Messages

166

Games / Re: Blockland-Inspired Project

« on: August 13, 2017, 12:42:46 AM »

the first, 6th, 7th and last avatar concepts look really good and the terrain is impressive. what sort of distribution model are you going for?

I'm debating about either using Steam Greenlight or going with a publisher, who will post it to Steam and other sites for me. I'd rather not go with a publisher, but I'm not sure how difficult the Greenlight process will be. If the game really takes off, I'd love to pursue X-Box or PlayStation as well later on, but not sure how realistic that would be.


Btw, I'll try to post a new update very soon, hopefully in a few days. I'm just waiting for a new feature to be finished beforehand.

167

Games / Re: Blockland-Inspired Project

« on: August 10, 2017, 12:37:53 PM »

ok but will it have a farlands

just an idea, make a mode specifically to give players the deep farlands experience

The farlands is something every game engine will have, so you should be able to have that experience by venturing far enough away from the origin. It would be interesting to add a custom / unique farlands experience somehow.

Brazillian life savings? 100 pennies won't get you far.

lol

why not mods that allow things like fancy character customization n stuff

Thinking in terms of "whether the server has the proper bricks or not" is very closed-minded toward how Blockland and Torque is designed. Building a new avatar and brick system from the ground up, it would be trivial for this to not be an issue. From what it looks like, this game already doesn't have fixed brick sizes. Models can be transferred both ways. I've seen this thinking a few times in this thread, this isn't TGE and this isn't Blockland 2.

The idea for building your own avatar from bricks is very creative and a great idea, but it would be hard to implement, especially since I'm mostly working by myself right now. But, I definitely want to add plenty of options for character customization, and allow support for modding the avatar.

168

Games / Re: Blockland-Inspired Project

« on: August 04, 2017, 12:27:02 AM »

No progress updates right now; I'm reworking how brick textures are handled, which will allow for rotating UV textures when rotating a brick, adding prints to bricks, including new brick textures like the ramp, etc. However, this is over-complicating the brick system, especially when importing new or custom bricks, so it'll be a little while before I post another update.

169

Help / Re: increasing ptg chunk limit

« on: August 01, 2017, 06:55:07 PM »

Just now saw this thread; you can increase the chunk limit under Routine options in the Complex GUI. Just look for the "Server Chunk Object Limit" slider under Generator Limits.

170

Games / Re: Blockland-Inspired Project

« on: July 30, 2017, 11:16:03 PM »

Blocklander?

Sorry if this has been addressed already but what is up with this?

That was just an experimental concept for what the avatar might look like.

also, dumb question, but are you going to make it fps or tps for the game? some certain block games like lego worlds for example have some third person

You'll be able to switch between both like in BL.

Is there gonna be a separate build-mode where you can freely move the camera like Roblox?
It's different and it might make things easier so I approve.
If you're gonna do that, though, I'd implement mouse selection for copying, pasting, and applying things to loads of bricks.

or potentially an editor similar to unity, with its copying/pasting and movement

Yes, there will be a separate builld / free cam mode which will allow you build such as in Roblox. So far, I'm thinking destroying and repainting bricks in player mode will be similar to how it works in Blockland. However, in free cam mode, you can destroy and repaint bricks by simply highlighting them with your mouse and pressing a key. Also, free cam mode can possibly be restricted to only admins / super admins, only allowed in a creative gamemode, or by having a player ask permission of the host. Maybe the player model and building animations can still be present when flying.

also, Q/E for up/down camera movement would be cool

Great idea, didn't consider that.

i'm not too much of a fan of the current building mechanics, but that's probably because i'm too used to how blockland controls. honestly idk how else you could do brick placing controls as well as blockland though.
and also, the idea of using absolutely any color you want i'm not a fan of either. I liked colorsets because you didn't have to mess around with sliders, and you can easily get back a color that you used previously really easily and quickly. The idea of client-sided colorsets, ones you can download or create yourself is interesting though, as it's potentially possible to go on any server you'd like and use whatever colorset you'd want, with access to the sliders still if needed (and no color limit!)
plus right now i'm very concerned on lag/slowdowns. the grid loading in that last video seemed slow and i'm concerned we can't, like, place even more bricks then blockland can atm.

those are all my concerns right now though

There are new mechanics planned in addition to the Blockland-esque controls, which should hopefully make building (especially building large structures) much easier. You'll also be able to set, save and load preset color packs, which will work very similar to colorsets. And the grid was designed to load slow on purpose for performance reasons; in the first video it loaded instantly. Right now, floor chunks load once per frame instance, but that can easily be adjusted later, so it shouldn't be an issue.

171

Games / Re: Blockland-Inspired Project [New Video Posted! Pg.23 and O.P.]

« on: July 27, 2017, 08:09:42 PM »

This project is fake no pine tree

Pine trees will be replaced with moai bricks, as suggested.

also I assume you're going to make an oct tree?

I'll be experimenting with a new brick grid system, but if that doesn't work, I'll probably use oct trees instead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl3nLhbtJHA

about this video (because I haven't seen anyone mention it between the minifig argument)

Stud shadows misrotated. I hope there's a way around this issue.

Also about the textures, have you tested different lighting on the brick textures?

For that matter, how do a ton of bricks with a ton of shadows handle? I'm not sure how unity deals with culling by default.

Normal maps for the brick textures

UV rotation (like how Blockland handles rotating bricks) is one of the next things I'll be adding. Right now, I'm reworking how brick textures are handled, which will make implementing rotating textures (to align with the grid) much easier.

I have tested bump mapping and parallax mapping; you can see an example of parallax mapping in the floor grid of the header image in the topic O.P. I'll add them back in soon, right now I'm just focusing on core mechanics first. I may also look into a tessellation option.

And I've tested having 800 bricks on screen at once and it still performed great (I only had a drop of 1 fps from before, when there were no bricks). I'm using a complex, multi-pass shader to handle textures, colors and shadows, but I'll probably include client options to help the game perform better, if needed. Unity does have frustum culling built-in, which prevents rendering of objects off-screen. Occlusion culling and other culling techniques can be added later on as well.

add moai bricks

Where in the world did this idea come from lol. If that's what y'all want...

are avatar ragdoll physics after death possible by any chance, ghost? not completely sure if that lags the game or anything but that's an idea that came from the top of my head if you wanted to add a few more physics to miscellaneous things.

I haven't looked into it just yet, but I'm pretty sure Unity has support for ragdoll physics.

My favorite player model design is probably Ozmar's.  I do wanna get this in before the topic of avatars gets buried, though:

Facial animation.

This wasn't a feature in Blockland, but I think it would go a long way in enhancing the liveliness of players and bots.  Some examples of how it could be used:

• Blinking at semi-random intervals every few seconds
• Mouth moving when chatting
• Angry expression when attacking
• Hurt expression
• X eyes when dead
• Falling asleep when AFK (no action by player for at least 5 minutes, eyes close and mouth breathes; /sleep emote for manual sleeping?)
• Hearts in eyes when /love
• Angry when /hate
• Confused when /wtf
• Shocked/surprised when /alarm
• Happy when /win

Faces could be made of multiple textures, such as one for the eyes, one for the nose, and a couple more for optional layers like hair, facial hair, blush, wrinkles, or glasses (the latter of which could just be different eye sets).  This would not only make facial animation easier, as it would allow someone to, say, blink while talking, but could also go a long way in avatar customization.  Maybe you want pillowy girl lips, a pirate beard, and sunglasses all at once?

stuffty sketches I did, cropped from a concept for another Blockland-inspired game that more or less fell through:


One of my old BLF avatars, based on this idea:

Various facial expressions and animated decals is a great idea for the avatars.

172

Games / Re: Blockland-Inspired Project [New Video Posted! Pg.23 and O.P.]

« on: July 26, 2017, 12:13:57 PM »

he said he was moving away from BL

did you all just miss that or

Not completely. Right now I have two concepts in mind: an avatar that is very close to the Blockland avatar, and one that is more like a toy / action figure. I'll be developing both ideas over the next few weeks, and would like to eventually work on some concept art to better visualize what they will look like. Even if I do move away from Blockland however, that doesn't mean the final product won't still have it's own charm; people were concern when the retail version of Blockland was about to be released, and it distanced itself from the lego textures and minifig. But, now most people like the textures and minifig.

Model based off of the concept

I really like this design, if the limbs were slightly larger i think it would be even better.

I really like the physics object feature.  Will there be ways of changing properties like its weight, buoyancy, etc.?

Also, buildable vehicles ??  ;o

Buildable vehicles are planned. =) I also would like to set up build physics to adjust weight, buoyancy and center of mass to be relative to the bricks and how they are arranged in the build.

i mean yea i do agree that the look of the players matter but imo there's too much discussion on that alone rather than the game right now but maybe i'm being silly idk

Yeah, until I get to working on the avatar and the concept art for the game's art style, it would probably be best to keep discussion relative to where the game is at now, i.e. the core mechanics.

173

Games / Re: Blockland-Inspired Project [New Video Posted! Pg.23 and O.P.]

« on: July 25, 2017, 12:17:53 AM »

Is this closer to what was in mind?


I'm not sure how I feel about this join idea, but the Kingdom Hearts toy designs feel too action-figure-like as opposed to Lego minifigures which have limited joints.

The charm of having limited joints like how a Lego minifigure does is that there is a limited range of motion. With limited range of motion, animations could be more creative by embracing the limit rather than moving away from it. As an example, look at the animation in the Lego movie compared to the older Lego films/animations.

 

Not only that, but I think it would be best if the characters are going to be compatible with the bricks around them like how Legos are and similar to how Blockland is. (Basically having proportions right)

But anyways, this is only a suggestion from me.

Is there a specific brick height I should aim for for the character models or is that still to be determined?

That's really good and yeah, it's much closer to what I had in mind. Maybe for now, the character can be around the same height as the Blockland minifig.

I'm not set on the toy idea, right now just trying to come up with concepts to work on to see what works and what doesn't; it'll take some time before the final decision is made on the character's design. It would be interesting though to be like a toy / action figure that can build mainly with legos, and possible in other ways. You could also drive toy-theme vehicles, and choose characters that are based off other toy brands (like lord tony mentioned army men, etc.). Plus, if I went with something that was very reminiscent of a Blockland or Roblox character, people might complain about it being a clone or ripoff.

Then again, the minifig idea is safer and as you mentioned, does have a certain charm to it, which even I love and don't want to modify too much. So, I'm not set on anything yet, it'll just take trial and error. What do y'all think of the joint / toy idea btw?

I thought Unity was packaged with a weird version of MonoDevelop

It does come with MonoDevelop, but I'm not sure if it can be used for modding in-game.

Hopefully you will follow through with this. I know you are able to stick to projects well, but I'm hoping this won't become another major blockland project that dies off into obscurity.

As long as people remain interested in the project it would really help motivate me to finish. If I can get a playable demo released soon, the project would really begin gaining traction.

That is a LOT better than the current colorset system we have actually.

It'll definitely provide a new experience when building / painting. Players will have to think about their builds in a new way when the color palettes they can choose from are nearly limitless.

do you plan on releasing a demo for this when the game is in a playable/user friendly state? i'm really eager to see where this goes lol

Yes certainly. I would like to have a single player Alpha demo released soon (rough guess would be in a few weeks, depending on any issues that come up). Then maybe release a multiplayer Beta later on. =)


Small Update: Everyone's suggestions so far have been added to the topic OP; let me know if I forgot to add anything. Also, removal of planted bricks is now implemented! The script for removing bricks from builds is automatically set up to remove multiple bricks at once, so I should be able to start on brick destruction tomorrow. I'll also start work on finalizing recoloring of planted bricks, repositioning planted bricks, UV brick rotation and brick snapping / errors soon.

174

Games / Re: Blockland-Inspired Project [New Video Posted! Pg.23 and O.P.]

« on: July 23, 2017, 09:41:26 PM »

I'd recommend that you create a kind of colorset (or find one on here that's p good) that you can implement so people don't get confused about the infinite amount of colors you have at your disposal

yeah keep what you have now but just add that in so that people don't have to spend 30 minutes trying to figure out a color

No, colorsets should be infinite, ingame, and nothing like Blockland's inconvenient system.
Keep the system as you made it, and optimize it, you're doing a fantastic job.

Also, the update video was amazing.

Thanks =) And someone recommended earlier to allow for setting color presets (which allow you to save and quickly access specific colors you like). Presets will be very similar to colorsets; you'll even be able to save and load preset packs, and share them others if you want.

And add 0-255 numbers to all those sliders
And let people paste hex codes

This and add in a HSV slider too
the hue being 0-359, saturation and darkness being 0-100

More color options will definitely be added in the near future. A color selection window can also be included.

175

Games / Re: Blockland-Inspired Project [New Video Posted! Pg.23 and O.P.]

« on: July 23, 2017, 02:00:14 PM »

What about the original blockhead? Are we not allowed to use it?

I can't use any Blockland assets in this project - even if it looks similar it could cause some problems. I'm sure it can always be modded back in though.

Super cool stuff so far, I hope to see this playable some day.

One of the biggest things I'd like is support for servers to be able to draw GUIs and other things on the client without having them download something. The add-on system in Blockland has amazing potential when it comes to modifying the game. But requiring/having a specific add-on just to play on a server it's not really a realistic expectation.

I also think voice chat would be cool to have (obviously with mute).

really liking the progress being made so far, that camera height seems a bit awkward though

I can adjust the camera height once I get to working on the avatar. And secure downloading of GUIs is a really good idea.

176

Games / Re: Blockland-Inspired Project

« on: July 23, 2017, 12:04:13 PM »

Don't know if this was mentioned yet, but separate/sister grid systems and some sort of distance curvature would really shine through.

Separate building grids is certainly possible and shouldn't be overly hard to add. Distance curvature would be interesting, maybe one of the maps could feature that.

if you ever do a patreon instead of this, please do not lock game builds away from non-patrons
that stuff loving annoys me

They restrict builds to only their patreons? I won't do that; I may restrict development builds only to those who are dedicated to testing and helping improve the game, but not based on those who fund me or anything like that. Later on in development, I may end up pursuing a Patreon page or crowd-funding.

Alright, before I start on character concepts, I need some feedback on how they should be done.

• What proportions should they have? (Cute or more serious?)
• Should they have floating body parts?
• Should they be close to how Blockheads look like?
• Should they be blocky or more Lego-like?
• Should they have joints? If so, where?
• How detailed should they be?

I just need these questions answered so that I head in the right direction. However, I can still do a few concepts before these are answered just so that I have some progress.

I will ask more questions in the future for other design decisions.

EDIT: I made some concepts.

Pretty cool =) I'm thinking they could be close to the Blockland minifig model, yet at the same time have their own identity somehow. The style I'm going for (so far) is like a cross between a Blockland avatar and a toy (with exaggerated joints - similar to how the main characters look in the Kingdom Hearts 3 trailer, when they became toys). They can still have a cute aesthetic to them, be flat-shaded and they don't need to be overly detailed. As a reference, Filipe's model is very close what what I have in mind:






Update: A new video has been uploaded! This video covers recent progress made in development, such as with different building modes and movement, brick painting, individual brick component coloring, recoloring planted bricks and conversion of brick-builds into physics objects you can interact with:



I'll also work on updating the O.P. with everyone's suggestions, reorganizing features planned to be included, and add new screenshots.

177

Games / Re: Blockland-Inspired Project

« on: July 22, 2017, 02:49:47 PM »

I think you should go to other building forums and get some ideas from there

that's if you want to make the game different from BL

It'll still be very similar to Blockland, just the theme / style would be slightly different.

Nice, I can see this superseding Blockland.

Any idea when some kind of Alpha release might be available? Do you accept donations?

Hard to say as of right now, there's still a lot of work to do. And sure, I can include a PayPal donation link in the OP if anyone wants to donate towards the project.


Btw, a development video (showing off recent progress) is underway, and should hopefully be posted by tonight or tomorrow at the lastest.

178

Games / Re: Blockland-Inspired Project (Minor Update - pg. 14)

« on: July 21, 2017, 11:38:27 PM »

EDIT: Also, I hate to be rude about this, but I feel that you should have developed this game further before revealing it. I'm worried this is going to die or end up being disappointing. :/

I really hope you succeed with creating this "blockland successor" game. There are so few games that allow for the level of creativity Blockland or even ROBLOX allows.

I understand the concern; I know there's been a lot of announced projects that were never finished for Blockland. However, I'm prepared to continue developing this game for as long as it takes until completion - I usually finish what I start. Plus, revealing it early allows the community to have input during the development process.

If you want some player model concepts, I can draw some variations just in case you haven't made a final decision.

That would be awesome. I haven't made any decisions yet; I'll decide on the final design later on, a long with the theme / style for the game.

Also, I really love what you're doing with this project so far. I think it has enough potential to be popular.

Hope you get far.

Thanks =)

Haven't read through the entire topic so I'm not sure if these have been brought up, but some nice things to see:

• World-based design as opposed to "saves". Gives a lot more continuity to maps, works well with a terrain generation system. Somewhat ripped from Minecraft, but it works very well for sandbox games. Loading/Saving maps could still work but I feel like it somewhat breaks immersion and shows a lot of barebone elements of how the game works.
• Chunk saving and dynamic loading. Blockland's octree is technically chunk based I suppose, but this is a much better design system overall optimizing rendering, netcode, and real-time saving.
• Asset based building. Being able to place pre-built multi-brick components. This is what I want to pursue in Blockland still, but support for something like this from the start would be amazing. Instead of downloading brick packs, you can download someone's "City Pack" and suddenly be able to place benchs, lamp posts, etc. as pre-constructed elements. It makes large builds much more attainable.
• Scratch-like eventing system. Eventing is important in Blockland but does have a bit of a learning curve to it. Making something more visual and similar to scratch has a much softer learning curve and you can do some neat stuff with it that is complicated with events, like inherit variable support, conditionals, loops, etc.

Great ideas; asset building is something I can look into, while still promoting building with bricks. I'll also look into scratch events.

179

Games / Re: Blockland-Inspired Project (Minor Update - pg. 14)

« on: July 21, 2017, 12:11:06 AM »

gsf i am sorry

Someone had to go there -_-

i cant :(

what about now?

That's actually really good

180

Games / Re: Blockland-Inspired Project (Minor Update - pg. 14)

« on: July 20, 2017, 08:27:12 PM »

Alright, I did a few changes on my character model.

Suggested by GSF, I added joints on the arms and legs to give it a more toy look, and it also gives more possibilities for animation.

UPDATE: Added shoulder joints so you can do this.

       

You mean this?

I like it, but something about the proportions are a little off to me - maybe the arms or the joints. What do y'all think of the original design Filipe made? I kinda prefer that one:

Question:  Expanding on my other post that talks about in-game editors for avatars and weapons, would it be a good idea to have an in-game editor for creating terrain maps on the fly?

An in-game editor for creating and editing terrain, maps, etc. is planned. I think it would be very useful, especially for content developers.

Hey Ghost, will you implement a way to build off of a 'universal' brick grid, perhaps implement child/parent grid system where you can build at a 45° degree angle, or even 21.56° if desired. I was thinking last night while I was on a server, and it would be interesting if I could create let's say a static train that has a wagon attached in the back, but it's tilted slightly on the vertical z-axis, giving it a natural lego equivalent of contrapposto, lol.

Here's a free of charge visual:

As of right now it would be very easy to have separate brick grids that can be rotated at 45°, etc. As the brick system progresses and gets more complex however, it may need to be removed. But, it can at least be added for now, especially to test the idea.

Alright, so I drew up my ideas for what the avatar should look like. I took inspiration from both the regular Blockhead avatar from BL, which has at least nine customizable parts, and the new R15 avatar from ROBLOX with at least 15.



The final design is boxed at the bottom right.

I took a lot of cues from Trogtor's avatar idea because it looked so clean-cut and cute. I didn't agree with full arms though; they just seemed awkward. So instead, I looked to the R15 avatar and to the BL avatar and I combined them into an arm with floating parts, like the BL avatar but with another small part in between to signify arms. I did the same with the legs. This means that you can differentiate between jackets, t-shirts, jeans, and shorts without the arms and legs seeming stiff and stocky.

People were complaining that the stud on Trog's model was awkward, so I flattened it out. I also took inspiration from the shape of Trog's torso, combined with the anatomy of R15's torso, and combined it into a torso with upper and lower parts. These can't move independently from one another; that'd look weird. Instead, the torso twists at the waist, which is something else I took from Trog's design. Instead of a single piece like with Trog's, as I said earlier, I separated it into three parts; the foot, the leg, and the asscheek.

I also threw around some ideas about customization anatomy-wise. Because of the two-part torso, you could basically make it so that your character has a BMI. I also thought of an idea utilized for at least some time by ROBLOX where you could customize the shape of your head. And I couldn't finish the design of the character off without making some Blocko feet.

After I finished with the design of the avatar, I threw around some ideas on studs for the game. That came out pretty "bleh" though so you can just ignore that. The avatar design is subject to any changes people want to make.

Great, but perhaps not too much like Roblox lol. And yeah, I do need to change the brick textures eventually.