Harvesters

Harvesters work in a similar way to those in the Star Wars Galaxies MMORPG (discontinued, replaced by SWGTOR).

New code was added related to these. They detect 5 ore types, and mine those at specific extraction rates per minute. Ores don't have extraction rates, its the harvester that sets that.

When opening a harvesters output, it pauses the harvesting. This is so that you, the player, have enough time to sort or collect the mined ores without stress. Closing the harvesters output window, resumes the harvesting.

Multiplayer progress update

Since late Friday evening, multiplayer support has been updated.

It is possible to connect multiple clients together now, and any of the clients can add/remove blocks in the shared world. This has been tested across the internet, so it's not restricted to local networks.

There has also been a few screens added into the main menus, which allow selection of known servers, as well as add/delete servers.

Also, there is a chat function now in multiplayer. Players can use the internal chat function to send text messages to the server, which everyone can read. There is no private/direct IM between players yet. That will be added once login details are added soon.

I'll get some screenshots onto the blog, and possibly a small video showing the multiplayer support in action.

Server and Multiplayer Support

This week I started the code for a dedicated server. The skeleton code is now in, and many clients can now connect to it.

The game itself has had some network code added also. It is possible to connect to the server, and listen for incoming data from the server.

I will now need to decide which parts of the game require the server, and which parts can be kept within the client.

At the end of this, in a very short time, will be multiplayer support as part of the game.

I'll keep posting information about this important feature as more parts are added into it.

Week In Review

This last week was quite slow, compared to previous coding weeks.

There were some bugs in the UI code, that were fixed.

Progress report

Still busy with refactoring to the new engine. Almost done with existing features.

Here's another screenshot:

It shows the smoke engine, with several different columns of smoke at various thickness. The smoke is animated, dynamically generated.

Mobs now have attack behaviors. More on that in an upcoming video, once a few more minor bugs are fixed.

Killing mobs

Water screenshot

Here's a screenshot (been a while since the last one):

The hotbar will be repositioned to allow for the widescreen view of the game, so ignore that for now.

In the screenshot, you can see:

1. Ripple effect on water
2. Caustics on the surface of water
3. Detail textures applied across many blocks
4. The new lighting engine working together with the water transparency