Development blog

July 27th update

Spent the day working on the website. Made a new background, updated some pages, Got a new logo provided by Yanz.

Also now moved to the domain www.Worldcrafter.org

July 26th update

Fixed all known bugs today. Always a good feeling. Even found another bug or two

Most annoying bug was servers that didn't forward the correct ports for a user to join where listed on the server browser. Now the announce server attempts to connect to the server on the client port to ensure its correctly forwarded and will notify the server if the attempt was successful or not. Servers that fail the test won't be listed.

To see the status of the server, Just click its tray icon. If it says “Connected to announce server” you are all set!

July 25th update

Added endurance drain when skinning animals, butchering them and when chopping down trees.

July 24th update

Lowered bandwidth required by grouping and compressing object updates, should also improve lag some.

Made mining require endurance, Amount used depends on exactly how many blocks you mine

July 23rd update

Sadly I don't think I can fix the problems with surface nets and water. Will have to take a different approach to rendering water. Going to take a break from working on water for now.

July 22th update

Running into some rendering problems using surface nets for rendering smoothed water.

July 21st update

More work on making the water transparent

July 20th update

Found a campfire model for the camp fire and bonfire object. Searched for new animal models to add to the game, but didn't really find anything suitable.

Investigated making water transparent.

July 19th update

Changed the spawning code to check for nearby NPCs and if they can see you or not. Attempts to place you somewhere far away from NPCs and out of there line of sight.

Made mining terrain use endurance.

July 18th update

Did some more work on the NPC AI code. Wrote a new “How to play” page for the website.

July 17th update

Looked into getting a trailer made today by professionals... Also costly, especially as the engine is still evolving and the trailer may need redoing a few times over the next few months.

Worked on adding new recipes. Now usable items can be crafted and used as crafting ingredients. Added Roast bear meat and bear jerky.

July 16th update

Talked to a PR firm today. Was not able to afford there services but they did give me a few useful tips and pointers.

July 15th update

Had a major toothache today so didn't get much done.

Added support for new 'types' of smelters, each with unique recipes. Added 'Camp fire' object. Camp fire is used to roast ores. Added a pickup button to the smelter menu.

July 14th update

Added basic vision to the NPC's. They now only attack if they can actually see you instead of if you just get close enough to them. If they lose sight of you, they will continue to run to the last place they saw you.

Fixed some minor GUI bugs and movement related bugs. Finally cleared the known bug list and now I can work on adding new features.

July 13th update

Reduced stutter caused by pooling more allocations in the game

Fixed a bug with the new memory pool class that I was up to 2am last night trying to find. Fixed some minor bugs with the smelter.

If you have not guessed, I have been focusing on bug fixes this week. Had a few bugs pop up here and there but I have been too busy working on new features to fix them.

July 12th update

Worked on speeding up the server shutdown. Got it down from 20 seconds to about 0.5 seconds. Apparently saving very large files (80MB) at once with fwrite is amazingly slow and by just separating it up into multiple calls to fwrite the same amount of data can be written in 1/50th the time.

Also, more bug fixes! Mainly to do with editing outside of world bounds. Worked on adding a new memory pool class for the game.

July 11th update

Spent the day searching for bugs and fixing them.

Made NPC's and objects die when they leave world bounds.

July 10th update

Hi to everyone coming from reddit! Spent today taking new screenshots for the website and trying to get the game a larger player base.

July 9th update

Spent most of the day getting a new version of Worldcrafter ready for release. Searched for and eliminated a few minor bugs.

Researched windows uac virtualization and realized it would take a lot of work to be fully compliant. So instead I changed install directory to Games\Worldcrafter instead of Program Files. If you must install it in Program Files, it will have to be run as admin for the time being.

Released: 0.25

0.25 is now released:

• Server now sends client any missing mod files when client joins server.
• Basic shadow mapping added, terrain now casts shadows on itself
• Server owner configurable death scripts added. Default death script causes users who die to drop 20% of there ammo.
• Server owner configurable periodic scripts added.
• Treasure island script added: Spawns a number of crates over the island containing ammo and sometimes weapons.
• Picking up or destroying a treasure island chest will spawn another in a random location.
• World objects like trees and bushes now can move
• World objects now fall when terrain under them is removed
• Dropping items from inventory now supported
• All types of ammo now have disassembly recipes.