Hi,

Developing this game has been a very complicated jorney. A long winding road with many road bumps and dead ends. Reaching dead ends forced me to go back to the drawing board and redesign large parts of the game form scratch. During these periods I was very bad at talking to the community. Much because I didn't know what to say. I am very sorry for that and I hope you can forgive me.
After all the years of hard work the game finally has a solid base that I'm happy with. No more long periods of nothing. This is the project of my life and I will never stop working on it. The fact that I'm still here working hard and giving you updates despite all the negative reviews should be proof enough of that. Peace and love!

Best regards
Jens

Finally a new trailer that matches the current look and feel of Blockscape. I hope you like it:



Best regards
Jens

Hi!



I want you to build big things. Just look at the massive build by Pasta of Muppets in the image above. Look at the detail level in the window and in the giant chandelier. To support that Blockscape needs to be really smart about how to store things. There are lot of things that happens under the surface in realtime when you move around or edit the world:
World map/tree is generated. Voxels are generated, compressed, and stored. Surface mesh is extracted, optimized/compressed and stored. Lighting is computed. Vertex buffers and textures are constructed/generated and uploaded to the GPU. And to speed this up further most of the stuff is executed in parallel on computers with more than 2 cores.
The best optimization though is if you can avoid generatinging/extracting something in the first place and that is why I have spent more time refining some of the modules. Next update will include a functionality that offloads detail in user modified world chunks in a smarter way. It is like a LOD for user modified chunks on top of the already existing world LOD. It is all very complicated under the surface but for you it simply means less memory usage, faster rendering and faster load times so that you can build bigger. :)

Thank you for reading!
Jens

Hi!



You can now opt in on the beta called "unstable" to get the absolute latest version. I plan to update this branch with smaller updates more often. But please understand that this branch will have even more bugs as I won't have the time to do any real testing. Also I may not have the time to write any release notes for this branch. I will make an exception for the first one:

New mesh optimization algorithms. This will fix most of the holes in the geometry. I worked real hard on this one. Please post a comment if you find any problems.

Better scaling and positioning of inventory items.

Have fun!
Jens

Hi!




Redesigned inventory.

Cleaner look. Updated fonts. Updated player model.

It is not perfect but a very big improvement. The next inventory update will have an inventory that scales with screen resolution. I have already made some preparations for this,

Full list of changes:

[x] Redesigned inventory
[x] Added "hmm" sound when worker is analyzing shelf.
[x] Cursor no longer makes water invisible
[x] Optimizations
[x] Removed tool slot texts
[x] Removed material slot texts
[x] Crafting recipe ingredient now show how much you have next to the required quantity.
[x] Bigger inventory slot quantity text
[x] Better inventory player model
[x] Smooth materials tab icon is now back.
[x] New font design for medium size text
[x] Add sounds volume is now based on amount of blocks
[x] Delete sounds volume is now based on amount of blocks
[x] Belongs to info is now only shown if the state model is the closest object.

best regards
Jens

Hi!




I have worked really hard to make the inventory cleaner and easier to work with. It is not perfect yet but a big improvement.

Highlights:

New font that you can actually read. Hand made (phew!) by me.



Large number abbreviation. 1000 will read 1k to save space.

New player model. A big improvement over the old one.

A more modern look. Frames are bad so I removed most of them.

You can now see how much you have next to the required quantity for a recipe ingredient in the crafting screen.

The upadate that will be out in a few days also includes a few fixes and optimizations.

best regards
Jens

Hi!



If you outrun the world-generator you will now see a turtle icon in the upper left corner (see image above). I get many question about why the game freezes from time to time and most often this is because the computer can't generate world chunks fast enough. I spend a lot of time working on optimizations and hopefully this icon will be rare even on lower end computers in the future.



All inventory items on the left side are now gray. This is done to make it more clear that they represent shapes and that the right side shows available materials for the selected shape.

Full list of changes:

[x] Add forest sounds.
[x] All tools should be gray.
[x] Remove block materials in desk state model
[x] Remove block materials in desk chest state model
[x] Remove block materials in crate state model
[x] Add turtle icon to signal slow world generation.

Have fun!
Jens

Hi!



First I want to send out a big hug for all the positive reviews posted in tha last couple of days. It really warms my heart.

Highlights:

Key binding! Found under Options->Controls in the in-game menu. Also good to have for people playing the game for the first time.

All in-game options are now saved correctly.

Procedural clouds. More of a test so they will probably change. I would like them to move. Would look cool I think. Maybe we could have some that move and some that are fixed (so you can build with them). Let's see...

I also spent almost an entire day tracking down a nasty bug that would make the voxelization phase of world chunks go crazy. You could see it as big, usually 4 meter, offsets in the terrain.

Full list of changes:

[x] Procedural clouds.
[x] Key binding.
[x] Fixed save/load of in-game options.
[x] Fixed rendering errors when water quality is set to low.
[x] Fixed a nasty world chunk voxelization error.

Have fun!
Jens

Hi!



Another update. It is so great to see that you are playing the game again and that you like what you see. ːsteamhappyː It would be fantastic if the reviews could be updated to reflect this (hint hint..). Just reaching a "Mixed" score would be so awesome I would eat my own beard.

Highlights:

I decided that you should be able to unlock doors from the inside. This means all the doors leading to roofs and balconies in castles are now usable.

Better lighting in caves and under water. Also fixed a buch of rendering issues.

A first version of a dynamic weather system I have been working on. Very simple for now. It will randomly select a few parameters at random times. You will see things like dense fog without direct sunlight (like in the image above). Later on I will add things like falling snow and rain.

Full list of changes:

[x] Fixed water flowing through solid blocks.
[x] Fixed most of the tiny cracks in the terrain.
[x] Better (more realistic) lighting propagation from the player.
[x] You can now unlock doors from the inside without key.
[x] Better underwater lighting.
[x] Fixed underwater fog.
[x] Added a fog system.
[x] Added fog chat command.
[x] Added dynamic weather.
[x] Added dynamic_weather chat command.
[x] Fixed ghost and firefly rendering.

Have fun!
Jens

Hi!



Just a few fixes. The Worker getting stuck in a loop trying to open locked doors is a game breaking bug so I decided to make a quick update.

Full list of changes:

[x] Cube scalar field (smooth voxel) tool is now available in survival mode.
[x] Fixed "Can't select tool in inventory when it has no materials" glitch.
[x] Workers will not try to open locked doors anymore.
[x] Fixed speed of sphere scalar field tool. It was way too fast.
[x] Fixed some cases where parts of hotbar was visible when menu was open.

Have fun!

best regards
Jens