Messages

16

Games / Re: Block Party

« on: October 08, 2018, 05:23:48 PM »

Oh whew I thought this was dead. How’s the lighting so far?

It's still in development, no worries. Although things will move along slowly for awhile, as I'm balancing a couple projects currently.

This is a quick example of baked lighting, using lower-end settings; I'll be making improvements to the lighting quality and the map itself over time:


Also added realtime screen space reflections for some of the materials, such as the flooring.

17

Games / Re: Block Party

« on: October 04, 2018, 11:05:54 AM »

one of those pictures is clearly showing mike's house 2

Yes sir, I was working on a remake of Mike's House at one time. =)


Not much to report on regarding Block Party as of late. Right now, I'm working on a couple minor projects to help fund BP, as well as experimenting with mixed (both baked and realtime) lighting. I've also picked up a couple other techniques, which will be included in BP. Development will still resume off and on.

18

Games / Re: Block Party - Update pg. 120

« on: August 10, 2018, 03:16:20 PM »

Another small, yet impressive, build by the community:

19

Games / Re: Block Party - Update pg. 120

« on: August 08, 2018, 04:39:55 PM »

Small Update: Working on the new painting and building interfaces, and will be adding new shaders very soon. Also, wanted to show off a few more builds by the testers:

Will this has terrain like blockland had? Just wondering.

It shouldn't have something very similar. Although, I'm not sure if it'll be infinite like Torque's terrain.

An omnibrick could actually save you a lot of dev time if implemented correctly. For example, you have a window full of different brick sizes and stuff and it takes a while to count the dimensions so they could fit exactly into whatever spot you need to fill. Using an editor wand style brick means you can entirely eliminate all that searching. It's also more natural to edit it in 3d space rather than in a 2d window so you can get a better spacial understanding of the dimensions you're trying to replicate.

I'm sure this is an overly ambitious overhaul and won't meld well with the more niche bricks like ramps or grates, etc. But when Block Party does get released an editor wand or newdupe-style supercut and fill will probably be the first mod ever made and it's uses will be so practical it'll already render a brick menu useless, especially for larger builds

One compromise I can imagine is a purge of the brick menu to only have 1x1 brick, 1x1 ramp, all the strange one shot bricks like grate and window wall. Then one can place their choice of brick and use the dynamic scaling to do the rest of the work. You could also add things like tiling for the weird ones like grate so Instead of a giant horribly stretched 64x64 grate you'd have 64 neatly packed 8x8 grates in a square. Or maybe you want to make a giant hill. Take a 1x1 ramp, stretch it out. In my mind this would introduce smarter building styles with incredibly reduced object counts. It would end up looking a little more like vanilla bl or roblox but maybe that's just the natural evolution of streamlined building

Depending on how development goes, I may look into adding this feature later on. It does make a lot of sense.

how will lighting look, and how does it affect performance?

There will be real-time lighting and shadows, as well as slight ambient occlusion. Some or most of these features will most likely be adjustable via the Options menu, so you can find the right balance for performance.

I found this PCSS shadow thing for unity: https://github.com/TheMasonX/UnityPCSS, again I'm not too knowledgeable about unity so idk if you could use it or not.

Thanks, I'll check it out. =)

20

Games / Re: Block Party - Update pg. 120

« on: July 29, 2018, 10:30:08 PM »

So if I need to pick a brick from a wide selection of bricks loaded I can rotate a bunch of 3D models of bricks at the same time and click on the exact one I want instead of clicking on tiny 96x96 icons with tiny text below them?
I'm sure this is built into Unity but do all interfaces take up the same proportion of the screen regardless of resolution? My biggest compaint with Blockland at the moment is that whenever I play in 4K mode I can't see stuff because all of the icons and text are scaled for a 720p resolution and windows only fill up like a tenth of my monitor.
https://blocklandglass.com/addons/screenshot.php?id=835

With Unity, GUIs can either adjust their positions relative to the screen size / ratio, or can be rescaled with the ratio itself. I'll see what works best, I can always rescale the text. And as for building, there will be a window on the left or right side of the screen, which will allow you to easily select any brick you want while building (instead of having to open up a menu that obscures the screen. I might also add a "favorites" list as well, so you can quickly select certain bricks you'll be using often. I'm certainly open to ideas though.

I suggest you add an omnibrick which is a 1x1 brick that can be scaled to any dimension using like looking at a face on the brick and using your mousewheel to scale it up

It would probably invalidate some Oct tree code or require special class interface but it's definitely useful to have for those times when you need a random 462x67 plate or some other handicapped dimension

That's a good idea. It wouldn't be overly hard to add an "omnibrick", but would just take awhile to fully implement it and figure out how it would work. I could probably add that later or post-release.

21

Games / Re: Block Party

« on: July 28, 2018, 01:33:19 PM »

Thanks ghost very cool

No probs

Still waiting on the Mac build which takes 5 minutes to set up

-_-

We'll add it eventually, lol.

22

Games / Re: Block Party

« on: July 28, 2018, 12:46:34 PM »

Bump! Update: 7/28/18

Custom Blender Exporter
A custom made, python-based exporter is being developed for creating custom bricks (and might support other objects as well, such as items and vehicles). By using the exporter, you'll be able to make bricks or even entire brick packs for Block Party. You'll be able to set up everything needed for bricks within the program itself: The brick model, collision, brick grid, size, vertex colors (including transparency), and even information such as the brick name, category, and subcategory. Once exported, face occlusion will be set up automatically, based on specific textures you use for model faces.

The exporter is not completely finished, but is working, and Block Party already supports custom, third-party bricks. The Blender add-on will be released later on, once finished and once the default bricks are decided on.


Brick Rotation On Any Axis
A new feature not quite finished is the ability to rotate bricks on any axis, rather than just vertically. Instead of having 4 rotation variants for bricks, there are now 24; bricks can be rotated using the new building interface that will be developed, or by hitting a single key to toggle the feature and while using the Numpad (very similar to positioning a brick). This feature will expand what's possible with builds.


New Bricks and Building Interface
With the new exporter almost finished, there's no limit to what kind or how many bricks can be added. I'm currently working on implementing as many default brick as possible, which range from basic plates, to various types of ramps, new cube variants and various detail models. A new interface for building will also be added, to make creating builds much easier. The interface is inspired by various Lego games, and will allow you to build and choose by using the mouse. You'll no longer have to use the alpha numeric keys for selecting bricks, which was meant to be temporary anyway. =P


What's Next
-Print Support
-Building Tool Functionality
-Networking Support
-Reimplementation of Previous Features (since I switched back to PC from the mobile version)
-Shader Overhaul
-Perhaps A Couple Other New Features
-In-Game and Avatar Options (?)
-Main Menu GUI and Map Selection

23

Games / Re: Block Party

« on: July 16, 2018, 11:44:52 PM »

Any progress on this?

I showed a teaser on Discord of one of the new features I'm currently adding. But, it's not ready to officially reveal just yet. I'm hoping to have it fully working very soon.

couple questions, are the characters going to be scaled the same as Lego minifigures?  And, if you are adding buildable vehicles, will there be special parts for them (I.E. 12x4 Lego Car Chassis, Wheel axles?)

Characters will be scaled to being about the size of Lego minifigs; I haven't decided just yet on the official size. Buildable vehicles are planned to be added later on in development, and yes they'll include special parts. I have some ideas on what parts to have available, but will keep that under wraps for now. =)

24

Games / Re: Block Party

« on: June 30, 2018, 01:11:46 PM »

Thanks for the ideas for the printer guys. The "packing tool" and the other tools were modeled based on reference images I gave Filipe; we were planning on going back and updating the models later on. The idea was to replace the roll of tape with a roll of decals instead, although I'll work on finalizing the design for it soon.

Btw, I might be able to post a new update soon, and show off some cool stuffs. It's taking a while because I'm completely rewriting the brick system and rethinking how they're made, so that brick creation will be as easy as possible for add-on developers.

25

Games / Re: Block Party

« on: June 26, 2018, 09:12:50 PM »

I made some tool models for the game.
Block Party Tools(View in 3D)

I love how they turned out thus far. I made a few tweaks and imported them into the game:

cleaning up trashposts in the new block party forums gamemode

lol

Aren't you gonna ask what the rest are for? A broom makes more sense than a saw, 2 different hammers, a screwdriver and uhhhh
the 2nd last thing

I'm experimenting with having various tools for different functions related to building. I'll go into more detail later on, but the "packing tape" tool is used for applying prints / decals to bricks.

26

Games / Re: Block Party [Update on PC Version pg. 117]

« on: June 17, 2018, 10:55:13 AM »

you should try and do a thing where if a brick with bricks on top of it is destroyed, the bricks ontop are destroyed unless they are also attached to another brick
make it realistic if u can

Now that building items are being added, we'll work on adding that feature soon (similar to how BL bricks are destroyed, using the hammer and wand).

27

Games / Re: Block Party [Update on PC Version pg. 117]

« on: June 16, 2018, 11:20:49 AM »

when you offer to help and provide projects to worked on specifically in c#/unity and then he says he'll "get back to you" and never attempts to communicate with you again

Apologies Waru, I've been talking to a couple others over the past few days, and have been working on preparing the project git and other team members for what they'll be working on. I'll respond to your PM now.

28

Games / Re: Block Party [Update on PC Version pg. 117]

« on: June 15, 2018, 11:46:47 AM »

this game would suck on mobile tbh, since mobile's controls suck unless you have a controller

Now that I think about it, a game of this scale woudn't work well for mobile, you'll have to compromise a lot of possible features that could work on the PC version for it, and the controls would be tricky to develop, if the mobile version will just be a side thing that is simplified compared to the PC version then sure, but you shoudn't make it your top priority, and you should definitely NOT scrap features to make both mobile and PC versions the same, think about Minecraft for instance, the Pocket Edition is what the name suggests, a simplified version of the game for mobile with less features so that it can run on the phone, if you want the full experience then you have to play it on PC.

Well the mobile version will be aimed at more casual players, and yes would have a lot of features stripped from it. You might be able to load up builds on your mobile device though and edit them ingame, then load the edited build in the PC version; it would open up a lot of possibilities. However, now that we have someone else helping with scripting, we can focus on finishing the PC build.




Update: The PC version is back in development! With the help of both Filipe and /dev/sr0, we can finally focus on getting the standalone build finished again. The mobile version will most likely continue to be worked on, but will take a back seat for now. I'm still focusing on implementing multiplayer support, and we'll be adding build tools shortly.

29

Games / Re: Block Party [Update, Mobile Game Progress pg. 116]

« on: June 14, 2018, 05:57:29 PM »

But the PC is the most used platform...

oof

that changes pretty much everything
I don't imagine many people are here for a phone game

If the community is still interested in the PC version, I'll continue working on it. I'm just not confident I can get the more technical aspects of the game finished by myself; hopefully I can get another scripter / programmer on board later on to help with that.

Btw, I'm currently adding multiplayer support.

30

Games / Re: Block Party [Update, Mobile Game Progress pg. 116]

« on: June 12, 2018, 05:15:03 PM »

If? Please don't give up on the PC version..

I'm still planning on finishing the PC version eventually. For the mean time however, I'll just be focusing on the mobile game; I may still work on the PC build off and on.