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[Storsorgen]

I'm excited for this like nobodies business!

[Graham-]

You won my heart at,

[Graham-]

I don't care which order the games came in either. Nor that they all use blocks in some way.
Dwarfcorp has it's awesome pixel art with 2d sprites and focus on dwarves.
That makes it stand out compared to Stonehearth and Timber and Stone which look pretty alike with their voxel approach.

I think that with pixel art Dwarfcorp has an edge when it comes to details like crafting, since you can have detailed icons for everything and small graphics like the archery practice targets.

Right but people will still compare. The rule of marketing is to prove why you are better than the competition. If you want people to love your work a good step to take is to care about how they will perceive it. Thinking about sales is a part of the art form. Communicating ideas is important. Image is a part of that. It's just ugly to think about if you're not used to it, or don't like it.

It doesn't matter how many people call you a copy-cat on the street. What matters is how many people who would love your game actually try your game because you pushed it in the right way. Just something to think about. We can only choose to release something into society or not. We don't get to choose which society that is, or how it is structured.

[Vitali Kirpu]

Y'all can't handle my wooden structures

Your water gives me *****. Nice!

[Pineapple]

Your water gives me *****. Nice!

Back off, slut.

[Graham-]

you can all have sex with the water. that's why there is so much of it. good thing computers can generate things. yeah. that feels goood.

[JobLeonard]

You'd better make sure we all get our fill...

[BleakProspects]

I noticed that if you alt-tab out of the terrain generator while its running, a weird threading issue causes the terrain to get warped and distorted (there are Nans and stuff in the erosion and height maps). I tried running on one of these bugged maps, and it looks like this:



I should also note that it was *LOUD* here because the ocean was pouring into caves on the sides of the terrain.

[Pineapple]

You'd better make sure we all get our fill...

What the hell is Sokka doing in that gif

[Seiseki]

Awesome, will we be able to upgrade the balloon to an airship for more space? :D

[JobLeonard]

@BleakProspects: I love glitched procedural generation. About the sounds, maybe put a cap on max number being triggered?

@_Madk: it's a joke about a joke linking the two Avatar series together.

.

[BleakProspects]

I decided it would be best to start the player with a simple balloon port at the beginning of the game. This present some challenges since the player can spawn anywhere (even in the middle of the ocean or on top of a mountain). Our current solution is to build a big, flat platform out of wood at the start of the game and spawn a balloon there. It then extends down so that it evenly covers any terrain it is on. This is not a complete solution. If the player spawns on edge of a mountain, for instance, the wooden scaffolds for the balloon port will extend all the way from the top of the mountain to the valley floor below. Similarly, if the player spawns in the ocean, the scaffolds extend all the way down to the bottom of the ocean. At least the player will get a lot of free wood in these cases!

[gimymblert]

If you are using "noise pass" to generate the terrain, why don't u use a "customize gradient" around the start point to generate the world?

[BleakProspects]

To further separate the look of DwarfCorp from other games, I've decided to redo the way grass voxels are displayed. Rather than having a single grass tile on top, with a grass "overhang" on the sides, I've made several grass transition tiles which are displayed on the *top* of the tiles and then, depending on how the voxels "ramp", I set the top texture to the appropriate transition tile. In my opinion, it looks much better!



There are still a few bugs with the ramps, so I think I might replace my entire system with something like one which is described in this wonderful post so that I can also put the transitions wherever the grass borders non-grass tiles.

Looks fairly interesting on mountains as well:

[Kurt]

The one thing that sorta bothers me is that the ramps scale on the sides and it looks odd. What if you only draw half the texture instead of scaling it?

[BleakProspects]

The one thing that sorta bothers me is that the ramps scale on the sides and it looks odd. What if you only draw half the texture instead of scaling it?

Just happened to be easier in code. I agree that I should just cut it off -- especially now that its just dirt and I don't need to worry about the location of the grass line.

EDIT: just for you, I fixed the problem Kurtss

[gimymblert]

it looks fantastic

[Kurt]

The one thing that sorta bothers me is that the ramps scale on the sides and it looks odd. What if you only draw half the texture instead of scaling it?

Just happened to be easier in code. I agree that I should just cut it off -- especially now that its just dirt and I don't need to worry about the location of the grass line.

EDIT: just for you, I fixed the problem Kurtss

That looks so much better 

[JobLeonard]

It looks great! I do wonder if it would make more (visual) sense for very shallow slopes to have continuous grass.

[Graham-]

I kind of like this idea. It's obviously more work. There can be good reasons other than that not to.