NEP Dev Update #6: Now you can throw rocks!

This post is part of a development update series about my upcoming indie game, Non-Essential Personnel. I'm going to challenge myself to regularly post one of these every Friday.

I spent most of this week working finding all the bugs in the network synchronization system I built last week. And fixing some design flaws too, which means lots of annoying refactoring of code. But the system is working rather well now which means I've been starting to build more game mechanics that use these systems.

For instance, now that the player equipment and inventory synchronize/persist correctly on the server, I can add items to the game that can make inventory changes. Like items that stack into piles and consume themselves.

Behold! Now you can throw rocks!

Use your trusty shovel to scoop up some broken rocks from one pile, and then toss them into another pile! Now you can move rocks from point A to point B!

Mining is all about moving rocks from one place to another.

And so it begins...

Until next time

I recently read a really fun rendering article on how they made GTA V so damn gorgeous. Now I really want to add pretty eye candy to my engine like high dynamic range rendering with tone mapping, and environmental reflections for metallic materials.

I also should do another pass on the world renderer to make it use varied textures for different blocks. It also helps hide the visual appearance of the block grid.

One of these days I should make better art too instead of these placeholders. So many things to do... =)