Development blog

2018 February 16th

Fixed graphical issue with preview model while building chemistry table.

Fixed right clicking while in cube edit mode while placing object removes cubes instead of rotating object.

2018 February 9th

Fixed clouds not obscuring stars when clouds set to low resolution.

2018 February 2nd

Added getting hurt effects: screen shake and screen blood splatter.

2018 January 26th

Fog has been reworked. it now respects underground ambient light falloff and dims the world at night so you can't see as far under moonlight.

It also tracks the colors of the sky background for a much more impressive sunset and sunrise.

2018 January 19th

More work on the sky background code to tweak it to look just right.

2018 January 12th

Reworked the sky background code responsible for sunrise/sunset effects to look better and be easier to tweak. Its now based on a 2d lookup texture instead of attempting to model physical light scattering.

2018 January 5th

Another great year for Brutal Nature!

This week I started play testing and hunting for more bugs.

found and fixed clouds not blocking stars when cloud resolution was set below highest.

2017 December 29th

Packed up another version of Brutal Nature and released it!

Released: 0.68

2017 December 25th, Brutal Nature 0.68 is now released:

• Fixed all known bugs.
• Added day/night cycle.
• Added ray marched clouds.
• Added horizon effect to fill in at edges of map.
• Added night time sky.
• Added atmospheric scattering effects including fog, sunrise/set
• Added a new animated switch model.
• Added sound effects to switch.
• Added new features to the particle engine: directional particles and stretched particles.
• Added Cloud resolution setting.
• Added debug key support to scripting engine.
• Improved the water shader effect to be more realistic.
• Improved terrain generation to remove slopes commonly being at 45 degrees.
• Improved terrain generation to have more variation in mountain steepness.
• Reduced NPC feeding rate by 50%.
• Changed NPC's to follow the terrain a lot better, including tilting upward/downward when going up/down hills.
• Changed NPC's to swim through water instead of walking on the bottom of the ocean/rivers.
• Changed NPC path finding and wander code to try and make the NPC's behavior a little more realistic.
• Fixed NPC's overlapping each other when attacking the same target.
• Fixed bug where voxel edit preview was obscured by grass rendering.
• Fixed some crashes that occur at shutdown.
• Fixed issue where wires texture had disappeared.
• Fixed up keyboard focus issues.
• Fixed issue where NPC's would sometimes not engage in combat with each other.
• Fixed foxes not being scared away by newly spawned players.
• Fixed issue where complex switch networks would not always work properly.
• Fixed a bug where DXT compressed textures where being allocated more memory then needed.

2017 December 22nd

Fixed bug where voxel edit preview was obscured by grass rendering.

Added horizon effect of water that stretches out to the horizon so that you can't see the edge of the map anymore. Horizon renders in any area that would otherwise let you see into the void.

Added fog/in-scattering effect on distant terrain to make it look more distant and help obscure the edge of the loaded world.

NPC's now become hungry 50% slower as I thought they ate a little too often.

2017 December 15th

Added a new animated switch model.

Added sound effects to switch from Freesound.org.

Fixed issue where complex switch networks would not always work properly.

Added two new features to the particle engine, directional particles and stretched particles. Directional particles rotate to the direction they are traveling and stretched particles stretch depending on how fast they are going.

Both features have been used on the new sparking effect when the switch is open/closed. Here is a short video showing them off!

2017 December 8th

Improved terrain generation to remove slopes commonly being at 45 degrees.

Improved terrain generation to have more variation in mountain steepness.

Added Cloud resolution setting.

Fixed some crashes that occur at shutdown.

2017 December 1st

Fixed issue where wires texture had disappeared.

Added debug key support to scripting engine.

2017 November 24th

Fixed up keyboard focus issues.

Fixed issue where NPC's would sometimes not engage in combat with each other.

2017 November 17th

Fixed foxes not being scared away by newly spawned players.

Started work on fixing some GUI bugs related to keyboard focus.

2017 November 10th

More work on atmospheric scattering, trying to get the sky and sunsets/sunrises just right.

2017 November 3rd

Starting to really get somewhere now with the volumetric clouds and light scattering effects.

The sunset effect is done by simulating RayLeigh Scattering. I walk a ray from the edge of the atmosphere to the camera, accumulating scattered in light at each step and scattering light back out, with each of the 3 colors of light used in computer graphics being scattered in and out at different rates.

2017 October 27th

Clouds are looking pretty good now and running decently. Looking into atmospheric effects for distance fog, sunrise and sunset coloring.

Fixed a bug where DXT compressed textures where being allocated more memory then needed.

2017 October 20th

More work on volumetric clouds. Starting to get somewhere.

2017 October 13th

Started work on a ray marched volumetric cloud solution.

Basically that means I cast a ray through 3d noise and sample along the ray, accumulating samples. Very expensive but apparently modern day video cards can do it at reason speed when the effect is down scaled.