Hi, this update mainly included various improvements to the handling of world sections/chunks that can be created by village generation and model importing from working threads. These improvements also fixed several issues to ensure seamless smooth mesh building across section/chunk boundaries. This update also fixed cloud generation that has been broken for quite some time. Now fog and ambient color are also improved slightly. A few other minor improvements and fixings are also included.

This update includes some improvements to the handling of third/mixed person view modes for the player's character, such that the player won't see through walls when the character is near places such as walls or wall corners.

This update mainly includes a new village generation system and various improvements to the multi-threading support. It also includes many other improvements and optimizations, making the game running more smoothly without lagging caused by large village generation. Also this update has made some progress in the support for the multiple player mode.

Village System

• Completely rewrote the village generation system;
• Supports generating large villages with more structures;
• Supports two architectural styles: Eastern Asian and European;
• Direct generation of structures in the scene, instead of using pre-generated structures;
• More variety of houses and workshops;
• Different internal structures and furnishing for houses;
• Added new bed, chair and lamp items;
• Added new defense tower and water well structures;
• Redefines habitable house by a sheltered bed with access to a door;
• Added a new Duty Post item, to prioritize warrior generation and deployment;
• Improved path planning and navigation for villagers and warriors;
• Supports generating of fenced yards with mangers to spawn farm animals;

Improvements

• Supports climbing up and down a ladder (W key for up, S key for down);
• Supports ladders in path finding and navigation;
• Switched to physics ray cast for locating surface point for navigation;
• Improved navigation mesh generation and the handling of obstacles;
• Supports pointing a point to go with right mouse clicks in the advance mode;
• Improved character movements and agent path following to avoid jittering;
• Improved the handing of view modes with a new camera tracking support;
• Improved terrain block storage and simplified their loading;
• Improved some materials and added support for texture orientation adjustment;

Optimizations

• Improved multithreading support and the handling of computational tasks, reducing blocking in the main thread and improving multicore cpu usage;
• Moved some extra computation for terrain and village generation to threads;
• Improved mesh optimization for collision shapes;
• Improved and optimized the models of some standard items;
• Removed a large number of obsolete items, reducing the base memory usage while increasing game loading speed;

Work in Progress for The Multiple Player Support

• Preliminary support for users and for interfacing external user systems;
• Preliminary support for multiple player game creation and joining;
• Preliminary server and client support;
• Preliminary communication mechanism between a server and clients;
• Preliminary support for state synchronization with incremental data;

This update includes a few minor improvements to things such as: collision handling for agents/mobs with navigation path, camera view mode for sitting character, hand holding for material items and village generation etc. This update also includes a few minor fixings to things such as: collision groups and masks, block mining in the development mode and the mining of certain object items etc.

This is a minor update that improves the recent support for controllers. These improvements includes both a better handling of controller operations and a support of more controller devices with a minor game engine upgrade. This update also includes a few other minor improvements, changes and fixings.

This update has brought to you the first Craftica release that can be played with controllers. The support is comprehensive and every functionalities of the game are accessible by controllers. Here are some pictures showing how the buttons are mapped to the functions:

This update has made significant simplifications to the controls for playing the game. Now the designation of hotkeys and mouse actions has taken the upcoming controller support into considerations, and removed most of the use of qualifier keys. Now the controls are supported as the following:
Compared with the previous releases, the main changes are the following:

• A new Advanced Mode is supported and can be toggled by the Caps Lock key. Now item variants can be selected with mouse wheel in the advanced mode, instead of in combination with the ALT key. A few advanced making and mining actions are now supported in this mode instead of using qualifier keys;
• The hotkeys for Trading and dropping (Throw away) items are now supported by a single T key. If the key is pressed when aiming at a villager, it will be a trading action, otherwise it will be considered as a dropping action;
• Now the mounting and dismount (on/off a ridable or vehicle) action is now supported the same with the jump action, such that a single jump while aiming at a horse (with a saddle) or a vehicle will mount the player on them, and double jumps will dismount from them;
• Now mounting an object onto a crafting platform is supported with the C key instead of the M key;

The biggest improvement in this update is a new feature called batch mode. In this batch mode one can place or mine a large number of blocks at once, so that large structures can be built more easily and more efficiently.

Please also checkout the new video that has been uploaded to the store page demonstrating the building of a Mayan Pyramid. Besides the batch mode, this update also added support for multiple block copy, paste and deformation. This update also improved and optimized the use of hotkeys. Now the hotkeys are supported as the following:
Additionally, this update also made a number of minor improvements and fixings.

Simplifications and Improvements to Block Placement

• When the cursor is around the center, the full block shape will be activated;
• When the cursor is near a corner, a partial shape with one cube corner will be activated;
• When the cursor is near a border and away from its corners, a partial shape with a slope rectangle will be activated.

Other Optimizations and Improvements

• An optimization has been added to remove redundant collision shape computation for objects with the same models;
• Mesh smoothing and ambient occlusion has been improved to handle border blocks better;
• Several minor improvements are also added to some standard object items;
• Progress rings around the health, armor and weapon icons have been make more square like;
• A few bugs are fixed for the handling of world section chunks;
• A few minor issues are fixed for the handling of mouse clicks;

This is a minor update with a few fixings for a few common and annoying issues such as:

• Seams at terrain chunk borders due to inconsistent herb and shrub generation across the borders;
• Improper action mode switching with a hand tool that is also a weapon;
• Improper handling of continuous mining;

This major update mainly brings some big technical improvements. With this update, Craftica will have much better looking sceneries and run much smoother than before.

Additional Mesh Smoothing

More Importing Support

Optimizations

Other Minor Improvements

Experimental Development

This is a small regular update with some minor improvements to the human, panda and pig agent models. There are also minor improvements to the handling of ray casting on materials with alpha masks. Some UI changes are also made to simplify item, agent and formula view&edit widgets. There are also some other minor improvements and fixings, including minor improvements to support itch.io, which is partially the reason this small update took this long. Other reasons include exploration of the possibility to support spherical worlds and a week-long cold or flu. The next update might take longer and be much bigger with spherical world support. Stay tuned!

This update has made various improvements and fixings to the operations in the game. The biggest improvement is the swapping of the left mouse and the right mouse usages, such that now, the left mouse click will enter the mining mode or do mining operation, and the right mouse click will enter the making mode or do building operation. This way is not only more consistent with some other operations, it also avoids a few problems that existed previously. Another improvement is the hotkey support for selecting block sizes for making and mining. Previously, this was done automatically according to the block amount (or unit) in the active slot of the hot bar and the block size of the targeting chunk. But it appeared to be confusing for new players. So adding this hotkey support will make it easier for new players to get familiar with building and mining, and also make it more convenient for everyone. With the support for explicit block size selection, the mining mode is also improved to support three types of mining: [olist]

This update has added a minor improvement to physics simulation that could reduce agents (player's character, villagers, animals and mobs) bouncing away when collided improperly with the terrain or objects. It also added a few other minor improvements for human striking animation and flying posture, and agent spawning. It also improved the handling of mining on combo blocks (block composed of two materials). This update also fixed various issues. It fixed a recent handling of vertices in mesh building that cancels mesh optimization, and some minor issues in:

• Tree or forest generation: inconsistent generation near octant borders;
• Locating a neighboring section: preventing item placement at certain locations;
• Locating a block in a neighboring section: same as above;
• World sections in terrain updates: causing some objects not showing up;

This update has improved mesh optimization for physics collision shapes to avoid large triangle faces, which may cause bumpy movements for some mobile objects. The game has some special handling for mobile objects to avoid unexpected movements after loading or initialization of physics states. This update has improved this handling to avoid certain other minor issues. Also the game has extra adjustments to the joints to stablize the simulation of object movements, this update has improved a couple of parameters for such adjustments. This update also made minor improvements to the support for in-scene crafting, to allow players to craft objects using U16 size blocks. This is unlikely to be used frequently, but it makes the support more consistent to avoid surprises, and also allows finer objects to be crafted if necessary. Finally, this update fixed a bug for mounting mobile objects such vehicles on a crafting platform.

This update has made huge improvements in model building and rendering, as well as in terrain generation. Though these improvements are computationally demanding, the optimizations included in this update alleviates such problem, and some part even smoother. In addition, this update also made a few minor improvement to the internal design of the game.

Deformable Voxels and Model Smoothing

Texture Blending and Normal Maps

New Terrain Generation

Optimizations and Improvements

This is a minor update with a few improvements and fixings to the handling of view zooming, hotbar widgets, complementary block previewing and addition.

This update mainly improves the support for rule-based placement. It includes more automatically generated rules for device items and a few other items. Now the game can better search placement rules against multiple other items in the scene, and select the best placement that is compatible to as more items and rules as possible. This update also adds some improvements to the handling of person/camera view modes, raycast checks for some operations and a few other minor things. A few minor bugs are also fixed in this update. Note: due to an issue with my Apple Developer account, the Mac build for this update is not notarized. A notarized Mac build will be released as soon as the issue is solved.

This update includes various improvements and fixings to the game. Improvements:

• The handling of block highlight and item preview in the making mode;
• Simplified block mining;
• UI supports for several device items;
• Interaction with device items;
• The handling of crafted items;
• Terrain generation;

• The handling of fog and cloud;
• The handling of the crafting platform item;
• The handling of the luminant mode for materials;
• The handling of lighted lamp device items;

• The handling of object chunks and world sections;
• The handling of modified procedural objects;
• The handling of village and agent navigation;

New Chinese Name with a New Logo

Game Update

Operation Simplifications

Device Items

Minecraft Schematic Importing Support

Internal Improvements

Internal Optimizations

My apology for the long delay, this update has been long overdue. The main reason is that this update has included some big and entirely new features as well as many improvements, which require a lot of development. The game is entirely developed by myself alone, even though I have been developing it with a fast pace, there was just too much work to be done. This update will include some big improvements and new features:

• Greatly simplified operation and building;
• New rule-based placement support;
• Many optimizations;
• Many mechanical and electronic device items for building cars, robots, aircrafts and computers etc.;
• Support for importing Minecraft Schematics.

Four months have been past since the last update. I think it is about time to make a short announcement about what I have been working on in these months. Simply put, I have been working on improving two main aspects of the game: simplification of game operations and mechanical/electronic device items for building machines. In the previous releases of Craftica, it has been complicated and difficult to operate and build. Recently I have finally found good ways to simplify this aspect of the game. Now the game has finally become almost as simple as Minecraft to play. I also have been working on a new feature to make it possible to build interesting machines such as car, robot, aircraft and maybe even computers in Craftica. This feature is more realistic and more powerful than Red Stone in Minecraft, and probably more fun too! Please stay tuned!

This is a minor update to mainly address some minor issues. This update adds new support for action overlay so that the player can strike an enemy while walking or running. It includes various improvements and fixings to the handling of agent posture, repeated striking action, agent path following and movements, horse saddle mounting and torch ignition etc.

This update added some significant optimizations and fixings to Craftica. Now the game can run at a higher and stabler frame rate with less memory. Main optimizations include:

• Several improvements to the physics simulation (reduced rigid body, added collision layers and masks etc.);
• Camera-based culling for agent animation;
• Reduced frequency for some operations and updates;
• Removing of duplicated updates for some agents;

This is the first major update for Craftica. This update includes a new game mode for beginner's guide. In this guide mode, players can get familiar with the essential operations in this game, by following some instructions to complete some small tasks.
This update also includes several improvements and fixings. Notable improvements include:

• Now the zoom view window is replaced by an adaptive view field, so that the player can see better when placing a small block or placing at a distant location;
• The orientation of a partial block or an item for placement is determined by the relative location of the cursor inside a placement area. Now this area is highlighted with a blue square to make it more clear how the orientation is determined;
• Now crafting bases can be switched directly by the block size switching hotkey without opening and closing the crafting dialog;
• Now a simple widget animation is supported for the clipboard item when it should be empty for certain operations;
• A few improvements are also added to item dropping and gathering to make it more convenient to use;

• Procedural object decoding;
• Terrain block loading;
• Object orientation for placement;
• Object anchor face checking for placement;
• Location handling for objects and agents in the terrain system;
• Tooltips for formulas;

An option saving bug was introduced to the game in the Update [2020.03.28] to support additional options for music and sound volume changing. Now it is fixed in this update. (If it is not working for you after updating the game, please remove the file named "Options.db" at the World Save Location, which can be found at the bottom of the Options tab) A minor improvement or fixing is added to character jumping to allow jumping with a single press on the space key.

This update adds a dedicated third person view mode to Craftica. Now the game supports three camera view modes: Mixed Person View, First Person View and Third Person View. The support for the First Person View is also slightly improved. A few minor improvements have also been added to character movements to handle acceleration better. And a minor improvement is added to agent path following to support smoother movement (no more constant jittering during walking). A couple of minor fixings have also been added to fix a bug in collision detection for item placement (which prevents the placement of some large items), and a crashing bug in handling repeated block mining.

Craftica previously requires SSD to run the game fluently, now this requirement has been lifted with an optimization to disk access. Instead of saving game state changes to disk in real time, now the game saves game state to disk only regularly at certain points of the game:

• Game pausing or game exiting: always saved;
• Inventory window or other window/widget opening: save only if the last save was more than 1 minute ago;
• Other points: saved every 5 minutes;