Hello everyone!

A ton of stuff was accomplished today. My goal today was to merge the inventory and the chunk systems and make them work flawlessly together. I'm happy to say that that plus a few more things were accomplished.

For some reason, when I opened the inventory project for the first time in several months, it was a bit bugged - some of the scripts were messed up. I'm not entirely sure how, but I fixed them. After not working on the inventory system for so long, I forgot how many of the components of the system worked, so I had to refresh my memory by looking at all of the scripts. Once the scripts were fixed I optimized the inventory system by stopping it from loading the inventory files every tick (which is very heavy on the performance). I still think that it can be optimized further, but it's fine for now.

After the optimizations, I imported all of the chunk scripts/objects into the inventory project. For any long-time readers, you may recall that in March I created an object-based block system. So, when I imported the chunk system, I had to program the inventory system to be able to handle the tile-based block system. It all works flawlessly now, with tiles having the same capabilities as the object-based blocks. The only object-blocks that cannot be converted to tiles are interfaces: chests, furnaces, etc. I still need to work on being able to save those.

• Basic world generation based around quadratic interpolation
• Saving, loading, and creating chunks
• Six different methods of block/chunk lighting
• Placing/breaking blocks within chunks
• Full integration with the existing block system as well as integration with the inventory system
• Collisions with tiles
• Chunkloaders
• Inventory optimizations
• Item rarities

Until next month everybody!

Hello everyone!

This is the post that was meant for yesterday... I'll post again today. Sorry! Today I completed full interaction with the tiles so that they seem like regular blocks. The player can now collide with the tiles like any other blocks. This was a bit tricky because I had to play around with the bbox object variables, which deal with the collision mask. However, I've noticed that its had some impact on performance, but not really a noticeable impact. I've sent copies of the game to several people to test its performance on their computers. 

Other than finishing the collisions, I've also been making modifications to the inventory system, and I've noticed a few bugs and a huge flaw in the way it was made. The inventory opens and checks the ini files that store its information every tick of the game. For those that don't know, checking files isn't a light task. The chunk system saves/loads from its files whenever you leave/enter a new chunk. That's how the inventory should be - it should save when an inventory is closed and loaded when an inventory is opened. There's no need for it to update every tick. This has a serious impact on performance, and fps can drop below a hundred. I don't think a full rewrite will be necessary, but I will rewrite the portions of the inventory system that need to be rewritten. It's still a very flexible system but it needs optimizations for it to be the optimal system in the new Crevis, which is centered around performance.

Until next time (later today)!

Hello everyone!

The chunk system is pretty much done. Right now, I'm working on optimizing the system, and I've been having some troubles, hence why I have not posted in a few days. The game starts off completely lag-free, and as time goes on the fps tanks. This is most likely due to a memory leak or something of the sort, and I'm still trying to fix it. It's definitely not an issue with the way I'm handling chunkloading, because I'm sure using ds_grids is the fastest way to do something like this. Other than working on optimizations I've also been prepping the chunk system for the move over to the engine, because I've been working on the chunk system on a separate project. Part of preparation was getting textures slapped onto those blocks. I still have to add foliage but it looks pretty good so far.

I have also completed several scripts that are key to collisions with tiles:

tile_check
tile_place_meeting

If any are familiar with GameMaker's language GML, these two scripts act like the function place_meeting. Overall, I'm very happy with the progress I've made this month on the chunk system, and hopefully next month I can fully integrate the system and start creating biomes.

Until next time!

Hello everyone!

Today I perfected the tile_create and tile_destroy scripts, and now they work properly! I have also made a few more scripts in preparation for the move back to the actual game project. A cool fact about the create and destroy scripts is that I can create and destroy tiles in an unloaded chunk! This allows for many different possibilities, and I can't wait to put it to use.

Not only did I perfect the create and destroy scripts, but I also fully implemented block lighting (Mytino's engine)!

The lighting works flawlessly. Now, I'm optimizing the system and then I will port it to the base game. In addition to the lighting and various scripts, I also created chunkloaders. Chunkloaders follow specific objects and load the chunks that they are in. This makes it easy to load the chunks around multiple players.

​Until next time!

Hello everyone!

​I made a video outlining the chunk system and explaining how it works and the issues I currently have with it, complete with commentary.

Until next time!

Hello everyone!

After several days of working on the base scripts for this task, today I finally was able to implement them into the chunk loading system. These scripts took quite a while to figure out, and I didn't post anything about them because I didn't deem them worthy enough for a dedicated post, hence why there were no posts in the last few days. If you want daily Crevis updates, make sure to follow me on Twitter.

In the gif, you can see that chunks are created, saved, and unloaded when the player leaves them. When the player re-enters those chunks, they are the same. Chunks in Crevis are stored in .grid files, which store block data for a specific chunk. I plan to utilize .grid files for randomly generated structures as well. I still need to figure out how to save instances within the world, and I think I have some ideas.

Until next time!

Hello everyone!

My friends, family and I have recently built a new computer, and during the past few days I have been getting settled with the new setup - installing all of my software, transferring files, and configuring various utilities. Development will proceed tomorrow. 

​Until next time!

Hello everybody!

I have successfully finished the base terrain generation. Have a look!

With the help of forum user NicoFIDI, we managed to get quadratic interpolation working! However, I have switched to cosine interpolation because it is a bit smoother. The procedural generation follows the steps I outlined in the previous post: points are generated, connected, and filled. I am now working on chunks and making sure that the generation smoothly transitions from chunk to chunk. I'm very happy with the result - everything can be customized, from the peak of the mountains to the rigidness of the terrain.

​Until next time!

Hello everyone!

Instead of boring myself with the save and load chunk functions, I focused on procedural generation! A seed is selected in the beginning of the game, and it can be used to reproduce generation. Let's talk about how I plan for the generation to work, and what I have completed so far.

The generation will be done by creating a set of random points within the chunk (figure 1). These points will then be connected by a formula (figure 2). I am currently using the line formula to interpolate the points, but in the future ease curve functions will be used (figure 3).

​

As you can see in figure 1, 5 points have been generated. The first point generates roughly around sea level, while the other points rise above it. This can be set within the biome properties. The next few pics will show how these points can transform into beautiful procedural terrain.

Lastly, here's are the ease curves I was talking about (smoother interpolation between the initial random points).

This all may seem well and done when I write it and all, and I know that actions speak louder than words and that I tend to speak a lot about what I have planned. Here's a screenshot of it in action... the only thing I have done right now is the random point generation (still getting familiar with manipulating the grid).

Until next time!

Hello everybody!

It feels great to be back into a consistent development schedule after so long. Let's take a look at the schedule and see where we're at. When I paused development, we were around a month ahead of the development schedule. Sadly, we are now two months behind schedule, which puts the first release in December 2017. Now, many of the development 'phases' can be completed faster than what I had marked down, and hopefully the release can happen a bit earlier. Now that I'm back, let's look at where we left off: the world/chunk system.

"we're two months behind schedule."

The issues with the last version of Crevis mainly comprised of performance and lack of control over the world generation. There was no method of saving chunks or unloading a chunk, and therefore when a new chunk was created fps would tank. This quite literally broke the game along with the abysmal inventory system. On top of the fact that chunks could not be unloaded, instances were used as blocks. For those that don't know, instances are essentially interactive objects. Most of the blocks in Crevis are static images, making the use of instances quite redundant. The new chunk system boasts the use of tiles, which run much faster than instances. The new chunk system will also allow for complete control of saving and loading chunks, and much more power over how chunks are generated and how biomes are handled.

"The new chunk system boasts the use of tiles, which run much faster than instances."

In the old chunk system, biomes would be confined to a certain chunk. At the start of every chunk, there would be a rigid switch to the next biome, and it felt very unnatural. Now, biomes are confined within a randomly generated length. Generation can also be reproduced with a seed.

Today, I created a single chunk with all of its block data stored to a grid. It randomly selects 0 or 1 for each cell of the grid (0 being no block and 1 being a block). Blocks are represented by green squares. In the gif, the script is ran every step of the game, generating a new set of blocks every tick. Block data can easily be saved and loaded. In the future, instead of just 1 representing a block, IDs of blocks can be used to draw the sprite of the block. All I have to do now is figure out how to load specific chunks when the player moves into them. I hope you enjoyed this fairly lengthy post.

​Until next time!