next »

[PsySal]

Ahh! That's what I missed! How can I talk to the lady at the start? When I started the game she said something but it wasn't too obvious how I could talk to her. I remember trying to activate when I first ran back to the ship.

I will play again and let you know any further impressions! Again, awesome work =)

[SolarLune]

@PsySal - Clicking on the woman will talk to her.

I just tried it out, and it seems pretty cool. The graphics were solid, and I like the world so far. Okay, so here's my contribution.

I ran north to find the boat, but it didn't seem like I was coming to any water - is the boat rather far from the ship (or did I not run north)?

Also, I tried equipping an item and attacking with the left mouse button, but nothing was happening. My character was definitely holding the weapon item (both the knife and the flashlight), but didn't attack with it. Do I have to be in a certain mode for it to work?

Q and E did execute a quick-roll, but not all of the time - it seems like I can only quick-roll if I'm holding a weapon...?

I would suggest a button or something to lock the mouse to 'look' mode, so that I don't have to hold down the right mouse button all of the time to look around. Maybe it could be reversed (or there could be an option to reverse it)? Without holding the right-mouse button, I look around, and if I hold it, I can click on something to pick it up or interact with it?

Anyway, great work so far!

[zede05]

SolarLune: The "boat" is a "lifeboat," it's what they call the spaceship they came down on, the one north should be straight north from the crash site. Left mouse should do attack unless the object equipped isn't a weapon (shovel, for instance). And we're still messing around with the controls of the "F" camera, put press f and see how you like that camera for now.

[zede05]

We've been working towards alpha 0.2 the past week. It should be out next Friday. The reaction to Alpha v0.1 so far has been great. We even had an article on PCGamer's site. Many people have been very helpful in helping us trouble shoot everything. As of now, there have been over 10,000 downloads. There are about 4500 who's signed on and loaded the game...some of them probably didn't get it to run though due to an older gpu.

Stuff for Alpha v0.2

- rewrote a lot of AI code, now it's more streamlined and efficient, AI will behave better
- remade the character customization area
- added in the male character with 3 changes of costume
- adding in 3 more npc characters with dialogue and story
- added a few more areas to explore, including 5 more cave systems and 2 locations
- adding in a fire bear...but the effects are screwing up at the moment
- adding in a few other animals
- added in collision for trees
- adding in sounds for a lot of things
- optimized saving so it saved everything and allowed players to save and load
- adding in the treasure box mechanism
- fixed a lot of bugs

I'll have some images in a couple of days.

[zede05]

Hey all, now alpha v0.2's available:

http://www.indiedb.com/games/planet-explorers/downloads/planet-explorers-alpha-v02

This version was a real pain in the butt to get out, since we moved around so many things. As we get closer to having a working terrain LOD system, we're beginning to see how that will affect so many different sectors in the game, from AI behavior to world editor. So we basically slowed down work on several aspects of the game until LOD gets implemented.

Still, this version does have some new stuff, including a working character customization area and a male character(which was also a giant pain).

Av0.3 will be the biggie though, lots of things planned for that build, including lod, creations system, multiplayer, range weapons, water physics...the likes. 

[zede05]

It's been a while since the last update. We've been really busy. Really.

We're getting really close to having voxel level of detail, allowing us to do 1.3km view distance. It'll be rather painful after that though, since we'll have to adjust everything to the new view distance.

We've added in NPC partners, there can be a max of 2. It's actually quiet fun having partners, we're trying to teach them strategy at the moment, like surrounding an enemy or aiding the player. We've also almost finished up with the basic Creations System, right now, the player can make pretty much any sword type weapon he wants.





We've also added in range weapons, only the bow and arrow so far, but it's adding some nice variety to the game play.



The next alpha build should be out in 2 weeks, good luck to us, haha.

[SolarLune]

Cool! The weapon creation system looks cool, as well. Is there some kind of limit on how many blocks / how large your weapon can be? Otherwise, why wouldn't you create a huge sword?

That bow and arrow looks cool, too. Any particular idea of the types of weapons that would be available (i.e. beam, projectile, gun, etc) and how they'll differ from one another?

[zede05]

Cool! The weapon creation system looks cool, as well. Is there some kind of limit on how many blocks / how large your weapon can be? Otherwise, why wouldn't you create a huge sword?

That bow and arrow looks cool, too. Any particular idea of the types of weapons that would be available (i.e. beam, projectile, gun, etc) and how they'll differ from one another?

The largest weapon can only be 1X1X2 meters. The weapons' attack numbers are dependent on the type of material and the amount of materials. However, the calculation is based on a curve, so it will reach a point of limited returns at a certain point. That'll hopefully cut down on people just making a giant block...

As for range weapons...hmm, everything you listed is in. We're hoping to get some simple guns into the creation system by alpha 0.3 as well.

[Pineapple]

this game is really cool

[zede05]

Here's a screen of our voxel level of detail system. It's been pretty math intensive to get to this point, and we're still wading through transvoxels to correct the seams. This shot is of 1km in view distance, once everything's optimized (and if we ever figure out transvoxels), we could probably get away with 2-3km view distance at a playable framerate (right now this image was at around ~20fps).

[peous]

nice !
but do you plan to show animals/trees at 2-3 km ? if not, this could lead to an "empty" background after 500m ?

[zede05]

The empty background problem will be there for sure, we'll tweak it but I don't think we'll be able to get vegetation beyond ~400m. Same for animals. With animals, there are actually 2 problems going against it. First being render lod, we'll need to make several models for each animals as well as rig/animate differently for each level, that'll take time. Then, there's the collision, the further out we extend terrain collision, the more drawcalls it'll take. There's a hack to solve this, which is to make the animals float above ground beyond the collision...but again, it comes back to drawcalls and fps.

[zede05]

A couple more swords made from the creation system. This system is getting pretty powerful, I think people will be pleasantly surprised by the amount of options.

[peous]

how does the system exactly works ? Is there some kind of in-game editor that lets you define these shapes ?

[Scott]

Hm? Where did this come from?! Looking forward to watching where this goes.

[zede05]

how does the system exactly works ? Is there some kind of in-game editor that lets you define these shapes ?

You use the resources that you gather or replicate and build the weapon/tool/vehicle much like how you build a house in the game. Then you export it to the real game world and use it as an item.

[zede05]

Some screens from alpha 0.3. We hit a few memory bugs that causes crashes, but otherwise all systems are getting greener, we're still on track to come out sometimes in the next several days. The lighting and the terrain texture distribution have been really improved. 

[Quarry]

That light shader is helluva drug

[zede05]

And alpha v0.3 is here! Woo! You can get it here: http://www.indiedb.com/games/planet-explorers/downloads/planet-explorers-alpha-03

Really long change list:

- LOD 1km view distance voxel terrain
- AI coding structure change
- New grassland species
- New enemy attack behaviors
- Species will attack each other
- Some species will not attack player unless attacked
- New adventure terrain map
- 5+ new materials
- small Forest demo area
- 3 more NPCs with another mission from the main storyline
- 10+ new FX
- Female back in
- Hair changing
- New armor sets
- Creation system (weapons)
- Range weapon (bow and arrow)
- Mission guidance
- Day/night cycle
- Random NPCs with random missions
- NPC partners
- Using the ctrl key to drag horizontal when building with voxels
- Trading system involving meat
- Simple multiplayer coop tower defense map
- Autorun (middle mouse to start and stop)

Geez, I can't believe how much we got done in the last 3 months. I'm still not sure how multiplayer will turn out in this version since we only have 1 server up and it can probably only handle 4-5 games at the same time. Here are some screens. Forest!













Next up is random multiplayer adventure maps and versus maps plus more all nighters. 

[zede05]

After getting some sleep, I finished the trailer for alpha 0.3: