Another creation of Welkrip’s, this time with working suspension and a universal joint in the driveshaft, very inventive!
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Playable build – updated
Over the past week I have continued working on the game design and project plan. This has taken most of my time, but I have also made some improvements to the build.
Unfreezing / deselecting inside the terrain
Previously if you deselected or unfroze a construction while it was positioned inside the terrain, it would immediately be free to move under physics. Due to the interpenetration with the terrain a massive impulse would then be applied, flinging your construction way up in the air, which was very annoying. To get around this, for a construction that is currently interpenetrating the terrain, deselecting it will simply freeze it, and unfreezing is prevented until it’s moved away from the terrain. Hopefully this will eliminate one of the big frustrations while building constructions in the game!
New parts
I have made some new assets for the electric motor and servo motor. Note that the new servo motor is a different size to the old one, so this may affect your existing saved constructions. I have also added 4 unit length beams.
Other than that I’ve done a few minor bug fixes and code cleanup. Next task I think is to port over to Unity 5 to see how that goes, might be a big job, not sure yet.
Welkrip’s awesome creation in the game, check out that piston engine!
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Playable build – updated
Minor tweaks
I’ve made some improvements to the way parts get serialized out to save games (I’m afraid this will break any existing saved games). I’ve also removed all options for multi-player from the game. The current networking implementation isn’t ready for prime time, and multi-player is currently on the back burner while I work on the rest of the game. I don’t want to promise what I may not be able to deliver, hence the disabling of multi-player for now.
Game design and project planning
On the subject of what I hope to deliver with this game, I have been working on finishing the overall game design and planning out all the tasks needed, at least up until alpha release. This has meant facing some harsh realities about project scope, as I’m the only one developing this game, I have to try and be realistic about what I can get done.
I have decided to settle on a fairly simple design consisting of two game modes, “creative mode” (basically the existing sandbox mode), and “challenge mode”. This second game mode will have a series of distinct challenges that get unlocked as the player progresses, each challenge will require the player to build a particular construction and then use it in some way to complete the challenge. My hope is that this will give the player a feeling of progression and will gradually ramp up the complexity of constructions they build. Ultimately I also want players to also be able to create their own challenges and upload them for others to play.
This alone will still take me quite a while to build, so that’s why I have sadly had to cut out all the crafting, exploration and survival ideas. I have also cut multi-player from the plan, at least until post alpha.
I have lots of ideas for challenges for the challenge game mode, which I’ll share as I get to working on refining them in more detail.
Playable build – updated
Part material variations
I’ve implemented a system that now automatically generates variations of all the generic block / plate parts with a selection of different materials. These materials are just test examples for now, and are not final.
To make this work, I had to change the part ID convention, so I’m afraid any old save games will no longer work! The good news though is that this part ID change should more easily allow modding in the future.
Now that there are more parts available (and eventually I plan to add many more), it’s starting to make the inventory UI a bit cumbersome to use. At some point I think I’ll change it so that you first pick the block size, and then pick the material from a sub-menu. First though I want to port over to Unity’s new UI system before making any more UI changes.
Standalone playable build
Once I have proper release versioning setup, I plan to regularly release standalone builds of the demo, so you won’t have to use the web-player. This will hopefully happen within the next month or two.
In the meantime, here’s a one off standalone build of the current prototype, as a few people have been asking for one!
Playable build – updated
Slider rails
There are now some new parts in the game, and a new attachment type. Slider rails can attach to blocks either with a rigid or with a slider attachment (you can cycle between these). The slider attachment allows relative linear motion between two parts in one direction only. This allows you to create sliding platforms, lifts, extending crane booms, and all sorts of other things!
Construction mechanic
I have also made some improvements to the construction game mechanic to make things work a bit better:-
- The construction you have currently selected no longer collides with other constructions. This prevents you from accidentally knocking other stuff around due to physics collisions with the selected construction.
- After cloning a construction, it becomes currently selected. It used to be that the construction would collide with its clone, causing stuff to fly around uncontrollably; this no longer happens.
- You can now only detach parts from frozen constructions. Given that you can only attach parts to frozen constructions, I think this behaviour is more consistent.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)