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

Last year, mesh smoothing was supported to smooth Craftica terrain and objects. Now a new additional smoothing technique is implemented, which greatly improves the smoothing effect, to the point that the terrain objects show little hint that they are block based, especially when block roundness is set to maximum for most blocks.

More Importing Support

This update also added support for importing MagicaVoxel .vox format and various 3D model formats. However, now instead of importing models directly, one must list them in a text file in the following format: #ImportingMode, BlockSize, X, Y, Z, Width, Length, Height, Rotation, File, UpAxis W, U1, 0, 0, 1, 512, 512, 128, 0, /Users/min/Models/Hidden Village.schematic W, U1, 155, 10, 1, 128, 128, 64, 0, /Users/min/Models/Temple-Japonais.schematic W, U4, 0, 0, 1, 128, 128, 64, 0, /Users/min/Models/phantom_mansion.vox W, U1, 16, 0, 1, 128, 128, 64, 0, /Users/min/Models/QingPagoda/SixCornerPavilion.obj, Axis=Y;Scale=8.0 Currently this support is still not convenient to use, this will improved in the future to allow players to conveniently importing models during games.

Optimizations

Several optimizations have been implemented to reduce memory usage, in particular the memory use for mesh smoothing has been reduced drastically, up to 40% reduction in some cases. Now mesh building and block-based model smoothing are also improved to use less memory. Also more computation has been moved to threads, making the game runs more smoothly than before.

Other Minor Improvements

There are also many other minor improvements and fixings. The most worth mentioning is the simplification on block size selection. Now building and mining block size is dependent on view modes. In the first/mixed/third person view mode, block size will be set to U4/U2/U1 (or U8/U4/U2 when crafting) respectively when entering making or mining mode. However, this is effective only when the player is holding a material block and clicked on a terrain block, otherwise, the block size will be automatically chosen according to the hand item or the target chunk.

Experimental Development

There are also some experimental developments, two of the major ones are spherical world and web support (works in Firefox and Chrome, not yet in Safari). However these are not available yet, as they are still work in progress.

[ 2022-06-10 16:20:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

Craftica: A Next-Generation Creative Sandbox Game with Subvoxels

Craftica is a next-generation creative sandbox game with a near-infinite world represented by voxels and subvoxels. It is inspired by Minecraft, but it takes the voxel representation to the next level with subvoxels of multiple sizes. Craftica currently supports both creative and survival modes with main focus on the creative mode.

Voxel and Subvoxels

In Craftica the basic voxel is a full cube and the subvoxels are partial cubes with one or more corner chopped off.



The support of subvoxels in Craftica make it possible to use relatively smooth representations of objects in the game. Also the voxel and subvoxels in Craftica are supported at multiple size levels, so that fine structures can be represented at a scale comparable to the real world.



In fact Craftica has very good support for Chinese architectures, and includes a large number of standard structures with Chinese architecture styles.

Smart Placement of Blocks and Items

Craftica is designed to allow intuitive construction of objects using subvoxels, and supports consistent operations for placing basic blocks (voxels and subvoxels) and items.

In-Scene Crafting

Item crafting in Craftica can be done in the scene, using formulas that are structural and intuitive.

Village

In Craftica worlds, some places are generated with villages. Each village is generated with a few houses and at least one workshop and one defensive fort or tower, and spawns with at least one warrior to defend the village.



The relationship between a village and a player is characterized by affinity. Affinity can be zero, positive or negative, indicating a neutral, friendly or hostile relationship.

The affinities between villages and player(s) are initialized randomly. Normally, there will be more neutral villages than friendly and hostile ones, and more friendly ones than hostile ones. Their actual percentages may vary according to game modes and difficulty levels.

Trade

When a positive affinity reaches certain levels, the player will have free access to some village structures and storages (different structures and storages may have different affinity thresholds). And when a negative affinity reaches a certain level, the village warrior will actively attack the player.

Trading with villagers or defending the village against hostile mobs will improve the affinity between the player and the village. On the other hand, attacking villagers will deteriorate the affinity.

Survival

In survival mode, barbarians and other hostile mobs will be generated. They will attack the player and villages. The only way to survive is to fight back or run!

Instant Help and Hint

Craftica can provide instant help and hint that is relevant to the current state of the game and the player. Such help and hint can be turned on or off with the H key at any time. Instant help and hint is automatically turned on when a new world is started, unless it is disabled in the game options.