Menu system overhaul

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New menu look and feel

Recently I have completely overhauled the menu flow, and re-skinned it (still placeholder art for now), it should be much nicer to use now.  I’ve also started adding additional stuff, such as the options screen (currently only graphics options are functional).  You can check it out in the web build at the usual link.

Next up – new game modes

The most exciting benefit of these menu improvements is that it makes it easier to start hooking in new game modes.  Currently there’s only the basic open sandbox mode, but soon I will be experimenting with other game modes that build on top of the core construction game-play.  More news on this soon hopefully!

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How to fix a monitor power board

Something a little different in this post!  After period of being sluggish to power up, my LG finally packed in and failed to turn on altogether.  This is a common problem, the capacitors in the power board fail (cheapo components presumably).

I didn’t much feel like throwing away a perfectly good monitor and forking out for a new one (besides, 1920×1200 monitors seem hard to come by these days, they’re mostly 1920×1080, I need those extra pixels damn it!)  So, time to get out the soldering iron and have some fun!

Save game update

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Save / load for inventory and player location

If you run the game from the usual link, you’ll find it now has save game support for your inventory and player location!

The same multi-player limitations still apply (you can only save / load from the server machine, and it only saves the inventory & location for the server player).  I still need to figure out a robust design for how saving client player data should work.

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Parts inventory – images added

The inventory screen now has a preview image of each part.  I still need to re-scale the view based on part size, as small parts are a little difficult to make out, but I think this can wait until a fine tuning / refinement pass later on.

Next up, I’ll add save game support for the inventory, once that’s done the basic inventory system will be just about wrapped up.

Playable demo – updated

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Playable demo – updated

Parts inventory

The game has been updated with a new parts inventory system.  Hold ‘Q’ when in game to bring up the inventory screen.  You can then click on parts in the inventory to add them into the world, ready to be used for construction.  Any part in the world that isn’t part of a construction can be added to your inventory by running / walking over it.

Right now each part in the inventory screen just has a text descriptor, hopefully I’ll soon be adding a preview image for each part so you can more easily tell what it is, watch this space!

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Now that you can save progress in the game, it somehow feels more worthwhile to build more stuff!  Here’s a rickety shed, with an assortment of machines…

At some point I’ll be adding the ability to rigidly attach blocks to the ground, for the purposes of constructing buildings (right now, they just rest on the surface and can still be nudged around by physics).

Playable demo – updated

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Playable demo – updated

Save / load support

Just finished adding a basic save game implementation.  It saves the current level and all your constructions, but there are currently a few limitations:-

  • Fixed number of available save slots.
  • In multi-player, can only save or load a game on the server machine (clients don’t have all the necessary data locally available).
  • Does not save your player’s position, you’ll spawn randomly (like when starting a new game).

Try it out at the link above!

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Multi-player avatar added

Now when you connect to a multi-player game, the other players see you as this guy.  Like all the assets in the game so far, he is just a placeholder, not representative of the final look.  Eventually I hope to have character customisation or at least a selection of characters to choose from, but this is this first step!

Playable demo

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Playable demo

Alright!  Here’s a playable demo of my construction game.  Once it’s loaded, to play, just select Start New Server, then select one of the levels.  There are hints at the bottom of the screen for the controls, and you can hit escape at any time to get your mouse cursor back.

There’s still a way to go with improving the user experience of building things.  Then there’s a ton of stuff to come such as save / load, a parts inventory system, as well as a progression loop that actually leads you through the game.

Hopefully though, this is enough for me to get some useful feedback with what I have so far!