WorldOfCube

[matheus23]

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/-GkusDNvko8?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/-GkusDNvko8?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=</a>

Thats it

This game is hardly in development. It's taken me some time to get to that point.. its almost a year now!
But I think I've really got a fun game, you can really almost play...
Although some thinks are turned off in the vid, to make it not that long, which also make developing easier. For example, I am able to break blocks instantly, or I'm able to place blocks wherever I want. which will not be possible in the release version.

One more thing: I am not including a download link right now... But you can be sure, it will come one day

GIMMIE FEEDBAAACK!!!

Also, how do I create these awesome screenshot previews? :/
EDIT: Okey, should be "fixed" now.. added screens
EDIT2: Wow ... 238 Views in 7 hours... Thats cracy... thanks guys... btw, donwload is coming soon!

Update:

The Epic Command-Line Patcher is available now! (only for linux and windows. And untested on windows :O... sorry for that...)
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/45530199/Games/WorldOfCube/WorldOfCubePatcher.jar
Just execute it from command-line with "java -jar WorldOfcubePatcher.jar".
I'm sorry for not having a Graphical tool... but this is a provisory Patcher... I've written it in the last 2 hours...
Have fun trying out... or posting errors...

Update:

I'm happy, to be able to introduce the non-finished but also for some time non-WIP WorldOfCube Patcher.
How to:
 - Download.
 - Start.
 - Click "Download"
 - Wait for him to finish, and say "Start game now."
 - Click "Play".

Thats all. I designed it to be as easy as possible.
Download here again: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/45530199/Games/WorldOfCube/WorldOfCubePatcher.jar

Have fun

Update:

 - Added "Leaves"
 - Added "Treewood"
 - Added tree generation. These trees will grow on all sides of the planet. Just go around, you will find them.
 - "Fixed" a bug, where trees, earth and grass connect wrong to other blocks.
 - Added alot of Debug features, and behind-the-scene things. (Press "G" to get into godmode)

Update:

 - Added Root generation for Trees.
 - Added "Options" Screen, which is totally not useful right now. (blank screen with "Back" button).
 - Added a bunch of more GUI stuff/screens:
    - Change: The menu screen does not show "Play" anymore, the button's name is "Worlds" now.
    - Added the "Worlds" screen, showing the Created worlds. Lets you create worlds with the "Create World" button
    - Added the "World Creation" screen, where you are able to specify a name and a seed for your world. After creation, you will find yourself in the World itself. It will automaticly start Saving (Currently really slow, takes about a minute, but It saves in another thread anyways...). When going to the Pause menu, it will start Saving too.

That stuff took me some time... I took me suprisingly much time to create the GUI stuff. The GUI-Code took me a bit longer then writing the Load/Save stuff
I also refectored a LOT.

Have fun playing your save- and loadable worlds
Oh, btw, standard Patcher download: Download the Patcher

Bugfix/Speedpatch/Update:

 - Added a bunch of Loading-Screens.
 - Added caching to world-loading and world-saving (see more at my Block (see signature))
 - Fixed bug, when saving game, and loading it again, before having saved.
 - Fixed bug, where dropped blocks disappear after a frame.
 - Fixed more bugs, I don't remember...

[cptyx]

Verry nice! Some friends and I are planning to create the same type of game, but a bit diffrent .

Have fun programming you're game and good luck!

[matheus23]

Verry nice! Some friends and I are planning to create the same type of game, but a bit diffrent .

Have fun programming you're game and good luck!

Mhmm... you're lucky I had to create this on my own :/

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[Gjallar]

That is pretty awesome! Terraria comes instantly into my mind :p


2. questions!

How do you render this? Do you simply for-loop through every block on the screen and call it's draw-method?

Oh and how do you do the shadow? Is it simply a "black overlay"?


If you dont want to answer those questions I understand 

Hope to see more in the future.

[ra4king]

That's a very impressive video! Keep up the good job!

[matheus23]

That is pretty awesome! Terraria comes instantly into my mind :p


2. questions!

How do you render this? Do you simply for-loop through every block on the screen and call it's draw-method?

Oh and how do you do the shadow? Is it simply a "black overlay"?


If you dont want to answer those questions I understand 

Hope to see more in the future.

1. Thats easy: if you ever built up a tile-based game: Just for loop through all visible tiles. That means: Start at world position and end at world position + window size

2. Easy too: (lighting itself is hard tho...) I use the abilities opengl gives me with interpolation between colors. I just give the "edges" of every Block a specific light value how to calculate that value is MUCH harder to explain... I went through some problems...

And since this is kind of a Terraria clone, I'ts just perfect to make you remember Terraira
But: I've kind of got a lot of respect of Terraria's lighting system. It was really awesome, and really just... wow... And now look at Starbounds realtime raycasting lighting!!! they're cracy

That's a very impressive video! Keep up the good job!

Thanks , That will happen
I still wonder, how to set the preview-screenshot of this thread?

[Gjallar]

Thank you very much for the insight!

1. Thats easy: if you ever built up a tile-based game: Just for loop through all visible tiles. That means: Start at world position and end at world position + window size

Yeah, I just thought there would be a better way of doing this, since this sounds so simple.
Also when I do this with 16x16 tiles on a 800x600 screen my FPS drop from 8000 to around 1000, and that without any logic. I know 1000 FPS is still a whole lot but then again.. my PC isn't too shabby, I wonder how fast it would run on worse computers. I guess I'm just worrying a bit too much about performance :p

I still wonder, how to set the preview-screenshot of this thread?

i assume you just post a picture in your very first post and the thread grabs the first one and sets it as the preview picture.

[matheus23]

I still wonder, how to set the preview-screenshot of this thread?

i assume you just post a picture in your very first post and the thread grabs the first one and sets it as the preview picture.

Thank you, that worked

Thank you very much for the insight!

1. Thats easy: if you ever built up a tile-based game: Just for loop through all visible tiles. That means: Start at world position and end at world position + window size

Yeah, I just thought there would be a better way of doing this, since this sounds so simple.
Also when I do this with 16x16 tiles on a 800x600 screen my FPS drop from 8000 to around 1000, and that without any logic. I know 1000 FPS is still a whole lot but then again.. my PC isn't too shabby, I wonder how fast it would run on worse computers. I guess I'm just worrying a bit too much about performance :p

That totally depends on how you draw them. The strongest bottleneck was the Texture-switching. Minecraft avoids this with Display lists, I avoid this with a little class... I thought about Display Lists too, cause I like em. But support for them was dropped so... hehe

Also, don't worry about 1000 FPS...
8k FPS means: for every update your game needs 1/8 MILLISECONDS.
1k FPS means: for every update your game needs 1 Millisecond.
even when you need 8 times as much for every frame, due to other updates you still get up to 120FPS, just like me (8 ms for every update)

[mcurry]

It would be cool if you had some sort of leveling system that would allow you perks. Also I think you should have to go and find those torches underground first...

So far though, pretty good work, well done.

[matheus23]

It would be cool if you had some sort of leveling system that would allow you perks. Also I think you should have to go and find those torches underground first...

So far though, pretty good work, well done.

That leveling idea is really good... Yeah, thank you

About that torches: These are "lightstones". And this is the "developer" version. I'm kida gooood :DDD I'm able to build everything without losing blocks. These lightstones will be available on other planets. Yes you will be able to travel to other planets.

To light your own starting planet, you need to craft torches... but these aren't "drawn" or implemented yet...

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[Gjallar]

And thank you once again 

Also I think you should have to go and find those torches underground first...

Wait wait wait wait..... you use the torches to see underground.. hence you... must find them first underground? Does not compute.... FATAL ERROR

[matheus23]

And thank you once again 

Also I think you should have to go and find those torches underground first...

Wait wait wait wait..... you use the torches to see underground.. hence you... must find them first underground? Does not compute.... FATAL ERROR

xD as I said: you will have Torches, you can craft on the surface

These will not look like these Lightstones, shown in the video
These Lightstones will be available on other planets.
And Torches aren't available yet.

Crystalclear?

[Longarmx]

So I noticed that when you broke a light stone, the regular stone was still behind it. Are you storing all of the light stone on a different layer? Also, cool game!

[matheus23]

So I noticed that when you broke a light stone, the regular stone was still behind it. Are you storing all of the light stone on a different layer? Also, cool game!

I just have 2 Layers of Blocks, a front layer and a back layer. In the video I build lightstone on the front layer. Else the light wouldn't light up the world, if a block from the front layer is in front of it. But thats another story.

The stone you see behind is the back layer.
Or maybe you saw me taking stone and just putting it onto the light in the front layer. That means I just replaced the lightstone with stone I think thats what you saw. (That won't be possible in later versions)

[deathpat]

Nice ! I'm waiting for a playable demo now

[matheus23]

Nice ! I'm waiting for a playable demo now

Shouldn't take too long for that one.

[davidllanos22]

This is awesome! I love Terraria so obviously this too Can you explain a bit your map generation? Once I made some random map generation for a game like this but it was very simple and I don't liked it at all xD And what about the caves, can you explain that too? Thank you and keep working!

[matheus23]

This is awesome! I love Terraria so obviously this too Can you explain a bit your map generation? Once I made some random map generation for a game like this but it was very simple and I don't liked it at all xD And what about the caves, can you explain that too? Thank you and keep working!

That map generation is really unique i think... Cause I'm creating a planet...

For the caves: thats easy (with some little extras): Cellular Automata (sounds kinda strange.. tomato .. )

[davidllanos22]

This is awesome! I love Terraria so obviously this too Can you explain a bit your map generation? Once I made some random map generation for a game like this but it was very simple and I don't liked it at all xD And what about the caves, can you explain that too? Thank you and keep working!

That map generation is really unique i think... Cause I'm creating a planet...

For the caves: thats easy (with some little extras): Cellular Automata (sounds kinda strange.. tomato .. )

I tried to implement this but never got it working xD I love random generation really!<3 But it's a bit hard to get it working and make it look good. When I become more experienced I'll try again! xD

[matheus23]

This is awesome! I love Terraria so obviously this too Can you explain a bit your map generation? Once I made some random map generation for a game like this but it was very simple and I don't liked it at all xD And what about the caves, can you explain that too? Thank you and keep working!

That map generation is really unique i think... Cause I'm creating a planet...

For the caves: thats easy (with some little extras): Cellular Automata (sounds kinda strange.. tomato .. )

I tried to implement this but never got it working xD I love random generation really!<3 But it's a bit hard to get it working and make it look good. When I become more experienced I'll try again! xD

You just hit the site, I got everything from. I'ts easy

[matheus23]

Patcher uploaded! Get it here:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/45530199/Games/WorldOfCube/WorldOfCubePatcher.jar
Topic updated too.

[davidllanos22]

Patcher uploaded! Get it here:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/45530199/Games/WorldOfCube/WorldOfCubePatcher.jar
Topic updated too.

Worked fine here on Windows 7 x64. I opened it and nothing happened...30 seconds or so after, the windows appeared xD Everything is fine except when you're placing blocks and walking at the same time the fps slows down to 20 or so. Keep working!

[Orangy Tang]

This is awesome! I love Terraria so obviously this too Can you explain a bit your map generation? Once I made some random map generation for a game like this but it was very simple and I don't liked it at all xD And what about the caves, can you explain that too? Thank you and keep working!

That map generation is really unique i think... Cause I'm creating a planet...

For the caves: thats easy (with some little extras): Cellular Automata (sounds kinda strange.. tomato .. )

I tried to implement this but never got it working xD I love random generation really!<3 But it's a bit hard to get it working and make it look good. When I become more experienced I'll try again! xD

You just hit the site, I got everything from. I'ts easy

Have you read these? Starburst cave generation is also nice:

http://roguelikedeveloper.blogspot.co.uk/2007/11/unangband-dungeon-generation-part-five.html

The whole series of articles are well worth a read IMHO.

[Gjallar]

fun!

how do you handle collision? quadtrees?

[matheus23]

Patcher uploaded! Get it here:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/45530199/Games/WorldOfCube/WorldOfCubePatcher.jar
Topic updated too.

Worked fine here on Windows 7 x64. I opened it and nothing happened...30 seconds or so after, the windows appeared xD Everything is fine except when you're placing blocks and walking at the same time the fps slows down to 20 or so. Keep working!

Yes... I still have to optimize some things ... It's the lighting.
EDIT: Window opening delay, was due to the Patcher being a COMMAND-LINE tool. The patcher downloaded everything in background... You could not see him doing so, and when he finished, he just Opened the game
Starting the patcher again will make the game appear almost instantly.

This is awesome! I love Terraria so obviously this too Can you explain a bit your map generation? Once I made some random map generation for a game like this but it was very simple and I don't liked it at all xD And what about the caves, can you explain that too? Thank you and keep working!

That map generation is really unique i think... Cause I'm creating a planet...

For the caves: thats easy (with some little extras): Cellular Automata (sounds kinda strange.. tomato .. )

I tried to implement this but never got it working xD I love random generation really!<3 But it's a bit hard to get it working and make it look good. When I become more experienced I'll try again! xD

You just hit the site, I got everything from. I'ts easy

Have you read these? Starburst cave generation is also nice:

http://roguelikedeveloper.blogspot.co.uk/2007/11/unangband-dungeon-generation-part-five.html

The whole series of articles are well worth a read IMHO.

Thanks! I'll take a look. Looks good so far

fun!

how do you handle collision? quadtrees?

Easy Just check all tiles around the Entity, and then simply use rectangle collision checks.
Quadtrees are intresting things, but totally bad Idea for such kind of game. Checking for collision the way I do, is maybe a thousand times faster.

EDIT:

One more thing I'd like to add:
I just released the "game", cause It took me so much time so far, and I really wanted to share it.
I acctually did not want to do it that way. I wanted to implement Inventory, and some remove some god-tools, and as well add some trees and ores and crafting.
Right now its less than even the famous "Classic" mode for me.

[Tim Spekler]

I just tried it, really well done, runs smoothly on my computer, and sounds like fun !
My only advice, if you want people to play your game, would be to avoid making a Terraria clone for the simple reason that is... it already exits ! (or maybe you want to build a free clone,  )
But I 'm sure your game can become awesome. Keep on with your great work ! 

[Jimmt]

nice game, good graphics. there's potential to make it different from terraria.

[Screem]

Although your game may look like Terraria now, you could still make it different from Terraria, as Jimmt said. Unless of course, you don't want to.

Just please don't make the same mistake Terraria made, which was that once you beat the game, you don't feel like playing anymore unless there's some major update. After basically doing everything possible, me and the friends of whom I was playing Terraria with quickly got bored. Keep this in mind when designing the actual gameplay of WorldOfCubes.

Other than that, it's looking really great so far! Keep developing for this, it seems like you have lots of potential for a fun game here!

[matheus23]

Phew... Gonna reply now...

I just tried it, really well done, runs smoothly on my computer, and sounds like fun !
My only advice, if you want people to play your game, would be to avoid making a Terraria clone for the simple reason that is... it already exits ! (or maybe you want to build a free clone,  )
But I 'm sure your game can become awesome. Keep on with your great work ! 

Same as

Although your game may look like Terraria now, you could still make it different from Terraria, as Jimmt said. Unless of course, you don't want to.

Just please don't make the same mistake Terraria made, which was that once you beat the game, you don't feel like playing anymore unless there's some major update. After basically doing everything possible, me and the friends of whom I was playing Terraria with quickly got bored. Keep this in mind when designing the actual gameplay of WorldOfCubes.

Other than that, it's looking really great so far! Keep developing for this, it seems like you have lots of potential for a fun game here!

Not thought about really "selling" it... Also, yes, of course it looks like terraria right now. The beginning is always the same: You can mine blocks (thats just like Terraria, Minecraft, All other Minecraft 2D's and Infiniminer, Blockworld, and many more games).

The following steps make such kind of games different.
Terraria: You mainly get Armor, weapons and fight with bosses.
Minecraft: You build awesome ... Things... It can be anything.

Now, what is planned for WorldOfCube is tricky to say.
It's planned to add some kind of evolusion. You kind of start with a little tree, a little house, some mining and so on. Now, to make your life awesome, you begin to build awesome machines with ... anything.
You will have a level up system with both mining skills, and weapon skills, maybe even "electronics" skills.

But back to the presence:
TODO-List:
 - Better, Graphical Patcher
 - Working Inventory, making you need to get resources, etc
 - Mining system
    - only mine in a specific radius, make the player look in the direction you mine with the right mouse button too, right now only left works
    - make you need time to mine blocks.
    - add an Item bone to the player, to be able to carry, blocks graphically
    - add kind of a .... erm... thing, which shows you, if you are editing in foreground or background, (currently possible to switch with "F" key. (to see command-line output, start in bash/cmd with "java -Djava.library.path=lib/native -jar WorldOfCube.jar"))
 - Limit gameplay and hacky things, like not being able to die.
 - Things which are mentioned above, and will appear much later.
 - Oh, I forgot the Crafitng system... have to think about that too... maybe you have some Ideas?

Special Quote:

Just please don't make the same mistake Terraria made, which was that once you beat the game, you don't feel like playing anymore unless there's some major update. After basically doing everything possible, me and the friends of whom I was playing Terraria with quickly got bored. Keep this in mind when designing the actual gameplay of WorldOfCubes.

Oh man! Thats the point. It was the point through all the time, developing this game. Yes! you will be able to get much more intresting things to see, with the planet-system. You will be able to get on other planets. It's something, I have to work on later, which will take a lot of time, and keep in mind, planets was the thing I always had in mind, when programming this game. Just take a look at my Blog, the first planet being generated is already SOME time ago...

Lastly, I REALLY love you guys, appreciating my topic That keeps me on developing this game!

(Also, I'm so cracy about the Patcher, working on windows without having it tested... I wrote the Patcher completly "Blind" (!), I love Java   )

[matheus23]

So, I just uploaded the Graphical version of the Updater.

The updater is really not very special. And I won't work much more on that one now. Maybe, if someone want's to draw some nice things about this game... There are some things planned for the Patcher, but I will mainly work on WorldOfCube itself now.

First, klick on "Download", then klick on "Play". Thats all.

Download here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/45530199/Games/WorldOfCube/WorldOfCubePatcher.jar

For more infos, I'll write a Blog Post just now. Just look at my Signature
And, I'm updating the Topic.