Small suggestions

Heya, I tried your game :smiley: Looks fantastic!

I already built my own house near the sea, amazing how this kind of games can be so amusing =] Nice usage of the bloom filter too, looks lovely.



Just noted a few details that you can easily get rid of and that would make the game feel a bit more finished imho :wink:

The movementspeed on land appears to be dependent on the pitch (if thatā€™s the right one from the top of my head), i.e. looking down slows you down. I suggest you get rid of the y component (.setY(0) when determining what direction to walk (on land of course), followed by a normalization :wink:

The camera is not clamped, so I can view the world upside down. Of course it can be a feature too :stuck_out_tongue: Could you add something like max(min(newCamVertical, -FastMath.PI/2), FastMath.PI/2) to fix it? I feel way more confident if everything stays upright :stuck_out_tongue:



As for stability goes, it seemed that the game crashed when I changed the time a bit (I believe I scrolled down through the night), perhaps you hadnā€™t noticed that bug yet :wink:



Oh, and I love the grass, just feels a bit odd that it sometimes allows me to put a block on top of it hehe :stuck_out_tongue:





I believe you were after making a shader for underwater, would you like me to look into that for you? I think I already implemented something similar today while trying to give the impression of some heat (which by the way was actually pretty awesome). Just specify what it should look like, Iā€™d love to make another shader :wink:



Greetz!

Thanks for the kind words. It can be pretty addictive.



The movement slow down when looking down was on purpose, actuallyā€¦ though Iā€™m still trying to decide if I like it. It always annoyed me that in other games when Iā€™m standing right on a ledge and trying to nudge forward that it still sends me forward at a run even when Iā€™m looking nearly straight down. :wink: I will probably tone it down though because straight down itā€™s pretty ridiculous.



ā€¦mostly I just havenā€™t tweaked that stuff too much as Iā€™m still waiting to see how the networking affects all of that. The clamping is easy it just never bubbled up on my to-do list.



The block stacking isnā€™t very smart at the moment but on the other hand is completely flexible for trying things out. Smarter block placement is high on the to-do list and some of it factors into water that behaves like water, ie: runs down hill.



And yeah, I have a shader for underwaterā€¦ it works ok. Iā€™d like to add a ā€˜planktonā€™ particle effect but that will all get bundled into rain and snow, I think. Caustics would be nice.

Hey there, after enjoying the game yesterday evening I want to give you some suggestions, too:

  • tint glass would be awesome. Yes you told me that the transperency stuff is awful but you could possibly find a way.
  • colored stuff, atm you are limited to build kind of medieval stuff as there are no matierals with a smooth surface and different colors. If that would be available we could build like future city stuff etc. So it would add a large variety of options.
  • user logins, with that you would know how many people play your game and you could add some user roles step by step. One of these roles could be important for your goal to let the user create the ingame content: checking things out and only implement the new stuff after testing it, by a group called moderators or something like that. Otherwise some morons would definalty add stuff to your server wich could get you in trouble hosting that. Of course thats long termed.
  • some automatism to update the game. Like ā€œvā€¦0420 is available, load it for playing on my server!ā€
  • interior stuff like doors, cupboards. All the things making your house a home :wink:
  • signs or similar things to let other ppl things know e.g. ā€œThats my house, donā€™t break anything plsā€
  • a pm system, so you can stay in contact with your buddies even you are online at different times

    well do whatever you want with my thougts for your awesome game, just wanna share it with you :slight_smile:

    regards

    C

Thanks for the suggestions.



ā€œTinted glassā€ is hard because transparency is very order dependent. If you draw the wrong thing first then it makes stuff behind it invisible. I would love to have it but it would really mess things up. As it is now, you cannot see glass through the water from certain anglesā€¦ that was the compromise I had to live with. :slight_smile:



re: colored stuff, etcā€¦ at some time in the future, I plan to officially support alternate texture packs and block type packs. This should make stuff like that easier for a particular server and set of users to implement if they like.



-user logins are comingā€¦ but I havenā€™t really had plans to make a development-oriented collaborative server in the fashion you describe. However, after user databases there will be the concept of claim flags that are issued to the user and allow them to lock a particular area as their ownā€¦ which will at least limit the griefing somewhat.



-interior stuff will be placeables that the user can construct.



-signs are definitely on the to-do listā€¦ as is the ability to carve messages right into the walls.



-a persistent pm system gets tricky and starts to bridge into a forum. Iā€™ll have to think about that.

To start, great job! It runs pretty fast & stable on my box.



I just want to put my two cents in on the suggestions.

Options for configuring controls would be really nice. Some left handed folks like me find the standard w,a,s,d really awkward. Iā€™d like to be able to set the game to use the arrow keys, if at all possible.



Also, it doesnā€™t seem like the anti-aliasing is enabled. I set it for AA in the startup, but in game there is no AA. If what you are shooting for is a higher quality ā€œcrafting & miningā€ game, enabling AA would definitely be one major thing that ā€˜thatā€™ game lacks. 3D without AA is so 90ā€™s.

Itā€™s some incompatibility with the post-processing filters. If you disable them (with F1) then you get AA. Iā€™m just using stock jme post processingā€¦ donā€™t know if this will be fixed or is just an issue with the way post processing is done in general. Things look uglier without post-proc than they do without AA. :slight_smile: ā€¦especially under water.

Well I usually never use AA since I canā€™t see a difference in 1920x1200 anyway (well rarly).

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Hey Paul, three things in my head:


  • concrete and bricks bocks and jersey barricades. so you could make streets and stuff and make some industrial looking buildings.
  • animated fire so you could do some fireplaces in your houses. Iā€™m sure there would be some great miniblock-creations with that, too
  • a rotation block. so if you build a windmill e.g. and put this block between the building and the rotating part with the wings the wingthing would spin. The block could be half red half blue and the blue side would be the static one and the other the spining one. I have no idea if that is possible but that would add an awesome amount of possibilities



    cheerio

This last one is sort of what Iā€™m working on right now. Thatā€™s one of the things I mean when I say ā€œphysicsā€. On one side, itā€™s the ability to make the hot air balloons, boats, etc. float for real. On the other, itā€™s the ability to make big doors, pendulums, large wheels, etcā€¦



Wish me luck. It may turn out to be impossible. :slight_smile:

Nice :slight_smile:

Would be awesome to get that kind of block, you could do so many neat stuff with it.

So, okā€¦ iā€™ll do it wishes Paul luck :smiley:



btw. the water is still strange to build with and to build in itā€¦ Would be a big step forward giving it some kind of real water behaviour, too.