Hello and welcome to the thirteenth CardLife DevBlog,
So we have been super busy so I missed the DevBlog last week, so I’ve lots to update you on. Let’s get to it.
Voxel Resolution & Contouring
As I mentioned in the last DevBlog Bryan was investigating ways we can increase the terrain generation. As a result of this we had to go one step back in order to go several steps forward. The one step back was having to reduce the voxel resolution both in the height and the width - as previously we had doubled the number of voxels per card layer in order to remove the visual artifacts we were getting between layers.
This has meant that Ed has spent the last two weeks working on custom contouring which means we can generate the terrain at the lower voxel resolution without any artifacts, as the contouring now assumes that we will always have layers. Fortunately Ed has finished the bulk of this task and we can now move at 10m/s on a low spec machine and not outpace the terrain lodding.
Whilst Ed has been deep in contouring, Brian has been optimising the terrain generation code so we are now very close to putting together a viable launch build which is very promising. Although this will most definitely be post Christmas as most of the team is off over the holidays.
Connect the Dots (CTD)
Aldo has continued his work on the Connect the Dots Crafting system and you can now draw custom shapes and see the creature updating in-game. We have had a lot of fun in the office making some weird and wacky creatures (my favourite being the 8 legged skeleton wolf made by Ed) but there is still a few weeks worth of work left on it. He has now begun to implement the ruleset which defines whether a piece of card is drawn by you or is auto-generated by our ruleset (basically so you don't have to draw every single piece of card).
Player Character, UI and HUD
As I have mentioned previously it’s our goal for you to be able to customise your character at the beginning of the game. As Aldo progresses with the CTD system, we are having to fine tune the auto-generation rules so they are really robust. This has meant Mike has spent some time going back over our player character model in order to make sure it meets our strict criteria. Mike has also been working heavily on the UI in the last few weeks, with the CTD crafting screen, Hotbar and Chat all now textured and ready to be implemented. He’s now begun working on the front end screens which will allow you to select a server and see what servers you have characters on.
World Machine
The main reason I didn’t write a DevBlog last week was because I was deep in World Machine. I have now spent a few weeks experimenting and learning different techniques that will come in handy when I actually make the world. At the moment I have a made a few large example worlds and they are starting to look really good. I have also tested the pipeline between World Machine and Voxel Studio, which meant I could run around and see how the world looks from a character’s perspective - which is very different compared to a bird's eye view. I am really excited about our world and am really looking forward to getting it up and running in CardLife.
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It’s been a really tough but rewarding few months so it’s going to be good for everyone to have a bit of time off over Christmas and then come back in 2017 with renewed vigor. We have had an up and down year, with some setbacks but we have also made some real progress and I think 2017 is the year we are going to see our first big launch for CardLife which I am really looking forward to.
You probably won’t hear from me now until after Christmas as the majority of the team is off on holiday from the end of this week. So I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Cheers,