nerdkingdomofficial

[nerdkingdomofficial]

Dev Blog #49: Pathfinding Tech

Hey all! This is Northman from Nerd Kingdom here to share some AI bytes with you. Specifically I’d like to talk about Pathfinding and how it relates to TUG and our characters.

Pathfinding is the act of finding the best path between two points in the world. The key word there is “best”. The definition of best depends on the type of game you are making and the type of character you are trying to find a path for. I think a small thought experiment helps to clarify the set of problems pathfinding tries to solve:

Imagine a mountain goat and a human facing a mountain that extends as far to their left and right as their eyes can see. Directly in front of them is a door. On the door is a sign that reads: “Tunnel to the Other Side”. The human does not have any climbing gear and the mountain is far too steep to for the human to scale it without proper equipment. If both the human and the goat want to get to the other side of the mountain what do they do? The goat does not have hands to open doors nor the ability to read. However, the goat is a sure-footed climber and does not have any problem scaling the mountain so it goes on its goaty way over the top of the mountain. Conversely, the human does have hands and can read so they take the tunnel. The path the goat and the human found are both the best path they can muster by their definition of best even if they are both very different.

By Darklich14 (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)],  via Wikimedia Commons

*Insert funny remark about goats here.*

“Ropes? We don’t  need no stinkin’ ropes!”

So now that we have defined Pathfinding and talked about what “best” means we can look at what tools we have for finding paths. Most pathfinding techniques break up the world into spatial subsections (nodes) and store information about how those nodes are connected (edges). In Computer Science we call a set of nodes and edges a “graph”. Graphs are cool because they have been studied by mathematicians since the 18th century (check out the Seven Bridges of Königsberg). What this means to us is there are well known techniques, also known as algorithms, for dealing with graphs and finding best paths on them (see Pathfinding on Wikipedia). One of the most common algorithms used in games for pathfinding is A*. I won’t get into the details of A* in this post because it gets technical very quickly but the image below provides a good visual representation of a typical A* search.

By Subh83  (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via  Wikimedia Commons

An  illustration of an A* search. The initial red node indicates the starting position and the green node indicates the goal position. The gray polygon represents  an obstacle. The goal is to find the shortest distance path from the starting  node to the goal node while avoiding the obstacle.The path found is highlighted in green at the end of the animation.

We are currently exploring algorithms and graph representations for our world in TUG but so far we have implemented a navigational grid. In graph terms the grid is made up of nodes that all represent the same amount of space (one square meter) and each node has edges to its immediate neighboring nodes (grid cells): top left, top, top right, right, bottom right, bottom, bottom left, and left. These cells can be blocked by obstacles (shown in the image below in red) or open (shown in the image below in blue). This allows us to run A* searches to find best paths for our characters that avoid obstacles.

Blue Cells:  Areas a character can navigate in.

Red Cells:  Areas blocked by an object.

I hope you have enjoyed this introduction to pathfinding. Pathfinding is a large topic with many different techniques available depending on the pathfinding problem at hand. If you have any questions please feel free to email me at “northman at nerdkingdom dot com”. We are working hard to refine our pathfinding approaches for our characters and look forward to sharing more with you soon!

Have a great weekend!

[nerdkingdomofficial]

Progress Update - 3/31/2017

Hey everyone! I hope everyone is having splendid week.

We are still hammering away on the engine and tools so there are not many visuals to show yet. However, we do want to keep you all updated with more goods so I will be sharing videos from our tech demo Fridays. Until then, here are a few WIP shots of some of our new tools.

[Biome Tool Graph]

[Animweb Graph]

[Biome Generated #1]

[Biome Generated #2]

[Early rough video of our floating island with sample of edges]

[8 blend target]

In a previous blog, we answered many of the planning and lore questions from the community. Today, we’ll focus on the TUGv2 and engine remake questions.

TUGv2

Can you give an overview of the new TUG in a couple of short paragraphs, as if to new potential customers? What's the "elevator pitch" description of the game?

The game takes place in procedurally generated worlds filled with floating islands that are enriched with resources, populated with diverse cultures and held together by a deeply rooted narrative.

Players slowly discover the beginnings of their universe through interactions and relationships developed within the game as well as uncovering the history of their own purpose for being.

Through a series of relationships and a string of choices our players determine their friends, their enemies and their eventual place with their creators.

With regards to features:

Will we see any of the Kickstarter stretch goals being developed?

Yes, without question, however timing is subject to the most impact it will have in early development for the community to experience.

It’s been mentioned that manipulation of voxels in v2 will differ from that of v1? How much so, and what will the new system be like?

Voxel manipulation will be available in our creative mode. During gameplay the focus shifts more to surviving within the world and building up a home world using prefab objects. Though, this may change to be more robust, once we have fully developed the game, and advanced some concepts of usability. Still, this is largely TBD

What other features are likely to change from v1 (crafting, combat, building etc.)?

Generally speaking, each feature has undergone revisions to create a more simplified / optimized approach to how they worked and to improve the user experience. We have done our best to keep the player in the game and not in the menus.

What are the initial focuses of TUGs use of AI?

AI plays a vital role in the experience players will have. Our focus on AI is one that feels alive with respect to how creatures behave in the wild, how companions seek to help the player as they build their worlds, and how enemies respond to our actions during combat. At each interaction we a setting a goal that keeps the player immersed in the world and the event that they are a part of.

Are there any features which investors have decided on?

Investors have played a supportive role in our goals and vision. They have allowed us the freedom to design and develop the game based on our recommendation for what works best for the world of TUG.

How much input will the community get on new and current features? How will Nerd Kingdom receive this input?

TBD, we will be leveraging a lot of contribution from the community from our exposed tools, as a medium to allow us to understand real insights from play, and reward those that assist in experimentation. This is a large motivational factor in why we have been pushing harder on ease of use for tools, and platform.

With regards to modding:

Can we add more complicated custom models to build with, e.g., a statue/non-voxel based?

You will have the ability to add custom models of all shapes and sizes. Though to work best with the game there will be a list of guidelines for those that want to add their own custom content.

This Update showed off lots of what NK has been working on over the last year; is there anything you’d like to give an extra highlight or detail on?

As excited as we are about the game we’re building on top of a great set of technologies, we are super excited about being able to develop the tools and pipeline that will empower our users with the ability to quickly and easily mod everything that we do.

Are there any plans to help push community driven development?

Along with the tools to support and broaden community development we also have in the works a platform that simplifies and organizes everything for a community to be built around.

Are weekly or monthly builds planned? (like minecraft snapshots)

TBD

Will there be documentation/tutorials/guidance for new players, or will that mostly be left to player-made tutorials/wikis?

We have planned out to support players with

 In game tutorials

We have planned out to support developers with

Documentation

Tutorials (written/video)

The Engine Remake

“There is a lot to be said about what the engine does, and can do, but i’ll let Josh speak more to that in an update early next year” 

When is early next year?

TBD

Could you please get into specifics i.e. how the engine handles voxels, networking, memory management, mesh and collision mesh construction etc.

 TBD, can be addressed with engine writeup

If possible some statistics on before and after measures.

TBD, can share this information with sentiment of community in a write-up on our data and research, with a post-mortem on what we have learned, and will be applying as we develop the game further.

At a time when updates were starting to become a regular thing (0.8.9), a decision was made to remake the engine. Why?

During development of TUG we reached a point where there were several opportunities to create a new game engine which could be supported by a full suite of tools for modding and game development. Recognizing the scope of our plans for providing a platform for players and creators we took the chance and are now beginning to use the tools and tech that drove us to depart from the old and get started with the new. It was a big decision then and one that will continue to be what supports all of our adventures moving forward.

With regards to hardware specs:

What are the expected hardware requirements of TUG at release?

TBD, actively testing and working towards lowest specs possible, but as we have stated for years, it’s a balancing act

What are the new capabilities of the engine, that the old one could not do?

TBD, but can offer a write-up from tech team in an upcoming update with some samples of work, and capabilities.

 How easy will it be to modify the engine going forwards, both from a developer and a modders perspective?

TBD, with recent implementations of the development pipeline, we have made modding and development significantly faster. Which impacts our ability to create content, and the ability of others within the community.

Have a great weekend!

@Cambo

[nerdkingdomofficial]

Dev Blog #48: Devotus Tech Update

Happy Friday! Cambo here to kick the weekend off by bringing back the dev tech blogs. We plan to keep them coming at least once a month as we make more progress on development. In regards to the Q&A, most of them are answered and I’ll be sure to post it in our next update blog. For now, here’s our infrastructure dude, Maylyon!

Hey everybody! Maylyon here with a new non-game related, non-engine related, non-tools related tech blog!  Hint: this is your tune-out point if those are the topics you are looking for.  3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .  Still here? Excellent!

After literally years of silence about Devotus, I wanted to follow-up with a snapshot of where Devotus is today. If your memory is a little rusty, Devotus will be our mod content distribution pipeline to help mod authors create and manage their home-brewed content and deliver it to end-users.  To get context for this blog entry, you should definitely read those first two blogs.  Without further ado, the "what has been happening?" (aka: "you guys still work on that thing?").

ModJam 2016 ARMAGEDDON!

In case you didn't know, there were mods on Devotus's developmental servers from a TUG v1 ModJam in early 2016.  Don't go rushing to find them now; they're gone.  They were sacrificed to the binary gods in order to make way for…

Going "Serverless"

Suspend your understanding that the term "serverless" is a lie because there are always servers somewhere and play along for a bit.  The old Devotus architecture was built on AWS EBS-backed EC2 instances running a mix of Node.js, C++, and MongoDB.  It looked a little bit like this:

The primary detriments to this approach were:

1.    Paying for these servers (even extremely small servers) when nobody was using them,

2.    Scalability at each layer of the stack would incur even more financial cost and contribute to…

3.    Complexity of the implementation.

 Leveraging AWS API Gateway and AWS Lambda, we have moved to an architecture that looks like:

Moving to this setup allows us to:

1.    Greatly reduce the costs associated with Devotus (especially when nobody is using it),

2.    Offload most of the scalability problem to AWS (less work = more naps),

3.    Synergize our implementation with the other microservices we have been developing on the Infrastructure team.

Support for GitLab

Devotus now allows mod authors to create git repositories on GitLab in addition to GitHub.  It's actually been there for a while but wasn't there in the last blog I wrote. By supporting GitLab and their awesome pricing model, Devotus allows a mod author to choose whether they want their mod's git repository to be public or private at mod creation time.  This choice does not apply to mod's created on GitHub because their pricing model is less awesome (but still pretty awesome) and I'm cheap (see previous section for proof).

Improved Download Metrics

In the "bad old" days (read as "a month ago"), mod download count was just an unsigned integer.  Download request comes in, number gets incremented by one.  Commence spamming download of your own mod to falsely inflate its popularity!  Everybody wins!  . . . Except for the people who want to use the system.

Now, in the "brave new world" days, mod downloads are tracked per-user, per-version.  This allows mod authors to track their mod's popularity throughout its release history and allows end-users to trust that a mod's popularity is probably because of an amazing mod author rather than a mod author's amazing spam-bot.

The Future Is…?

That's all I have for this installment.  I (or somebody from my team) will be back with future Infrastructure updates as we get new and/or exciting things to share.  In the meantime, be sure to jot down all those cool mod ideas you have kicking around in your brain into a little leather-bound notebook so that WHEN TUG v2 is launched and WHEN Devotus is client-facing, you will be ready!

Have a great weekend!

[nerdkingdomofficial]

Progress Update - 3/3/2017

Hey everybody! Cambo here and Happy Friday!

I’ll go ahead and update everyone since Ino is lost in the world of Zelda today. The team has been very busy the past month working on our engine tools and gameplay features, and core experiences. I will personally be working on having more frequent blog posts, dev updates, and videos when they are available. I am aiming for at least twice a month and video snippets from our demo Fridays. Importantly, I hope to shift our blog posts to our website in the future.

In the last blog, we mentioned that we would take note of the QA document that was compiled from the community. I got to work and nagged the team leads to answer them, nagging is what I do best. You can find the questions here. Thanks for organizing and bringing this to our attention @Rawr! The leads answered most of the questions but we will wrap up the rest over the next couple blog posts as we have more concrete answers. Get ready for the wall of text!

Planning

Could we please have a roadmap? I.e.:

Lists of features you’re working towards

We are currently working towards a dynamic list of features to support an exciting experience with our sandbox adventure style game. A general list of features would include:

Building, Resource Gathering, Crafting, Combat / Weapons, Multiplayer, Natural AI, Companions, Large Multi Biome Worlds, Portals, Questing

Up and coming dev milestones.

By mid-June we expect to have our “vertical slice” as our core gameplay experience is due to submit to our team and investors.

Dates we can expect to hear from you guys (which can literally be an announcement of an announcement)

Mid-June will be our next big announcement. We are stepping up our interaction with the community over the next four months with developer blogs and videos twice a month to showcase progress and let you guys see all the fun stuff that we are all excited about!

When should we be hearing about the “plan for coms”.

You just heard about them in the last question. =)

2 x a month with developer blogs and videos

With regards to the roadmap:

What features are expected to be in the alpha? When will it be released?

Our focus for alpha is a strong compulsive game loop built around our core features to explore, collect, create and engage in combat all within a multiplayer experience. 

What features are expected to be in the beta? When will it be released?

As we progress to beta we will deepen and broaden our core features as well as add support for questing, portals and logic.

What features are you aiming for with full release? When?

Creating a robust feature set that supports an adventure sandbox game would not be complete without beginning to delve into the lore that brings our world to life. We will have a write-up from gameplay and design by the end of next month on what to expect.

Will OSX/Linux usability be part of that release?

Unlikely. The core parts of the engine that make it Windows-specific have been abstracted behind layers which will allow us to more easily approach OSX and Linux, and supporting OpenGL also moves us towards that goal. Unfortunately, as with many things in development, you cannot be 100% confident in anything unless you can see it working. We do not actively test on OSX or Linux.

When will people start getting access to v2? Does anyone outside of NK have access already? 

A select group of testers will be using the software during development to assist with bugs and feedback. Please note, this is not an early access release, this is a development release. We are looking forward to getting the software ready for our early access users and as we get closer to being able to provide information on a time frame you all will be the first to know.

Will you need to sign up for the Alpha?

Over the next few months we will be better positioned to start putting a date to when we can expect to have a closed release to the public. Our team is excited to bring people on board for the experience and just as soon as we can, we’ll let everyone know. 

You mentioned “Playtest Fridays” on your youtube a few years back; do you still plan to do something like this?

As we move closer to our Alpha we can get back to our playtest Fridays. In the interim, we have demo day Fridays where developers have the opportunity to showcase their work to the team. These works will make their way to the community in the coming weeks and months and give you all a better insight to what we are currently working on.

Lore

How much has the core lore/story concept changed since the kickstarter? 

Not significantly at all, in fact, we actively keep towards the framework of lore when defining design and various aspects of gameplay.

Are the entities (gods?) from this post still part of the game/story?

There are still god like characters that the player will learn about and we’ll write more about them in a future post.

Why was the gem removed from seed’s hands?

As the lore has changed the reasons for removing the gem were necessary. More to be revealed at a later date.

Is Tuggles still going to be used?

Not likely. 

Radial Menu UI prototype

Have a great weekend and don’t forget to follow the leads!

-Cambo

Engine Programmer Lead @JoshuaBrookover

Gameplay Lead @Scriptslol

[nerdkingdomofficial]

Progress Update - 2/10/2017

Ahoy!

Our adventure into gameplay prototyping has begun, with big steps towards making our development environment much more seamless and flexible. The benefits to having a small team of brilliant minds, is that we are constantly forced to looking at ways to make our lives, and the lives of our users, easier. We have to find ways of making things accessible, faster, and easier to understand, and while that can take more time than just smashing a system into an engine, the results are exponential, and keep everyone excited.

In the coming weeks, we will continue to take note of the QA document the community has been compiling, and aligning our internal leads to address them as appropriate. Without question, it will result in more and more questions, so we are discussing how best to address this. We get a lot of live feedback from everyone involved in our discord channel, and please know it's invaluable

As an update on our investor presentation, it went fantastic. Everyone is pleased, and excited about our progress. It's always been a chore, to focus on the idea that we ARE making a game, but not understanding how important all of the technology and tools are, in being sure we can make it, and the community everything it has the potential to be. The investors, and many new opportunities, are seeing what is now being accomplished and it's very exciting.

The members of the community that have been messing about with our current build of the engine, has been leading into a lot of interesting discussion, and strong insights into our approach. Much of the thinking has made it clear we are on the right track, which is an empowering sentiment when working on something this ambitious.

On that note, we will be clearing out mods from devotus from previous mod jams, to start prepping to get another version of the engine out in the coming months to a larger community, and start our own mod jams as a studio, with members of the community, to start focussing on more aspects of process and communication. Its understood that no dates creates a lot of frustration, but we have to put stability first, especially since we know there are a lot of high expectations, and locking down hard dates right now, have the potential to set everyone up for failure.

The QA will be a smart step forward, get everyone on the same page about what is happening, shed some light into general milestones, features, mythos, etc. And from all the pieces missing in the QA, we will have an opportunity to define the angles that we need to work to communicate better.

As always, thank you for all the support, your near endless patience, and confidence in what we are doing. Not one decision gets made for us, that doesn't have us asking “what would the community think”, or “how would our community use this”. And this thinking is producing some really neat solutions, that are exciting enough to keep us working hard.

Expect another update from us in a couple of weeks, as next week is a big rush for us on dev goals, where we can lock down a schedule for the QA session, share some video, and get out some general milestones and feature lists for our first public release of TUGv2.

-@Ino

Procedural Maze Generation

TUG Discord Channel

Nerd Kingdom Forums

TUG Twitter

[nerdkingdomofficial]

Progress Update - 1/13/2017

Ahoy! Just wanted to give you guys a quick update on what has been going on this month, and some things to expect coming into next month.

We have a big investor milestone meeting coming up on the 19th, and all of our time has been focussed on getting all the systems we shared with you, via youtube, stable and clean. Of course, those systems are not fully fleshed out game features just yet, but it's a strong foundation built on the engine that is allowing us to expand out on things with gusto.

Into the coming months, we will be focussing on what is defined as a “minimally viable product”, that is to say, “what does this game experience feel like, with polish, for a short play session”. So while it may not be perfectly balanced, we need to demonstrate polished animations, some competency with enemy AI, and strong visuals (particle effects, graphics, etc). This also means a grasp on what the actual UX is in a 3d space, which revolves around the process a person gets from a keystroke, or series of keystroke, from a selection to an action.

Working through these things over the next few months gives us an opportunity to start being more open, again, with some of our thinking, and intentions, with design. While we do not expect EVERYONE to approve of all our choices, the product is too early on to allow for any design by committee. We will be responsible for creating the foundation of what the experience is, and leave opportunities for systems to be modified and expanded upon. And this is much of the reason we are so focussed on tools and our own development pipeline. The more clean and streamlined that is, the easier it would be for any of you to do, as well.

Some of you in the community have brought up the possibility of a QA, and that is a pretty solid idea. We love getting a chance to talk to all of you, and answer questions. If nothing else, we can always say that we pride ourselves on transparency, even on topics that are taboo and perpetuate chaos and confusion… (web based cookie clicker FTP clone, anyone?) But first, we are gonna get the current build into the hands of a few of you, and have some footing to get both technical, and experience driven question from all of you. So expect us to start taking in questions in a couple weeks time.

That is pretty much it for the time being, but if you have any questions, you are always able to reach out to any of us, and you will hear back from us.

*high five*

ino

@inoritewtf

[nerdkingdomofficial]

TUGv2 Progress Update

Ahoy! 

After a long period of development with TUGv2, under the new engine, internally dubbed “eternus”, we are proud to share the progress we have made so far. Please do keep in mind, that we are building everything from the ground up on our own, to facilitate a lot of unique future goals, so not all systems have been complete. In order to hit our goals for this month, we had to be sure we focussed on systems that made the most sense, to share something today. So be aware that what you see is incomplete, the systems are not final, and we still have a long way to go until it's “complete” and polished. 

As for advancements: 

Art: we have FINALLY been able to define visual consistency to work hand in hand with graphics development. And while we are still lacking some general systems like Particle Effects, and proper animation support, to facilitate polish, the general look of the game has really started to define itself. 

Technology: Our team is broken into 3.5 major technology groups internally. Core engine has pushed forward our eternus engine, and lowered the bar to entry for hardware requirements, how much that bar has dropped, is still subject to some negotiation with art and design, but it's still at least lower than the Dx11 spec as it stands. There is a lot to be said about what the engine does, and can do, but i'll let Josh speak more to that in an update early next year. 

The tools team is a massive change for us from the first iteration of the engine with TUGv1. Not only do they create tools that allow for our own team to develop content faster, but also allow for modders to change parameters within the game with relative ease, and even develop their own tools from an extensible framework. This is also another topic to expect being spoken of early next year. 

On infrastructure, the ability to create accounts, upload and distribute mods, and be able to house a growing community of players and creators, we have come a long way. While I KNOW Nathan is going to love digging deep into share the emotional themes behind proper documentation and planning of systems, we will be sure he tones it down so as to not over excite himself (does sarcasm read well in blog form?) 

And about half of the gameplay team is building systems that sit somewhere between gameplay, and core engine team. Little bits that give the game a great quality of life, that people may not fully get the implications of, until it's revealed to them. Stuff like persistence of “simulated” data (what happens when off screen”, logic and power stuff, and even object datas and interactions. 

On design and the other half of gameplay, it's been all about making sure tools, and engine are supported so we can accomplish various goals. For now, lots of SYSTEMS are working, and we now have a chance to play and iterate to make the game “fun”. Lots of work still goes into narrative and mythos consistency, defining the “laws of nature” within the world, and the general approach to learning of complex systems is also a thing, but at this point it comes with a great deal more focus. 

On the topic of communication, both recent, and going forward, I accept full personal responsibility for how things have been handled to date. The process of game development, and more so, software development, is a difficult enough thing to maintain internally as a group, and a great deal more consideration should have been taken from migration of our v1 to v2 work. We will ALSO communicate the plan for coms moving forward, early next year, so you know what to expect, and we can be held accountable to it. 

While we have been active and responsive to community on various channels (Discord chat, email, NK forums), we have neglected a few outlets for various reasons. However regret does come from lack of communication on our Kickstarter page. It was not considered a community to this point, simply a blog outlet channel, one of MANY, and no proper path was given to alter that outlets means of connecting with the project. This mistake, across a slew of others, were opportunities for us to learn and set a plan of action for communication into the new year. We have a lot of progress to share from this point forward, which will be more consistent. 

As for “when the game is going out” to the community, some of you guys are going to be getting it sent to you soon, hopefully by end of week. HOWEVER, it's not going to everyone, just yet. The first hands on have to be with some of the developers we have in the community, to help us catch some bits, so we can do a better job on supporting our own developers getting the game done. We will roll out launches to various groups within the community, and likely put out some kind of sign up in the next couple of months, to start phasing people in. On the note of “our future”, we have determined that “paid mods” is not the right thing to do, if for nothing else cultural reasons. However, this doesn't mean that modders will not be rewarded or compensated, it just means it will be coming from NK. The actual final cost of the game, is a bit up in the air, though do know that we are leaning AWAY from the idea of FTP. 

Expect us to make more mistakes moving forward, it's a process of our getting better, if nothing else, we can at least promise to be transparent with everything (no matter how taboo), and hold ourselves accountable for the decisions we make, and learn from them swiftly.  (no, nobody is paying a penny more for V2 of tug)

xoxo, ino, who still lives in his car.

[nerdkingdomofficial]

Discussion Update - 2/8/2016

Hey all, it seems that lots of people are taking bits and pieces of information from different places, so here is a breakdown of something with specifics, so there is not any hearsay involved. Please note, we will update this list as discussions advance a bit further as well.

strongly considering giving TUG away for free, but don't know what that looks like yet

monetization for TUG is all about aesthetic, not gated content

design and experience are not changing with this consideration

game is playable offline and moddable, so not really something that allows for us to gate or control content, since you could just mod around it

discussion is needed with community over next year to figure it out.

focus on getting into as many hands as possible, both dev and player

mod monetization/support

important to give modders a way to earn living from amazing work

quality control is first priority, not everyone can just monetize (skyrim fiasco)

empowering amazing modders = more amazing mods and support

(thoughts) would need to be proven modder, and proven content

(thoughts) near professional level quality to be considered

how it works unclear, community dialog needed, a year till decision, at least

doesn't mean people are paying for every mod

NK interested in licensing mods that make TUG better as an experience

monetized mods perhaps optional with some aesthetic reward

no updates to DX11 TUG, but new engine getting done fast important because...

DX11 is limiting who can play

OpenGL will be able to reach a great deal more gens of hardware and paves the way for Mac and Linux in the future

comes with better performance across the board

comes with “new” art style and awesome graphics improvements

comes with improvements to dev environment (faster content, better mods)

powerful behavior and analytics tools available to all players and modders

powerful distribution system to share and distribute work

new modding platform with real time debugging

new tooling platform with direct engine integration

We will share details of these things over the course of our development, and we are only a few months away from being able to show progress, which we will do as regularly as possible.

[nerdkingdomofficial]

Monthly Dev Wrap-Up For September

Hey Everyone!

It’s Cambo again! Since the last update we have been continuing our focus on engine tech planning and settling into our new office. We were hoping to release a patch in September, but that quickly changed as we got settled into our new office.  Let’s just say our devs are not fans of assembling furniture.

What else did we get done in September?

We’ve almost completed a large overhaul of the pick up and looting systems. Many of you have requested that we separate the controls for looting and other actions, so the pick up command is now a separate key press. We’ve also made some distinctions on how placed objects and lootable resources are handled to minimize accidentally picking up crafting stations and decorations. We’ll post more details on these changes during the patch notes.

The Crafting Journal will be available in game for those that choose to use it. It logs recipes as you discover them.

For all those people with extra junk laying around you wish you could get rid of, we’re introducing a Void Basket soon that will destroy items you throw in it. Hooray for magic trash cans!

The world has gotten a little more dangerous as some plants have started developing defensive mechanisms.

There are more improvements and tweaks, but we’ll save that full list for the patch notes. We’re looking forward to seeing your feedback once you see these changes live!

The NK family is growing and our newest member is Benjamin. Welcome to the team @5ubtlety!

We are always looking for talented developers to join us, please check out our career page here or send a tweet to our CTO @CoreyClarkPhD

- Cambo out!

[nerdkingdomofficial]

Dev Blog #47: Devotus Tech Part #2

Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No! It’s a flying dessert?

Hey folks! Time for another new face: Flying3.14 is the name, full stack is the game. I wandered in a few months ago and have been banging on things behind the scenes; recently, I’ve been  focusing on the user experience of the new modding system that Maylon introduced us to last blog, Devotus.

Access to this new mod system comes in two parts: a web portal and the game launcher. This blog will be focusing on the development of the web portal which will facilitate mod creation, versioning, and multi-author management. We’ll go over how to create a mod with Devotus, upload the source to GitHub, how to tag that code as your first version, and download the mod for the first time!

To create a mod, users must have both a Nerd Kingdom and GitHub account. After providing some basic information about the mod, the front end sends the create request while the user is free to browse the rest of the portal. On the backend, Devotus is busy creating the GitHub repo and preparing the customizable marking page. After a few moments the mod is created, a push notification is sent to the user and the new mod is available from the My Mods page.

All mods are created with an empty git repository, just waiting for awesome code. To add source to your project you’ll need to clone the repo and commit as usual. If you are new to git or GitHub, here is a resource to get you started. Helpful links such as the mod’s GitHub page can be found on the Management page. Here you can edit the basic info entered earlier, add authors, add dependencies, add media, and publish updates.

As explained in the last blog, one of the common problems we wanted to solve was mods with multiple authors. The Authors tab within the Management page allows you to add multiple authors, and Devotus will do the footwork to make sure GitHub knows who can access the repository.

Once everyone is on board and pushed their code, the Versioning tab will help you tag your release. Updates are made simply by creating a tag on any commit in the master branch. You can do this by visiting the GitHub Tags & Releases page via a link located in the Versioning tab. The tag must be formatted like so: vX.X.X-release. In most cases Devotus will be listening for these tags and will automatically start building the new download package in the background. In the event a manual check of the tags needs to be made, a link is provided in the Versioning tab.

Once Devotus is finished creating the download package, the status in the Management portal will update, and a ‘Test Download’ link will be available. Wa-lah! A single .zip package that contains your mod! Soon the Launcher will be collecting these, installing and managing the updates automagically!

Each mod comes with a marketing page that can be customized using the Nerd Kingdom Page Editor.  Share this page with players and followers on social media to give a detailed insight into what your mod provides. This tool is found on the Management page and runs off the same media and information provided throughout the portal. Change the look and feel through the theme menu, and add images or YouTube videos in the media manager. Entire new sections can be added containing multiple types of content including lists and tabs, allowing you to fully explain the features and usage of your mod. We believe by providing modders with an easily customizable interface to reach players, each mod’s presence can be a little larger than the typical profile page on a mod management service. To try out the Nerd Kingdom Page Editor head over to the ExampleMod page where you can fiddle to your heart’s desire.

The frontend is still a work in progress, but it demonstrates the direction modding is heading, and we are excited about all the opportunities that brings.

[nerdkingdomofficial]

Dev Blog #46: Devotus Tech Part #1

 Everybody! 

Maylyon here with a new blog!  If you just rushed to your “Nerd Kingdom Trading Cards” deck and didn’t find me there, don’t fret; I joined the Kingdom in March and have been quietly working behind the scenes as the Lead Infrastructure Developer.  (On a side note, if those cards don’t exist, we should change that . . . .)

One of the things that has impressed me the most since joining the company is the perseverance of the modding community.  You guys have such amazing ideas for ways to enhance or improve the gameplay of TUG, but the journey from “concept” to “deployment” seems fraught with needless perils:

How can we have multiple collaborators working on the same mod?

How can we manage changes to the mod over time?

How can users report issues with the mod in a coherent and cohesive fashion?

How can we deploy mods to the end users?

How can we trust those end users to know:

How to install the mod for use?

How to update the mod when it changes?

How to not blame the author when Nerd Kingdom changes the Eternus API?

The last may be a lost cause, but the answer to most of the other questions right now seems to be “the forums”.  The forums are a great tool for fostering discussion in the community, but they seem like a less-than-ideal fit for the challenges that face a modder.  Towards that end, we are actively working on Devotus!

Devotus will be a mod content distribution pipeline that facilitates the creation and deployment of mod content by the mod authors for the end users.  With Devotus, we hope to allow the modders to focus the majority of their efforts on creating amazing content that pushes the boundaries of what Eternus can handle and stop worrying about the nuts and bolts of deploying a mod.  The rest of this blog will focus on answering, “What does Devotus provide?”  The next tech blog will focus on answering, “How can I use Devotus to be awesome?”

The first step towards admitting that you have a modding problem is registering your mod with Devotus.  When a mod is registered, a blank git repository is created on GitHub; this will be the main home for the mod content that you create.  Utilizing a third party git repository site allows us to leverage a proven implementation without the development time and risks of building our own in-house solution.  Git repositories on GitHub should help mitigate frustrations 1 - 3 above:

Multiple authors can be added to the git repository to allow concurrent development efforts (more on the “how” in the next blog) -- or not.  You could be sole author on a mod and choose what forked changes you want to propagate upstream into your repository.

Git provides revision history so you can track changes over time (often read as: “know who to blame when things break”).

GitHub provides mechanisms for users to report issues with a repository, allowing mod authors to receive feedback and bug reports from the community.

I am definitely not providing a comprehensive feature set list of GitHub; if you want more information, hit up their website or contact me at maylyon@nerdkingdom.com and I’ll do my best to address your questions/concerns/loathing.  A few items to note here are:

Mod names must be unique within a target game domain in order to combat the chaotic nature of the universe.

Mod authors will need a GitHub account and a Nerd Kingdom account to register and manage mods.

Another feature of registering your mod with Devotus is the creation of a GitHub IO page.  This page is yours to brag about . . . er, explain . . . your mod to the community at large.  I’ll let the next blog cover the features that are being worked to enable you to create page content highlighting your epicness; I just wanted to provide a teaser to hopefully pique your interest and incentivize you to read the next blog . . . .

The second step towards admitting that you have a modding problem is publishing mod content for end user consumption.  When you tag your git repository with a release tag in the format “v<Major>.<Minor>.<Revision>-release” (e.g. “v1.1.2-release”), a GitHub webhook will push an update command to the Devotus server that will revise the mod information within Devotus and build a ZIP file of the mod repository contents.  The intent here is that you will perform a trivial action (tagging your repository) and Devotus will take care of the legwork necessary for that content to be available for download by the end users.

One hurdle of publishing mod content that Devotus attempts to mitigate is mod dependency resolution.  Mod authors can indicate that their mod depends on another mod, and Devotus will provide a single download package that contains all the files necessary to use the mod.  This feature could be used to develop content that depends on a utility mod (such as Johny’s “CommonLib”) or to develop a mod collection with a single-click installation ( “DaBoom” that contains all of UFIOES’s mods, including “Thermobarics”).  A limitation here is that the mod that satisfies the dependency must also be registered with Devotus.

The final step in admitting that you have a modding problem is sharing that problem with others!  Tech is planned to incorporate a Devotus browser into the Nerd Kingdom Launcher to mitigate frustrations 4 - 5b above:

Mods can be browsed, downloaded, installed, and managed by end users for use in-game.

Out of date mods can be identified before loading into a world and experiencing massive amounts of Lua errors!

This tech is the biggest piece of the ultimate goal:  getting a mod into the hands of users.

So that’s it for me rambling about Devotus and scratching the surface of what we are working towards.  @TheCamboRambo suggested that blog readers enjoy pictures.  The backend isn’t visually interesting, but I want to make the audience happy, so I’ll end with this:

In the meantime, check out the latest NK Cribs video from Josiah!

[nerdkingdomofficial]

Monthly Dev Wrap-Up For August

Greetings everyone!

It’s Cambo! There is a lot of exciting stuff happening and we’re looking forward to the future. But before we get into that, let’s talk about what we’ve been working on this month.

Launched Alpha 0.8.6 build

The crafting journal is almost done and we hope to have it out in the next update

The moa is now in it’s animation stage after rigging and model revisions

The hunting horn to help train pets is in the works

A void basket is in the works. A fancy trash can to throw away unwanted item.

Reworked our launcher and fixed some bugs that caused some slowdown

The new art style update is still on-going and will continue until we have our new engine update ready. You will start seeing new content using the new art style in our current engine as we will stop creating assets in our old art style soon.

We are constantly working on AI improvements and will be adding them to updates as we complete them.

Lots of balancing stuff

We’ve been expanding our team size and will be moving to a new studio space next week. Thanks to @brennanpriest42. As an added bonus, we’ll have more hiding spots during our nerf wars. That’s also a reasonable excuse for a larger studio right?

Tech and art style updates are still our current focus. As a result, you may have noticed the lack of work in progress videos. Don’t worry! They will be coming back more frequently once we meet our tech and art milestones. Better yet, the new office will have space for a dedicated live stream room.

September plan

The big move to our new studio and settle in

New build update

Planning and documentation for the new engine upgrades

We also want to welcome Jake, Tyson, and Michael to the NK family! Feel free to send them a tweet anytime!

We are hiring developers so please check out our career page here or send a tweet to our CTO @CoreyClarkPhD

Have a wonderful weekend!

-Cambo

[nerdkingdomofficial]

TUG Update Alpha 0.8.6 - 8/11/2015

Hello everyone, Nekochu here! 

We’ve got some new stuff: fixes to old stuff and some really bold stuff to be found in this update. First off, we’ve made some changes to how you can place objects in the world. This is really important to me as I want to focus our efforts on making the player experience a top priority going forward. Now when placing objects, you’ll be able to use the V key to turn on grid snapping, making it super easy to line up your objects.

We also have dyes in the game to make your own custom colored bricks. We have a Bear Ram and he is terrifying! We also have a basket to collect your fruit from your gardens for you! There’s much, much more so check the patch notes for all the new things!

You’ll also find a lot of changes to recipe times and the method to crafting certain items. Check out the changes to the cage trap, you can now capture other players! We’ve been making some tweaks to the AI to help them with pathfinding and avoidance. This is all leading up to big future improvements for the AI in the game. Oh did I mention the pets can now guard your camp and protect you in battle? No? Well they do and it is awesome! Unfortunately, due to the nature of some of the changes we’ve made, previous game saves will not load up with the new update. As always, follow us twitter@nerdkingdom to keep up with our progress and announcements. Also, make sure to let us know if you run into any bugs or other issues, and if you have trouble running the game, check out our Steam forums for more details. Our lead coder does lots of live streaming so follow him twitter@camfergusondfw And if you have any game questions, give me a shout twitter@x_nekochu_x If you want to know when indev and release builds arrive, follow twitter@theuntiltledgame

Patch 0.8.6 Save Version bump

New Features

Glow maps on terrain

Helmets are now equippable

The bronze necklace is equippable

The woven basket is a new container that will automatically gather edible fruit within a small radius of itself

Z placement now ignores collision for placement allowing a greater freedom of placement in Survival Mode

Z placement can now be toggled to snap to the grid for placement. The default key for this toggle is ‘v’.

Snapped grid placement will also apply to Creative object placement tools

Mother Bear Ram has arrived and she is not pleased that people have been hunting its cubs

Dyes can now be crafted.

Dye can be combined with clay to make a colored clay brick voxel. Some dyes can also be mixed with cobblestone.

Bamboo trees drop bamboo voxels

Creatures can now be placed in Creative Mode

Improvements/Changes

Can copy/paste into and out of the main menu text fields

Clients should be able to pick up and interact with things with better consistency with normal lag conditions

Rebalanced stats of all tools and weapons

Added in more variety to existing resources

Vine bearing fruit now detaches fully grown fruit

Mushroom hands are plantable

Many recipes have been rebalanced

Adjusted craft times for all items

Rebalanced many transmutation recipes requirements and output

Repair recipes now restore a smaller portion of durability

The requirements to craft the Artisan Workbench have been lowered to only require a Crude Hammer

Bronze tools and weapons now require an Artisan Workbench to be crafted

Bronze tier tool and weapon parts can now be crafted together in any combination of head and handle

The Cage Trap recipe now requires its components to be crafted individually

The Cage Trap will craft at the location of its floor component. The trap can no longer be picked up, but it must be broken down and recrafted.

Meat can now be cooked with torches

Projectiles now follow a more consistent path

Return Stones can now be used multiple times before it is used up

After using a Return Stone, players may hang in the air briefly before touching down to mitigate falling before the terrain generates underneath them

Creature AI has been expanded

Taming a pet now requires the player use a Vine Collar on a fully appeased kid/cub

If left alone for long enough, Guardian Pets set to stay will begin to slowly wander

Guardians now help defend their owner from threats. Cats attack aggressively and Goats attack defensively.

Guardian Goats now have a head butt attack

When attacked in any state, creatures will now defend themselves or flee

Wandering predators will eat their kills and other animal corpses

Goats will focus on consuming nearby fruit before targeting vines

When breeding, pets will create a nest for more visual feedback for the process

The Mushroom Man’s drop rate has been adjusted

Updated the sky with a more readable 2nd moon and other cosmic entities

Adjusted several player animations

Terrain optimization

More recipes added to convert blocks to more useful items as well as recipes to breakdown objects such as the rock heads that become too plentiful

Creatures can now be placed in creative mode

Fixes

Fixed normals on objects, characters, and terrain

Spears and potions should no longer reflect off of the throwing player’s collision

Damage states and warning sounds for tools and weapons

Creature collisions should be more accurately sized and be easier to hit and harvest

The collision capsule for the teen is more accurate

Goats no longer orbit trees

Goats and Cats now play their sitting animations

Growth potions cannot be used on something that is already under its effects

Fixed an instability caused by loading into multiple games within the same session of TUG

The Ctrl, Alt, and Shift keys should be bindable now as well as differentiated by their side i.e. LCtrl, RCtrl, LAlt, etc.

Modding Improvements

Fixed Modded keybind resetting after game restarts

Exposed NKGetCraftingArcheType, NKGetCategory, NKGetTier on GameObjectSchematic

Server side command registration using Eternus.GameState:RegisterSlashCommand

Exposed GetModdedPath on EntityFramework, used to get absolute path based on VFS

Exposed NKGetPath on ModScript

Added custom Strict Lib to DebugUtility

Added JSON parser to Core

Known Issues

Slingshot projectiles can still reflect off the throwing player’s collision

When Client players throw a spear, it briefly reorients itself to the hand. This is purely a visual bug.

The ‘|’ and ‘\’ key have been removed as a bindable key

Cannot bind key combinations together i.e. ctrl + e cannot be bound as an action

Some of the new bronze throwables will appear to be spears when z-placed

If you leave an area where a nest is, it is not producing offspring when you return. The workaround is to stay within the area until the baby is produced.

In Creative Mode, the first time you click into the Search bar will cause the inventory icons to shift/shrink slightly

In Creative Mode, you cannot place voxels as voxels when in the Survival Placement mode unless the voxel is in hand already when you switch to that placement.

In Creative Mode, the object representation of a voxel is appearing even when in voxel placement mode

When you destroy all the voxels in a cell, it will appear to destroy all objects in that cell as well. Reloading (or leaving the area and returning) will restore those objects.

When a player dies and respawn from a wisp, you can briefly see a flash of their character at the wisps last position before they appear at their spawn point.

You can use a Health Potion when at full health.

AI Creatures can wander off the edge of the world.

The wool shirt is clipping into the default leaf pants and gauntlet

[nerdkingdomofficial]

Monthly Dev Wrap-Up For July

Happy Friday everyone! Cambo here.

July is coming to an end and we have some good news and some not so good news. I’ll start with the good news. We are play testing for the next update and will release it in roughly one week. The not so good news is that we’ve upped the game saves again and your previous saves will not work with the new update. This is due to some necessary tweaks to our biome system. You can tweet your rage to @camfergusondfw

Here’s a quick breakdown on what you can expect in the Alpha 0.8.6 patch.

Placement snapping

Specialized Containers

Equippable Helmets

Adult bear ram

Pet system improvements

AI Improvements

Dyes can be crafted and combined with clay to make colored clay brick voxels

What else is in the works? The crafting journal is coming along but it will not make this update. Lots of engine tech and R&D involved. In addition, the art style update is still on-going and keeping our art team slammed. We are also in the process of moving to a new studio location soon too. A new battleground for nerf wars!

We are ramping up and hiring full-time game programmer positions in the Dallas area. 

More details here

If you missed it, check out the latest in the works for equippable helmets

Cheers! - Cambo

[nerdkingdomofficial]

Monthly Dev Wrap-Up For June

Greetings everyone!

I’ll keep this one short, promise! This is a week late but I really wanted to write a brief wrap-up for June. It was a busy month filled with nonstop play testing, bug fixes, and nerf wars. We launched Alpha 0.8.5 a few weeks ago but we didn’t stop there. We’re constantly on the grind at Nerd Kingdom, so what comes after an update for us?

After patch monitoring

While we extensively test our own patches in-house, after any release we make sure to monitor user activity to see if you all come across anything we didn’t. It’s fairly standard for game studios to keep an eye on bug reports and rage comments to make sure the patch went smoothly. This means we are ready to look into and do our best to fix any major reported bugs. We have been pretty good so far *knocks on wood*.

Planning

We revisit our existing plans after each patch cycle to see how (or if) we want to reprioritize any upcoming features or systems. After that, we break the work into sets of smaller goals that can generally be done in smaller internal milestones known as Sprints. No, this does not mean we are going to race around the office. Our public releases typically occur after 2-3 Sprints; this length can be longer or shorter depending on what we’re trying to get out (and what bugs we encounter).

What we are working right now

Here’s a nice little list for you. We will go over these in detail for our future blogs.

Crafting Journal

Adult Bear Ram

Equippable Helmets

More Modular Tools

Specialized Containers

Improvements to pet system

NK Launcher improvements (non-steam client)

Placement Snapping

Resource Variations

Super long term stuff

Lots of engine tech R&D

Art style update

We are committed to making TUG a unique and fun game for you. Give us some time and we will keep you updated as we move forward.

In the meantime, check out the latest “In The Works” episode.

-Cambo Out!

[nerdkingdomofficial]

TUG Update Alpha 0.8.5 - 6/23/2015

Ahoy! This is a big tech update we have going on, as it's the benchmark for the team moving on to engine 2.0. The next several months will be spent building and porting systems over to openGL and making the game accessible to more and more players in the community. Not only do we expand the reach of the community, but we also get a chance to dramatically improve ALL the things for the game.

We have some REALLY exciting times ahead of us, as we prepare to grow our team and get a bit more aggressive on the things we create. As a lot of you know, we have always had a huge focus on modding, and much of that focus is actually going to start to shine within the next few months. While the DX11 engine may not expand much while we move over to openGL, we have some pretty rad stuff planned for the community and a lot of modders from the MC community. Its a great chance for us to really work out new systems we are introducing to make mod creation and discovery easier.

We will have a lot of fairly huge announcements on the future of TUG, within the next couple of months, so be sure to follow us @nerdkingdom

As per usual, report any bugs you run into, screenshots and videos are super helpful if you have the time. And if the game is not running for whatever reason, and it was, we are more likely going to see the report email before we see the review on steam… just sayin.

Cameron has been doing a LOT of streams on builds lately, so follow him @camfergusondfw

If you want Corey to hurry the H E double hockey sticks, up with openGL, harass him @CoreyClarkPhD

And if you want to send lavish gifts and cookie bouquets, feel free to get me @inoritewtf

of course, to track when indev and release builds arrive, follow @theuntiltledgame

Alpha Patch 0.8.5

Update Warning! Game saves from v0.8.4 will not load in v0.8.5 due to terrain tech updates. 

Recent changes to our physics and terrain system have been drastic enough that we have had to bump the save version. All older saves are not compatible.

Updated recipes list here.  

New Features

Sky Update: New look to the sky, as well as adjustments for color and density that will change depending how far you are between different biomes

Biomes have been made more distinct. Resource distribution, lighting, background sound, and fog density have all been updated for each.

Terrain voxels are now what you dig is what you get (with the exception of the ore dropping rock which gives cobblestone). Cobblestone and Thatched voxels will need to be crafted from rock and grass voxels, respectively.

Terrain Input system: biomes generally larger than before and more consistent with which biomes they are adjacent to. Biome frequency adjusted

Crude Door

Fat/Skinny body morphing

New clothing options for the Seed

Coconuts can now be harvested and planted

Variety of mushrooms can now be planted

Hitting the crafting button while crafting will cancel the current craft

Z-Placement Adjustments

Right click to place

Hold Left Shift to adjust the distance of the item from the camera

Hold Left Ctrl to free rotate the item

Hold Left Shift + Left Ctrl to rotate on the X-Axis

Creative Mode update (back to explicit tools for each function)

Creative Mode now has three sets of tools for object placement, voxel placement, and standard Survival interaction

Ctrl + MouseWheel or the ‘y’ key: Switch between Object Placement, Voxel Placement, and Survival Interaction

MouseWheel or Ctrl + 1-4: Switch between placement mode specific tools for each placement tool set

For Object Placement Tools: Z: resets the current object scaling/rotation settings

For Voxel Placement Tools: Shift + MouseWheel : Switch Voxel brush sizes

Object Placement Eyedropper Tool :

Primary Action : Select the currently highlighted object

Secondary Action : Place Item

Object Placement Rotation Tool :

Primary Action : Rotate the object on both X and Y axes

Ctrl + Primary Action : Rotate the object on X axis

Shift + Primary Action : Rotate the object on Y axisSecondary Action : Place Item

Object Placement Scale Tool :

Primary Action : Scales the object

Ctrl + Primary Action : Moves the object

Secondary Action : Place Item

Object Placement Delete Tool :

Primary Action : Deletes the object

Secondary Action : Place Item

Voxel Placement Eyedropper Tool :

Primary Action : Select the currently selected material

Secondary Action : Paints the selected material on the selected area

Voxel Placement Brush Shape Tools :

Primary Action : Removes the selected voxel shape from terrain

Secondary Action : Places the selected voxel shape on terrain

Survival Placement Tool

Normal Survival keybinds

Voxel icons now represent the type of block they place as well as representing the material of the block and any billboards

Tons of smaller new features and adjustments throughout the game

Improvements

Increased performance of script processing significantly as a whole by allowing scripts to schedule their own update rates

Large performance optimizations to AI character processing when looking for objects or other characters

Greatly optimized networked game object performance managed by the server when clients are connected

Fine-tuned serialization interval times for game objects, gaining some performance when clients are connected to the server

Added billboard mipmaps, reducing visual noise of billboards at a distance, as well as potentially gaining some rendering performance

Improved shadow appearance

Large improvements to networking bandwidth usage

Various terrain performance improvements

Adjusted blending threshold for terrain to give a more distinct separation between terrain layers

Miscellaneous performance gains in various parts of the engine and gameplay

Updated AI system when making decisions for their state

Fixes

Fixed a crash with Intel systems and certain AMD systems using 8 or more cores

Fixed an issue with with mouse cursor and window focus when using the Windows Classic Theme

Expanded initial range of spawn locations to more consistently start new players in a Forest biome

Fixed a runtime memory leak when cleaning up objects and terrain

The player is no longer capable of consuming a coconut whole

If there are additional items of the same type, stacked items in your hand will refill when used up.

Polar, desert (sahara), bedrock and red cliffs biomes are back in the main Survival Generation

Adjusted the angle of terrain that billboards appear at

Shields now occupy the same inventory slot as gauntlets

Fixed several tool/weapon animations

Fixed a potential crash when first loading new assets. Unfortunately, this will increase the initial load time the first time you launch a new version

The keybinds not saving for the current session is fixed. Be sure to save your settings after rebinding them.

Sprint can now be rebound to another key

Pressing caps lock will no longer lock the brush shape size

Arrow keys and mouse buttons 3+ should be mappable

Adjusted poison damage values upwards

Adjusted crafting priorities of several transmute recipes

Softened the torch sound effects

Fixed environmental FX not appearing

Fixed an issue where renamed save game directories were still referencing their original directory

Fixed some issues where placing objects would put them inside of the player (such as Vine Fences)

When crafting, recipe checks will now look for all active crafting stations which should side step issues with crafting near multiple crafting stations

Pressing G again after initiating a craft will cancel out of the craft

Fixed issue where loading a save would advance the time of day further than what it should have

Certain recipes (primarily alchemy conversions) now stack when creating more than 1 object

Fixed various issues with MaxViewDistance not taking effect properly in certain circumstances in a networked environment

Fixed several issues with clients disconnecting then reconnecting while dead.

Fixed an issue causing bouncing sounds to not play for clients when other players jumped on Mushroom Beds or Double Cap Mushrooms.

Single player no longer hard-sets port 6600 when launching, it now retrieves an open port from the OS. This can be retrieved in game by typing /port in-game

Note: To go from single-player to multi-player, you can type /allowconnections <true|false> while in-game

To set a multiplayer game initially to just find a free port, enter ‘0’ as the port number. You will need to use /port to find out which port was allocated.

Modding Improvements

Implemented ModScript save, serialize and event systems

StaticModels, textures and mesh colliders can now be swapped on GameObject from lua

Mod can now create additional sound file

Mods now have the ability to define additional keybinds

Fixed the initializing order to prevent most lua loops

Updates and fixes to existing Lua API documentation, mostly correcting missing documentation, but also typos and definition mis-matches

Tons of new, modified and deleted Lua API calls. Here are some of the most notable changes:

Players can now be queried for their biome weights

Many new Sky controls

NKRefernce/NKDereference have been removed in favor of a better relevancy system in the engine.

Networked Script events are now registered on a per object level instead of global

New NKGetFilteredGameObjectsInRadius for searching for a particular item in range using the GameObjectSystem

New NKGetRadius API on the graphics component

Tons more! (see the EternusAPI Documentation for more details)

Known Issues

Tools can affect voxels they normally would not interact with when using larger voxel brush sizes

Repeatedly leaving and joining games within the same session of TUG can cause excessive memory issues.

Helmets are not wearable yet

Seedlings and Teens have their own sets of clothing right now. You can’t currently mix/match them. So if you are wearing Seedling leaf clothing when you grow up, it will not visually appear on the Teen even though it is still in the equipment slot.

The size of a Teen’s head is shrunk compared to the Seedling

On of the cactus icons is missing in Creative

When players die, all their inventory is placed at their feet. Some smaller items may require digging to retrieve (depending on the slope of the terrain).

The console/command window isn’t in the bottom left of the window when you go full screen

If you travel roughly 10000 coordinate points away from your initial spawn location, collision and object generation will cease

At certain angles and movement, projectiles can reflect off of the player that throw them

Rarely, Clients will have gaps in their terrain generation.

Rarely, players will see a cell of missing billboards.

When placing square voxels so that only a single point/corner touches, graphical issues can occur. Usually, it will appear as streaks or black triangles

Objects do not save while they are in motion (they must stop and settle)

The radius of torches scaring certain creatures is too long

Pets are missing sound effects

Pet taming timer is not accurate and sometimes you can overfeed a wild critter before it turns into a pet

Recipes that use tools in the hand are not causing durability damage to those tools

When digging or placing billboard voxels (like grass), the billboards do not reappear until after you have reloaded that game

The Skull Stick is craftable, yet its uses are mysterious and unknown (or possibly not done yet)

Animals/players caught in cabbage traps are not visible until the trap has completely reopened after releasing them.

Creatures will sometimes run small circles around their targets if they can’t quite reach the food item they are trying to eat

Tools can affect voxels they normally would not interact with when using larger voxel brush sizes 

[nerdkingdomofficial]

Dev Blog #45: An Update on Modular Tools

Greetings again! Nekochu here to tell you about something very important that is coming up in the next release. This is so important and will change your life so much, that if everything works as intended you won’t even notice it.

What am I talking about?  Modular tools of course!

For this first stage of modular tools, we have revamped all the bronze age tools and weapons to work with modular crafting. You may notice that the bronze items look slightly different, but they are crafted and work exactly the same as the old tools you are used to.  

You may ask, “How does this affect me?”  Well, at first this shouldn’t affect you at all. All of the work in this release is behind the scenes and visually you won’t see the potential of modular tools.

Let’s talk about the future though; that is where this new system will really start to shine. Items that can act as the “head” of a tool can be swapped out to generate new tools and the stats of the produced item will be adjusted based on the components used.

Now you’re starting to see the bigger potential!  Imagine a sword that incorporates the swiftness bonus from its handle and the extra damage stat from its blade!  Or perhaps you want to use a unique head of a pick that you crafted on all your future pick crafts.

We’ve only scratched the surface of where we can go with this new system but for now it lies in wait under the surface of the bronze tools.  The future will decide where it grows from there!

We are fixing a lot of bugs this week and hope to push a new update soon. In the meantime, check out the latest “In The Works” video for the artisan workbench and loom here.