Tyron

Vintarians-To-Be Nothing significant happened game dev wise as expected My ongoing period of low activity will continue for another 5 days, I can hardly await to finally be able to binge type some game code again. I did solve a some administrative and interopability issues though, which means the release should only be days away now. The online shop is pretty much done and configured to automatically generate a game key on successful purchase. There will be also a VIP Addon which will give a perk or two, but it's mostly there for anyone who wants to support the game beyond buying a normal game account. There is one more thing I would like to have before the release - which is a code signed installer, at is it might eliminate some issues with downloading or installing the game. If Comodo is quick enough to deliver my code signing certificate, I will include it in the official release. In any case, I will probably put the game up for sale within the coming 7 days. Updates New high-res app icon for the game as well as the model creator Topsoil blocks are now displayed more correctly in the inventory (still not quite right though) Added some code to worldgen to allow for sub-landforms, which should help create a greater variety of biomes in the future. View full record

Crepuscular Vintarians! Another epic graphics update v0.9 Pre-Release 7 is now online for all owners of a game key If you see no big news from Vintage Story in the coming two weeks, don't worry, I'm probably still alive ;-) I will be having a voluntary period of low activity and instead spend some more time with my family. In any case, here are todays... Updates / Tweaks Added a god rays shader pass to create beautiful light shafts during daytime. Elegantly attenuates when looking away from the sun and with some extra intensity boost during dawn and dusk. I would actually like to see them also when looking away from the sun, during the nights and have it more constrained to very bright light sources, but it would require more shader tech and tweaking, so that'll be for another time. Added a rather hackish solution so that the grassy sides of the topsoil blocks are only climate tinted. This restores the classic brown on dirt blocks - something our lead artist has been impatiently awaiting for months ;-) Allow jump while sneaking Bloom tweaks: Lava and ember blocks now glow as well. Added a block-wide glow level. Glowing elements no longer so intensely bright during daytime. Added some more documentation to the server API Mushrooms, Torches and Firepits a bit larger in the inventory. Torch glow particles decrease in size over time. Bugfixes The 4 backpack slots can no longer non-backpack items (backpacks don't exist yet though) Fixed clouds no longer visible Fixed game speed not saved with world Fixed several issues with shaders for certain players which resulted in a black screen when a game was running View full record

Bloomy Vintarians! Fanciness increased to Level 2 v0.9 Pre-Release 6 is now online for all owners of a game key Yesterday I spent the major part of the day implementing a shader bloom effect and even got it all working by evening. What an impressive effect, it makes everything so pretty *_* However if bloom is not your cup of tea you can reduce or disable it easily in the graphics setttings. Let's have a look at the full list of... Updates Bloom Shader effect Added a glowiness level to particles and individual element faces of blocks to make them glow. Freely configurable for all blocks as always. Should allow for some epic Tron-Style Mods Updated the VS Model Creator to allow entering of glow levels for each block element face Added a switch in the graphics settings to enable/disable bloom calculations for performance. It's not very hard on the graphics card though. My cranky old GT 630M card gives me 53 FPS with bloom and 60 FPS without. Added a slider in the gfx settings to set the ambient bloom between 0% and 200% Worldgen Doubled the size of the climate map, which results in the emerging biomes now being twice the size We finally have Deserts. I found the bug that prevented them from generating. Saguaro Cacti are now generating in deserts. Also the cactus has an occasional flower now Fixed Trees generating in the wrong climate Added rotated logs Changing the GUI Scale in the graphics settings is now much faster The game installer now offers to uninstall the game in order to prevent old files messing up the game somehow Strafing while running now half as fast Changed grass blending (now more smooth over distance) Leaves and Branchy leaves blocks are now tinted by the climated. The branches are now a cross model inside the branchy leaves block. Bugfixes Fixed a client crash during game startup for some people Probably fixed an old and rare client crash (that showed the message "Chunk has no data?"). With that, all crashes known to me should be fixed \o/ Fixed massive gpu memory leak because I forgot to enable 3 lines of code after testing something >.< Probably fixed certain mouse wheels jumping 2 hotbar slots Probably fixed all scrollbars moving slower than the mouse for some people Fixed pressing inventory key not closing an opened inventory Fixed some flower stem graphics too dark Fixed some minor memory leaks in some of the GUI elements Multiplayer Fixed player no longer able to move around on the second time joining a multiplayer server Fixed Teleport not working in multiplayer Fixed one more instance of the game crashing instead of showing the disconnected screen View full record

Fellow Vintarians v0.9 Pre-Release 5 is online for all owners of a game key I have sent out the first few free game keys to a number of youtubers as well as a few other people. If you are a Youtuber with a decent subscriber count feel free to contact me and I'll probably send you a free game key. Since the game is officially in the hands of others now, I will change the format of my news articles to always include the version number and notable bugfixes. Updates The account manager is complete. It now also allows downloading of the game. \o/ The game now ships with XML Documentation for the Server Mod API Two example server mods are now available as open source project at https://github.com/tyronx/vsmodexamples Added cobblestone slabs Significantly improved readability/crispness of many texts in the game, especially when using a GUI Scale smaller than 8 Added player names above the players head for multiplayer. Fixes Fixed many collision and selectionboxes not being correctly applied to blocks. Fixed some networking weirdness that sometimes prevents the player to leave a multiplayer world Fixed some instances where the client crashes instead of showing a "disconnected from server" screen Adding npcs no longer crashes the game View full record

Fellow Vintarians! Could have worked some more on the game but my hands were not agreeing Updates Lo-Phi has joined our cause to make music! He already made two excellent first tracks and two days ago we've signed a contract that should ensure long term collaboration. This is going to take our game to a whole new level. Nearly completed the game account manager. The site now let's you log in securely, change your password and player name and sends you a password reset email if you've forgotten your password. Still missing is account creation from a given game key. I've also integrated a "Forgot Password?" and "Account" button in the game that redirect you to the account manager site. Sounds so simple but it actually required a lot of things: Had to buy and configure a Wildcard SSL Certificate - this is what creates the secure connection (https) for the account manager and now also for the game client, so nobody can steal your password especially over wifi Input validation: Need to ensure no duplicate playernames, correct lengths of playernames and passwords, etc. Anti Brute Force Login - Protection against people guessing your password with trying every possible combination: The account manager now shows a re-captcha after 3 failed logins and the game client login slows down the login attempts to once every 2 minutes if there were failed logins for 10 times. Setting up email sending, the webspace, the subdomains, etc. Saraty redid some of the last unlicensed textures we had and also made a fantastic new cobblestone texture. There is always room for improvement and more additions but texture wise the game is pretty much ready for a first release. View full record

Thanks for the suggestion, easing would surely be nice but i wouldn't know how I could make that work smoothly with the current lighting system. It would need to redraw 1-27 chunks (32x32x32 blocks) many times per second which would probably lag the game

Dedicated Vintarians! The polishing continues Probably the best news of the month is that we now a (so far) glitch free colored lighting system. We also worked heavily on terrain generation again. Updates I have finally fixed the last known lighting glitches related to the colored light system. As mentioned in an earlier article I was unable to make it work in certain cases which was super frustrating, so now I'm all the more happier to finally see it working and no longer something that I have to touch until release. You can see it in action here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0_M4b9_1TQ Block Updates New block: Added 10 Paintings that you can hang on walls and which depict Saratys Art \o/ New mushroom variant: Bolete mushroom New flower variants: We've added Wild Daisys and Cornflowers New config: Any Block can now be individually be configured to be randomly offseted when placed in the world (currently used for tall grass, flowers, saplings and mushrooms). This now also affects the blocks selection box. New config: Individual elements of a block can now be tinted by climate. This is used to climate color the flowers stems, but not their petals. Looks massively better \o/ WorldGen Updates New Subsystem: Shrub Generator. Generates small shrubby trees only composed of leaves. Uses it's own shrub layer independent from the forest layer. New Subsystem: Vines Generator. Generates columns of vines on trees in wet climates Added several new tree generators for greater variety Added several new kinds of block patches to the 'Block Patch Generator': Now places single cornflowers and wild daisys, mushrooms in very small groups and heathers, western gorse flower and horsetails rarely in very large groups Some more balancing on the individual landforms Tweaked block layer generator some more, I could finally see something sandy and desert like appear Inventory Convenience Update: Can now use left shift + mouse click to move items between inventories (e.g. from creative inventory to hotbar) Half broken blocks now slowly repair themselves (with a backwards running breaking animation) In the create world screen you can now enter a world seed I've begun work on a 'Game Account Platform' - a website where you will be able to log in with your game account, change your player name or password as well as assisting you when you forgot your password. Another dozen bugfixes as always Screenshots All these screenshots are from procedurally generated terrain, no hand placed blocks (except the first 2 pics obviously) View full record

Most patient Vintarians! Game dev is like a roller coaster No video just yet Everytime I want to get recording I notice a gazillion imperfections that I want to fix, so I did those first >.< Until next time hopefully. Saraty and me had our very first usable multiplayer experience and built a small house together (picture below). Still more bugs to squash but that felt totally awesome <3 Alright, let's dig into the git commit log to see what has changed. Updates So I did a lot of polishing, well mostly bugfixes. I usually don't share these, but this time I'll give you a behind the scenes look: Fixed chunks generating twice under certain conditions Fixed a water wave rendering glitch at chunk borders Fixed 2 bugs preventing the standalone server to start Fixed particles wrongly colored from block light and fixed transparent overlapping particles getting very dark. Fixed player characters not illuminated by block light and also fixed precision errors when rendering the character at large coordiantes Fixed Chunk frustum culling being disabled -.- Fixed FXAA not working Fixed /help (cmd) command not recognizing mod commands. .help commands now also sorted alphabetically. Fixed worldgen mod not reloading landforms on server restart Fixed memory not being freed after leaving a multiplayer game Fixed snow layer replacing leaves during world generation Fixed snow layer not rendering if a solid block is above Fixed changing game mode in multiplayer not correctly interpreted by the connected clients Chests and Ladders now have correct collision and selection boxes and are orientable (n e s w) Fixed chunk loader suddenly stopping to generate new chunks after some time. Added another debug command to track such kinds of bugs. Refactored Multilanguage support Fixed not being able to climb out of 2 block deep water Added red mushroom block Worldgen Updates Added a block patch generator that can produce patches of flowers, different grass, mushroom rings, and later hopefully some smaller patches of sand and gravel near lakes. Tweaked climate tinting textures to be a bit more pretty Continued work on block layer generation: Works a bit better again, tweaked the grass layer, still not seeing any sandy deserts for some reason. Tweaked landform generator: Mountains and Grasslands probably look better now Sound and sound engine updates: Refactored the sound engine. The old code was super frustrating for me so I finally went ahead and refactored it. The code is now way cleaner and shorter too. Changing the sound level in the settings now also adjusts all currently running sounds. Blocks can now have randomized breaking, placing and stepping-on sounds again freely configurable by anyone. I've spent a day collecting and editing various sounds for the most common blocks. Added about 50 new sounds to the game. Most of them are decent, some need improvement still Small fun features Each time you you open the "new world" screen, a world name is randomly generated (e.g. "Gloomy Kingdom Worlds") Breaking blocks in creative mode also spawns particles All block sounds now also have a slightly randomized pitch, which sounds super funky. Maybe too funky for our theme Gallery This time with some random terrain screenshots, maybe you'll notice the improvements. View full record

Mighty Vintarians The Progress never stops. Boring text is boring I'll try to record a video or two this weekend to give ya' all an overview on how the game looks like now. That should hopefully be a bit more exhilerating than my constant walls of text Updates The building blocks in the game received some extra love Doors, the carpenters table and the sign block can now be placed in any 4 directions. All the torches properly attach to walls, emit colored particles, and they can no longer be attached to non-solid block sides Added upside down slabs We've added brick blocks and improved the textures for Sand, Gravel, and Shingles All the stair blocks (planks, shingles, cobble) are now correctly, which means they have correct collision boxes and can be placed in 4 directions each up and down side. We now have "wildvine ends" that give a nice looking end to the vines. Also fixed wildvines being wrongly shaded and wrongly biome colored. Did I already mention we can now generate 2x2 thick trees (all trees are made by the same generator)? Finalized the flower pot, which now can hold any flower or sapling. It's my second favorite block after the lantern *_* Saraty still plans to make separate potted flower graphics to they fit nice and neat into the pot. I've failed hard on trying to fix a lighting glitch when using coloured lights. I will have to refactor to a slightly simpler system. I'm currently using the HSV color space which seems impossible to get right, so probably will use RGB lights. RGB lights have a small glitch on their own, but a much less noticable one. The particle system got 2 new properties: OpacityEvolve and SizeEvolve. With those I could make some quite nice smoke particles for the fire pit that increase in size and fade out over time. Freely configurable in each block as always. Spent 3 hours finding a flipped -/+ sign that was causing block side shading glitches Many bugfixes and minor tweaks and additions (/help alphabetically sorted, .clearchat clears the chat history, reloading shaders ingame now tells if an error happened, block particle colors now in HSV space). Multiplayer should work a bunch better again. Some weird new issues appeared with trying to start the server on linux which I'm trying to solve next. View full record

Exquisite Vintarians! We've tackled more challenges Updates 64 bit Architecture: It was tough to set up but the game can now run as 64 bit application. When you start the game it will automatically choose the right architecture (32bit or 64bit) and thus on 64bit systems the game is no longer limited to around 1.2gb of memory. That should allow massive view distances as long as the graphics card can handle it and make it run more stable overally. Block id remapper: Another boring, but important update. Every game world now remembers what blocks were loaded since last time played and dynamically changes the ids of blocks to match the game world. In simpler terms: If you add or remove a mod or block, the blocks in your old world will not get all mixed up because the blockids have changed. Added per Block Particle Emitting Configuration: Making blocks emit particles is now just a matter of a few lines of json code. No programming skills required. Made Multiplayer work again and managed to run a first server on a Linux Machine, but the multiplayer experience is fairly buggy right now and needs fixing. Lot of progress in the complete block lineup that we want to have for the first release. We now have an absolutely awesome Lantern, Brick blocks, Shingles for Roofs, Doors that can be placed in any direction, upside down slabs, improved gravel and sand textures, 6 random textures for each plank type, and more. View full record

Splendid Vintarians! That was an exciting and very productive 4 days Updates A fantastic fellow going by the Nickname sitatop has joined our cause and has been mass producing high quality block models and textures from dawn to dusk. Saraty has been drawing textures as well, which means I also spent a significant amount of time gathering all the assets and putting them into the game. Added 2 new client commands to test out how far cloud rendering can go without lagging. As it turns out up the game can render up to 5 kilometers of clouds in every direction without lagging noticably. Admittedly I only tested it on in empty flat world. But then again, a normal world would only increase the load on the GPU and I have a pretty weak one (GT630M). This is how it looks like: Added a FoV Slider that lets you set the Field of View between 20 and 160 degrees. The customized Block Model Creator received some more attention Added block side shading, to give a much better preview of how the block will look like ingame. This one was a hard nut to crack due to boxes being freely rotatable. It now remembers the texture and file save/load path It is now open source and freely available for download at: https://github.com/tyronx/vsmodelcreator/releases I've automated the build process of the game and added a game installer. Both important steps for the relase of the game. My current build process steps: Clear output folder, copy binaries and assets together, obfuscate the binaries, copy some more libraries and finally create installer Added some cheap print-to-console .help and /help commands to display a list of client and server commands. I want to display those in a seperate dialog someday, to improve readability. When switching between hotbar slots you new get to see an info box with the name of the block for 2 seconds Added the infrastructure to set any player picking range, that is from how far away a player can break, place or use blocks. Cleaned up the server modding api and seperated the vintage story game content mods from the world edit mod. The latter I will probably release as open source example for server mods. Many tweaks and fixes, one of them is being able to use the full 65k blocktype range the game supports. View full record

Grand Vintarians! There is news to report! Website Added a features page which will give you a glance on what is complete and what I'm currently spending most my time on. Rewrote vision page in the hopes of boiling it down to the essentials Game Update since last news entry Colored lights, just finished minutes ago and super happy to have it completed and it's good looking too. It can seamlessly blend 16k colors in any combination. Through block json configuration files you can add/remove whatever color light source you like, if modding is your thing ;-) => More pictures Saraty made some great looking flowers and tallgrass, some of them have multiple variants. They all serve a particular purpose during world generation. Orange mallow, a flower which will appear in dry climates Heather and Western Gorse: Will appear in low fertility areas in temperate to cold climates Edelweiss: A uncommon sight in temperate mountains Horsetail: Common in temperate forests and wet areas View full record