Oct 14, 2023

World Turtles - gideon.griebenow

Good day, fellow Meeps,

I considered carefully whether I should mention this here, and finally decided I should. I recently took a 4-week "working holiday" with my wife and kids - we camped in tents for 3 nights driving down to stay with good friends for a couple of weeks before heading back. Towards the end of the trip my mother unexpectedly passed away...

So, I've had a couple of weeks largely away from work/developing. My mom was my biggest fan and she had always been extremely excited that I'd grabbed the opportunity to do something I loved - creating World Turtles. If my kids one day think half as highly of me as my mom did, I will deem my life successful...

I have now started developing in all earnest again and am still loving it! I have a long list of things to tie down before the huge UI (and more) update, which we are planning for early-to-mid November. The biggest updates since the last post here are:

Objectives and Messages

Objectives (with dynamic text updating with the game state) are now displayed with messages, and the player can choose to hide/display either/both categories. Clicking on an objective/message also takes you to relevant location or opens up the relevant UI. You can also minimize the messages, which displays only the icons, while restoring the one you hover over.

New Functionality / Gameplay

The most important new functionality centers around Space and the Turtle. Feed Bales are now available from the start of the game. These can be delivered to the Turtle via Helicopter, and you can steer the Turtle around in space (with some new elements, detailed below) from the start.

The Space Minimap has been greatly enhanced! It shows you the range and sensitivity it's able to display, and how to increase that (using Lookout Towers). It also supplies a Climate forecast (the span of the forecast increases as your visibility increases), which will also be used to indicate suitability of crops for the immediate future. On the right you will find information on Feed Bales and Catapults, with progress indicators and tooltips, while the steering happens in the center of the space map. Finally, you will also notice some new "icons" on the space map indicating naturally occurring food and crystals in space. These will be the targets you aim for while steering the Turtle.

Implementing the functionality for allowing a "climate map", a static overlay (for aiming) centered on the Turtle and a dynamic overlay (for special regions) moving with space, while also allowing the player to interact with all of these and the game to know when the Turtle finds itself in which conditions, was quite technical, but it all seems to be working very well now.

Short Cutscenes

Certain achievements now have short cutscenes (skippable) as a reward. For example, the first time you feed the Turtle with a feed bale and helicopter, or the first time a fault erupts, a cinematic camera will follow the action. The game also starts with a quick zoom-in-from-high up (and runs in reverse when you exit), and the title screen has an interesting zoom-in from time to time.

Let me jump right back into working on the UI - I can't wait for the next update to go live!

De Chelonian Mobile
Gideon

Oct 14, 2023

What's Next 0.11.0

M.A.S.S. Builder - V-DGT

First of all, before anything else, we must announce that we're shifting our development engine to Unreal Engine 5 for the next version. Now now, we must ask that you don't panic and assume the game is going into a development hell of reworking on each and every part of the game. That won't happen. We've tested it internally and it's something feasible and also what we've wanted to do for a while now.

So, let's talk about it technically. An engine shift sounds like something extremely large, and we do agree it's something of a huge hurdle to do so. However, the methods we've used to work on M.A.S.S. Builder made the whole project quite modular and we've always been updating our engines and plugins to their newest version. Shifting our project from UE4 to UE5 actually requires minimal effort. Minimal enough that we've tested working and playing the game successfully internally even before 0.10.0 was released, and it eventually became a reason why we released 0.10.0 in that state.

We are aware you might be worried about the specifications and downsides of using UE5 to develop M.A.S.S. Builder. Will the game now require the highest end of PCs to play? Absolutely not, because we aren't using those features of UE5 at all. We consider game engines as toolbox with various tools suited to developing a game, and even when changing hammers, screwdrivers, wooden planks, and any other thing, the house called M.A.S.S. Builder is still M.A.S.S. Builder, and we ask of you to trust us in this decision. We promise you here that we're not using any technology that requires a better hardware from the current version.

Then why are we using UE5? First, we wanted to upgrade the development Framework and Technology available to the latest version which allows us to work on the various features we wanted to implement for a while now as well as improving the game's quality as a whole. There are various features that have been on hold since forever, some of which we'll list below, which could be achieved through this upgrade. This will also allow us to improve our own efficacy and lessen the time required to develop the game. Updates won't be as stretched as 10 months like the last two updates in the future. The things required to develop the game would be streamlined through the engine itself after this shift without us requiring any third-party tools or us working on the editor/engine for weeks to be able to do certain things like before.

Again, we ask you trust us on this decision. Now let's look at what are the features and contents we're adding into 0.11.0 after this engine shift.

Improvement to control settings and combat as a whole.
In 0.11.0, we will be adding controller schema updates, allowing players to bind key hold + button to perform an action. Old players might know that since forever ago, the reason so many things cannot happen in our game is due to us not having enough buttons on a controller to perform actions, and creating a system to support it takes a while to do so. In 0.11.0, this will be available and a lot of QoL as well as new things will be added on this new basis.
Shooters, improvements and additions.
One of the most awaited shooter improvements are charging shooters. We'll be going over the old shooters and see which one we can add a charging mechanic to it, and also look further to add new shooter types to the game. It's one of the things we have heard players wanted for a while and we're researching which ones we can add into the game to create a new, unique shooter type where players can use to fulfill their imagination of certain weapons of their design.
Melee combat improvement and stance additions.
Aside from new shooter types, we're also adding new melee weapon stances. There are a few weapon stances we wanted to add into the game. Data miners might have known a few since ages ago, but aside from those, there are also various requested melee stances we also wanted to add. Also, the melee combat improvement plan is still being worked on and update 0.11.0 with the engine shift allows us to adjust them to a point we wanted it to be. Things like sliding, missing attacks, and other unsatisfactory movements will be improved upon in the coming update.
New story missions.
We're adding 3 new story missions and will end our story there. We mentioned how we've the story with filler missions in the Afterwords and after deliberate discussion among ourselves, we've decided to stop having those and focus on completing the story missions up to the final piece of the game. This will allow us to fully work on more polishing, QoL improvements, customization contents, and multiplayer in full in 0.12.0 next year. This will also allow us to fully rescale our enemies to a better status line.
Tier 7 unlocked.
With the completion of the story, we'll unlock Tier 7 units and sub-units in 0.11.0. We've planned Tier 7 to be used in the last few missions but since we're ending our story in 0.11.0 as well as rescaling enemies, unlocking tier 7 units is a must.
More customization contents.
And as always, as we're the BUILD game, we'll add more customization content.

We thank you for your support up to this point, it's been years of development and you're still here, and we promise to deliver a better M.A.S.S. Builder in update 0.11.0. Again, if there are things, you'd like to discuss with us, suggest to us, or any concerns, feel free to talk with our developers in our discord. Stay tuned for more!

Discord: http://discord.gg/quS7E46
Feedback Hub: {LINK REMOVED}

Oct 14, 2023

Tribe: Primitive Builder Changelog 1.0.17:

Tribe: Primitive Builder - mateusz

Tribe: Primitive Builder Changelog 1.0.17:
- Fixed a crash when loading the game where the shaman's hut was producing mushroom decotion.
- Keyboard configuration save fix:
-- It was being reset by other settings,
-- There was a lack of information for individual saves.
- Fixed the special building that opens the passage to Volcanic Land (it stopped working smoothly at 100+ frames per second).
- Turkey has regained his voice.
- Korean language updated (fixes for variables that were mistakenly translated).
- Fixed double parenthesis in es-latam.
- Changed the costs (leather 3 -> leather 1) of Altar elements in Sand Land.
-- The total leather was 45 and is now 15.
- Improved the appearance of the Sand Land altar during construction (one material was incorrect).
- The wave rider spawns in the Ocean Gate even when the player visits Volcanic Land during the final quests.
-- To ensure that the final conversation takes place in the Ocean Gate.
- Improved collision on Ark leaves to prevent player blockage.
- Improved clay fracture textures.
- Moved map buttons for better positioning on 19:10 screens.
- Improved collision on various cliffs and hanging rocks.
- Easier access to the workshop campfire.
- Fixed graphical glitches in the main menu.
- Fixed rotation of the Obsidian statue in Volcano Land.
- Adjusted brightness of taro plants at night.
- Fixed several irregular shorelines along the Grass Land river.
- Fixed bird sounds.
- Enhanced lake reflections for Sand Land water.
- Corrected fractured and glitched terrain in Volcano Land.
- Accidentally left a stationary native mesh in Stone Land has been removed.

Oct 14, 2023

NPC Dialogue and Quests

Dark Age Empires - Borisk

Patch Notes 116 - Version 1.1.0.3

New Items:
1. Able to purchase Peasant clothing from village tailor, more clothing to be added at a later date.
2. Added Mantling - this is not parkour, but you can now climb up items like a barrel but not a wall, if you jump across a gap, and you are close to the edge you will hold on rather than just dropping down. It's a realistic version.
3. NPC Dialogue - go chat with some NPC's
4. Quests now implemented and working

Fix's:
1. Implemented swimming back into project
2. Fixed the weapon quick slots not binding to the tool/weapon

Changes:
1. Changed the HUD
2. Changed the respawn rate of grass / Plant Fiber from 60 min to 15 min
3. Increased the density of grass in the world.

NPCs in the villages will give you small quests to help you learn the game mechanics, think of them as tutorials, not compulsory but there are rewards associated so worth doing.

More Quests will be added over time to give players especially those in single player a real meaning of the game story and Lore.

Can you survive through these Dar Ages?