My Summer Project

Chests are in, and complete.

Contents of a chest. I was just clicking and moving things around, separating stacks and such.

I know this is just me lacking confidence in my abilities, but I feel nervous about these chests. I think it is because they came together so easily. I expected it to be difficult, but it was pretty simple. I guess when the playtesters get their hands on it we will know how well I did. Everything seems to work great though. Inventory stuff is just nerve-racking; as I've seen the wrath of gamers when something disappears from their inventory, lol.

ADDED: Grass now grows on the topmost surface of dirt above the base level every morning at the break of dawn.
ADDED: Grass will not grow in the icelands or below the surface. A special item will be added that will allow this.

Not being able to read the quantity of items was driving me mad, so I went off to fix it.

Still have to do that for the chest items, and the crafting items, but that will only take a few minutes.

ADDED: The game tries to add a few trees every morning at the break of dawn.
BUGFIX: Trees should no longer spawn overlapping an existing tree.

Trees no longer are destroyed block by block. They have a scaled pool of hitpoints based on the trees height and the hardiness of the wood. Whack anywhere on that tree enough times and it will explode into a shower of blocks.

Before I started chopping.

Just after the tree exploded and blocks started to fall to earth.

When I draw them up, trees will have different leaves based upon the height of the tree and the region the tree lives.

Much like the TIMBER! mod, but built-in!

NNIICCEE!!!!

Terraria does it a similar way as well. It is just so much more user friendly than having to break down each block individually. It also works anywhere on the tree, even if you move up or down to a different part of the tree and don't always hit the same block.

Added the cleaned up quantity text to the rest of the necessary sections. I'm windowed so the screenshot doesn't grab the mouse pointer, but it is at the floating set of 14 stones there. I'm debating on drawing something behind the held blocks to make them pop out from what they are hovering over a bit more. Some blocks blend in and it is a bit hard to see what you are holding.

Just put a little shadow around it.

I was thinking something along those lines.

Doors are now in the game and work as expected. If you place the door to the left of the player, the closed door is on the left side of its block. Click to the right and its outward face is right.

Closed. The door is solid, and you can not walk through it.

Open. The door is no longer a solid, and you can pass through as usual.

You don't break the door down by hitting it directly, but by digging out the block above or below it. This way, hits don't cause the door damage. You can only place the door if there is a solid block above and below it, and if either of those blocks get removed, the door despawns into an item.

EDIT: On a less critical note, trees can now have various types of foliage based on the trees height and location, and even a random factor. Just have to make all the different textures.

Also, a whole bunch of item icons / spawned icons were reworked and improved. New recipes added.

EDIT2: I've been told the open door is confusing as it also looks like it is a closed door. What I might try is lowering the opacity so it becomes partially see through. I can't remove the texture completely as if the door is open there is no way to tell a door exists at that location. I think making it a bit see through when open will do the trick.

We are getting close to the point I will feel comfortable releasing the early exploration alpha.

I need to populate six more zones, get the base ores in, the recipes for upgraded items in, and make the basic animation for the upgraded weapons / tools. I'm going to redo all the animations for those to get ready for adding player / monster combat, but that can come after.

So, basically, I need to create a bunch of tile textures and add them, and then you guys can have at exploration / bug testing. Don't expect much more than Minecraft Indev type stuff. The action part of action / adventure will come later, along with performance improvements, polish, etc.

If its not too big I can try to help with some testing.