game as well, which I can also resume work on later:

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Games / Re: Block Party

« on: November 08, 2018, 09:01:11 PM »

That looks cool. It looks like Tetris picross

Thanks, yeah someone else mentioned it reminded them of Picross as well. I've never heard of it or played it before though, lol.
 
Here's a link to the Itch page btw, which has a download link to the free Windows demo if anyone's interested: https://asfghost.itch.io/pixik Block Party will be the main focus, however.

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Games / Re: Block Party

« on: November 07, 2018, 11:34:36 PM »

join the discord, there's a download there iirc

Yessir, although the demo is incredibly outdated by now. No ETA on the next update yet.


Development on BP has resumed! Here's a quick overview of recent progress:

• Added free cam support
• Made some adjustments to the Blender brick exporter, to handle exporting entire packs of bricks at the same time
• Bricks can now be planted on various map surfaces, rather than just on the floor plane
• The brick selection menu is being finalized and is already working to some extent, and will allow for collapsing / expanding groups of bricks
• New bricks (As shown awhile back) are now being added, thanks to the improvements made to the exporter
• Overhaul of how bricks and brick textures are handled; might implement new shaders and better bump mapping effects soon

I've also been working on a couple other small projects to help fund Block Party, such as a 2D logic puzzle game:

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Games / Re: Block Party

« on: October 31, 2018, 11:09:37 AM »

Impressive demo builds recently uploaded on Discord:

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Games / Re: Block Party - New Screenshots Pg. 121

« on: October 15, 2018, 12:55:36 AM »

I like the style. I hope there's lots of secrets to discover in these maps. One thing I've been wondering is this; Will it have a service similar to RTB? Like uploading add-ons and downloading them through the client. If so, please make it so we don't need to restart the game to be able to use the add-ons.

I imagine if this game gets release commercially, it'll be through Steam, which has the workshop. Making add-ons work without restarting the game is a different story though. Might not be too hard because Unity, but I don't have enough experience with the engine to know for sure.

Eventually I would like to add an RTB-like add-on hosting service. Although, I don't know if it will be included at launched. Steam Workshop is an option to look into as well.