Morterra DevLog
Hey everyone!
I've been working on
Morterra for many years now, and have always wanted to share it, so here goes!
I thought of the idea for Morterra between 2005-2010. The idea started off as a world with no rules, where players could fight freely. I originally liked this idea because I had played the game Runescape, and frequently PVPed in the wilderness - an area where you could fight other players, and the winner gets the other player's loot. I loved this concept, but I had always wished the entire world was the wilderness, to make every single action exciting. Eventually I started playing games like Age of Empires and then later Minecraft, and loved the idea of being able to build freely and building defenses to protect yourself.
I also really loved how Runescape and Minecraft were originally available to play on the browser. I thought that games should be played on the browser, since it allows anyone to play from anywhere. So I spent a lot of time learning how to program in order to start building this game.
I couldn't say the exact date when I started developing Morterra, but here's the earliest screenshot I could find:
The screenshot is dated
November 13, 2011. I was working on a Java based 2D application that I would eventually upload as an applet to a website. I was making the mouse movement rotate the image, and arrow keys change the position of the image.
The only coding experience I had at this point was from some Runescape private servers I ran when I was in middle school, so even creating the application window was a milestone to me.
The next screenshot I could find is dated
6/1/2012. You can see part of the login screen, and you can see that I'm testing connections to the server:
My next screenshots are from
7/26/2013 and
8/6/2013. I've got some pictures drawing and have multiplayer (partially) working at this point.
You'll also notice I change the names quite a bit throughout - I never really liked any of them, and eventually came up with Morterra.
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12/26/2013, I had a player sprite, a chat box, and a terrible login screen:
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3/29/2014, I had tested a ton of fake players online at once:
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6/7/2015, I had made a ton of progress. I created items, objects, player equipment, player levels (health, hunger, thirst, etc.), there were now zones (areas for players to build), and you can see I have each object laid out to test functionality. A flag is shown for claiming zones to build on, some boulders for mining, an anvil for smithing items, and plants for food. The sprites are terrible, but I had spent HOURS drawing them in MS Paint & Gimp. I'm obviously not an artist
If you're wondering why the time gap is so spread out, I would only have time to work on Morterra during breaks from school. I would spend a ton of time over the summer & winter breaks working on it.
You'll also notice I finally had found the name "Morterra", which is a combination of the words: "morte" meaning death, and "terra" meaning land. I felt like this was perfectly fitting because the entire world was meant to be a land of death. I had learned that
morterra.com was available, but unfortunately very quickly a squatter had bought it, so I had to come up with a different name temporarily. I ended up waiting a year for the domain the become available
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8/6/2015 I had added karma, player inventory, plants growing, 2D animations, collisions, and keys (for doors and chests):
At this point, school was starting and I wanted to publish the game quickly. I had no HTML/CSS experience so I set up the most basic site I could to include the download link. I had learned at some point that browsers were deprecating Java applet embedding, so the browser based dream had died. Anyways, here is a pic of me creating the basic website to link to the download:
Here are some pics from
8/27/2015 that show horses, and bases. I think this was on the live game, but I'm not sure. The game should have been live by this time.
So I this is where I basically stopped working on Morterra for a while. I let the server run during this time, and would get on to check it occasionally, but the fact that the game wasn't browser based was probably my biggest pullback from continuing improving it. Eventually, I had learned some Node.js and had gained some experience with HTML/CSS/JS. I decided to rebuild the game entirely using Websockets and draw the 2D game to a HTML canvas. It wouldn't take nearly as long this time around, because most of the hard work was done. I simply needed to re-factor the Java code to Javascript, re-do the canvas, and re-do the packet management.
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June 12, 2017, I had most of the canvas rendering completed, sleeping, collisions, equipment, and much more:
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June 29, 2017, I had item pickup, inventory, zones, combat, object interaction, and object placing completed:
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November 1, 2017, the game was live! You can check out this version now at:
Classic Morterra. Keep in mind, there will be plenty of bugs here and there. I've since moved on to 3D, so the classic version is no longer updated!
Moving On: 3D
Once the 2D version was live, I was already on my way to building the 3D version. A new 3D engine was built for 3D rendering called Babylon.js, which I started using to rebuild Morterra. I recruited a long time friend of mine to help, who is quite an artist. He began working on the 3D modelling (which he had never done before), and eventually redoing the 2D sprites and UI.
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November 18, 2018, I had gotten the world rendering, and used white spheres as 3D model placeholders:
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November 19, 2018, we had some object models created:
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December 8, 2018, we had made a ton of progress: animal models, tree models, building object models, UI, fire, and more:
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January 10, 2019, we had object locks, and a basic player model. The player model was decent, but I had tried paying some guy on the internet to make it for us, since my friend didn't have experience with rigging/animations. Unfortunately the guy I paid only made the base model and then quit on us. So we eventually had to hire someone else to build a completely new model, they also didn't complete it, and we had to finish it from there. Don't worry, we are now working on an entirely new model from scratch that is much better
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June 27, 2019, we had gotten the player model rigged with equipment rendering. The game was launched in a very primitive alpha testing version:
A couple of game play screenshots from
July 2019:
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August 14, 2019, we had made a ton of new progress on updates. We added all new metal types and alloy metals, a foundry for collecting and smelting ore, and metal construction objects:
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October 5, 2019, we had revamped the UI:
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November 20, 2019, we added explosive raiding, along with alchemy tables, and new item sprites:
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April of 2020, Morterra has made a ton of improvements. The terrain is now 3D, you can register your account, we've completely redone most of the 3D models, and more:
That's it for now!
We have organically grown an active player base, and we're excited to keep growing! I will keep this log updated as much as possible. I will also try to find some more vintage screenshots, so consider this post a work in progress!
Let me know what you think!
If you want to check the game out:
Morterra - Multiplayer 3D Browser Survival GamePlease let me know any feedback you have!
Thanks for reading!
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