Hello and welcome to the 24th CardLife DevBlog,
Another week and more progress to share - so let’s get to it:
Founder's Pack
Last week saw the release of our Founder’s Pack giving you the first opportunity to buy the game - if you haven’t seen it you can check it out here. We have been really happy with the reception and the whole CardLife team would like to say a massive Thank You to everyone who has become a Founder - we really appreciate your belief in us at this early stage in the development.
Minor Patch (27)
Unfortunately we don’t have a content patch this week as the entire team has been working on features that are still work in progress (more info on those down below). We have pushed out a minor patch though that fixes a small number of bugs. We should be back to content patches next week - with <fingers crossed> the ability to make your own character.
Tree Billboards
Now that you can cut down trees and harvest their wood, the next part of this system was to add tree billboards. This is a technique that allows us to display trees for vast distances without us taking a major performance hit. It works by essentially taking a screenshot of the tree and then displaying it as a 2D billboard in the distance. This makes a really big difference to the view of the world especially when you’re looking from a high vantage point. So Cian has started to work on this and it is looking really promising.
Digging/Mining VFX
We have spent quite a bit of time looking into how to implement a digging/mining VFX that wraps around the terrain and shows your progress as you dig/mine. Currently in game we are just using a simple circle that expands as you edit the terrain. This is just a placeholder though as the goal is to offer a better visual representation of what you are actually doing i.e. causing the dirt/stone to crack as you hit it. We have made some real progress on this and hopefully it will improve the feeling of the digging/mining. We still have quite a bit to improve in the general terrain but this is a small step in the right direction.
Ongoing Work: CTD Crafting & Hunger
We have started to focus test the CTD crafting internally which is the final test before we push it live. This will allow you to create your own customised player character from the default Boxboy. Hopefully this will be in our next build if all goes well.
We are also making good progress on the Hunger system which is actually encompassing health, stamina and hunger all as one system. This will mean that you can actually die and respawn.
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As always if you have any feedback, questions or comments please feel free to contact us at any of our social portals: Facebook, Twitter and our very own Forums.
Cheers,