Cavern screenshots

I placed some red flowers in the caverns to get some light down there. Here are some screenshots:

As you can see, it's very dark down there. But hey, this is space, and it's underground =D

Now, just need to think up which type of blocks to find underground in these caverns....

Hotbar and block placement

Spent about another 30 minutes this evening to get the hot bar working. Blocks are placed by selecting the relevant type from the hot bar slots (only using slot 1 at the moment).

Once the blocks there run out, the player needs to move another stack of blocks there, or start digging out new blocks again.

Similar to how it works in Minecraft and Terraria.

What this means is that I now have the minimum viable product that I could version as 0.1 alpha (YES!) and put it up for people to download. I'll wait a few days or one week longer, to get some of these smaller bugs fixed, and hopefully get more blocks into the terrain to dig out.

Deep and large underground caverns

Check this:

I added in deep underground caverns. Credit goes to BamYazi for the original idea (thanks!)

I'll add the option to place torches, and get some screenshots of what it looks like down in the vast caverns under the surface.

Alpha v0.1 (almost)

Tonight's coding was to add finally in the ability to create a new game via the main menu. DONE!

So, there is a an alpha version to play with. Well, almost.....

Just one very tiny amount of code to add in, which is related to inventory items:
the ability for the game to stack blocks and items separately based on each type. After that, to allow the game to select the block/item to place/use, based on the selected hot bar position. Easy stuff.

It looks heavily like there will be a proper v0.1 alpha out next week, for anyone to test or play with.

Keep checking this blog for the link....

Inventory textures

As mentioned in a previous post, here's the screenshot of the textures in the inventory slots:

It demonstrates:

- textures in individual slots

- background white in slot to highlight the hovered slot

- a text wording at the mouse pointer of the item

A small fix still to do of stacking items individually, will work on that tomorrow.

Other small point also is creating the keyboard input routine for the new game menu screen, to allow the player to enter a desired world name for each new game. Also to enter a random seed for the world to use during the procedural terrain generation.

And once these 2 small additions are done, its a case of feature freeze and clean up to get this finally to a v0.1 alpha release.

Still on target for a release at the end of next week....

Textures in Inventory

Tonight's coding was to add textures for each item within the hot bar and inventory. This went fine. Just some small coding to allow the textures to move when the items are moving. Not much to do there, but it's getting late, so i'll leave that until tomorrow evening.

Expect a screenshot also tomorrow, all going well :)

World items

Tonights coding was to place textures onto the world items, which are those after a block is removed:

In this screenshot, you can see the moon rock blocks, and the lower level blocks. These smaller blocks are collected by simply moving close to them. Then, they attract to the player, and are auto collected. Otherwise, they rotate and bob up and down when waiting to be collected, similar to Minecraft.

update

Last evening was spent reworking the code for the world items.

Not much to describe really, only that the code itself is being expanded to allow for more types of items later on. Better to get that in place now at the alpha stage.

I'll try to get something decent to take a screenshot of this weekend, time permitting.

Oh, and i'm still on target to get some type of demo out to play, in two weeks.

Tonights coding

Load game:
I put in place the load game menu. Its possible to load any saved game now.

I'll work on getting the code in, for creating a new game, together with either a random world seed, or a specific one entered by the player.

Let's see how that goes....

Update again

Inventory:

The base code is done now. Its possible to move items freely around within the inventory, to/from hot bar and crafting area. Moving an item onto an existing one, places it in position and puts the existing item onto the mouse pointer, similar to Minecraft and Terraria.

Some more base work to be done to get textures in now, but the code is done at least.

Menus:

I added in the menus for creating a new game and loading an existing one. Some more code to be done just to tidy those up still

World SEED:

The world seed is now persisted and reloaded when a save game is loaded in.

Small, small progress over the weekend, but still progress :)

Update on progress

Since my previous post on Wednesday, the following has been added/updated:

Persistence:
The world is now loaded correctly from the saved game
The player's previous position in world is loaded from the saved game

Blocks:
The removed blocks now spawn the icon blocks, which bounce and rotate until collected. The blocks detect the nearby player, and move towards the player to be collected, similar to how it is done in Minecraft and Terraria.

Inventory:
The inventory is saved and loaded correctly
It is possible to click/move/place items within the slots in the inventory
Items stack in inventory per slot. Once a slot reaches its maximum stack amount, the next free slot is used.
Removed blocks attempt to place in the hotbar first, similar to how it is done in Minecraft and Terraria.

A screenshot showing the stacking in the inventory:

Note: The items themselves, with textures and attributes will be added after the movement code is finished in a day or two.

Water

OK, so there isn't water on the moon, but i wanted to see how water or other liquids would look like so far. Here's a screenshot:

There's a nice light effect across the surface.

When I get more time later, i'll update the HLSL shader to make the water move a bit with some simple waves. Not sure though if water on other planets should have waves? Maybe particle effects of gas bubbles rising from the surface instead?

Better get back to some coding now..

Inventory screen

Heres what the inventory screen looks like so far:

It's dark because the inventory screen is on top of the main game screen. When that happens, the game screen darkens so it's easier to see the inventory screen. I don't pause the game in the background, so its still possible for enemies to attack!

I've laid it out similar to Minecraft, so that crafting will have the same type of feel to it. This screenshot shows the 'X' cursor, that is moved around to select each of the blocks and for picking and dropping items between slots.

The code is already added for highlighting each slot, with supported code too. All I need to do now, is get some nice textures ready for the blocks in the game so far, and connect it to the persistence code (load/save stuff).

Once this is done, I should have a version ready that can be called "creative" mode :) I think a week from now. Let's see how it goes.....

First screenshot !

This evening I was able to get the world loading from its save, with blocks being removed/added from the saved game. This is definitely a step forward now!

Next step is to get the inventory to save and load.

Things are moving along :)

Anyway, here is the very first screenshot i've taken of the game so far:

The textures are NOT the final ones. They are just a series of textures I found on the internet, and are purely for testing.

What you can see here is:

- Some type of weird space atmosphere with green fog

- A moon type texture for the ground

- Lots of 'X' type flowers which emit red light around them

- A hotbar, similar to Minecrafts

- To the bottom right, the health and oxygen levels (yes, in space we need oxygen!!)

Next post and screenshot will show the inventory screen so far

worlds are saving!

So I got the code in for saving worlds now. I'll optimise it more later, but for now the world saves only the parts where blocks were added or removed.

Some more work to do on the inventory code, and then i'll get that saved too. A day or two I expect. Once the player, world and inventory are all loading and saving fine, I think i'll look at the inventory screen again.

I wonder what the first ever screenshot of CraftInSpace will be of?

progress update

So,

The game has the following parts at the moment:

Graphics:
voxel 3d block terrain
highlights block to dig/place
sky with galaxy images and stars
fog
some nice moon rock textures
transparent water
sound for digging
background music
head movement

Lighting:
Ambient Occlusion
Sky/Space has gradients
Blocks can emit light
Overcast lighting/shadows (blocks under blocks are darker, for example caves, or overhangs/cliffs)

GUI:
start screen
loading screen
pause screen
inventory screen
hud with hotbar - 9 slots

Mobs:
Flying mobs
Mobs chase player
Mobs patrol

Blocks:
Falling blocks

I've also got the persistence (load/save) code in place but it's not active. The world regeneration is fully thread based now, and runs at ease around 60fps.

All the code is running fine on PC, and is compatible with XBOX360.

Screenshots coming soon :)

First Post!

Craft In Space !
A game I've started coding. It will have the same style as Minecraft, but be based in space :) So I decided to call it CraftInSpace.

It will follow a "block craft and mining" gameplay that Minecraft has, with a 3D voxel terrain engine, where the landscapes can be altered by removing or placing blocks.

Status so far:

Well, As I wrote some of the code for TechCraft (techcraft.codeplex.com) I will reuse most of that code. Since then, I've added in mobs (entities) and some other stuff. I'll save that though for another post, and hopefully put up some screenshots too.