Micro Adventures - an early demo of my indie game.

[Robert Swan]

Hi everyone, I'm an indie dev and Micro Adventures is my first attempt at a PC game. I'd hate to do a "proper" game demo release in a few weeks just to find it doesn't work, so I'm putting up the early tech demo here for help testing it runs.

I joined the RPS Minecraft forum and server a year ago after getting fed up with griefing on other servers. Having a PC based forum with pretty savvy owners seems too good an opportunity to miss for my demo so I'm placing it here exclusively - not that it's private or anything. I'm hoping to get this ready for the Eurogamer Expo too so it will change a lot over the next month! If you do download it then it's worth reading the included readme.txt.

• Screenshots: http://www.flickr.com/photos/54891459@N06/sets/
• Tech Demo download: http://www.aahgames.com/downloads/mi...entures/ct_01/

For those that play Minecraft:

• The texture set in the game is by Ray Frenden of the popular Frenden's pack fame. I have his permission to use it and am fortunate he's making some more custom graphics!
• The game isn't a replacement for MC but there's enough work in getting editable terrain working that I want to complete this before adding gameplay.
• Micro Adventures is a bad working title. Will get changed...

Cheers, and I hope this is an ok to do here...

Rob

[Comrade Commissar]

Downloaded it right away and it runs on my computer.
I do experience some problems, though.
My render distance is very small and I have to get really close to a chunk for it to start rendering.
Also, the horrible inverted controls drive me mad. :P

And there is some sort of problem with the textures, with them not loading properly at some places and therefore being transparent.

I'll add screenshots in a minute.

Edit:

Used the old version, all problems are gone (Except for the slow rendering).

[Robert Swan]

Oh yeah, there's a readme.txt in there that explains how to change the mouse inversion.
I advise people to stand pretty still until the "client jobs" is down to zero, then have a wander around.
Missing textures is probably that the scenery hasnt yet got to be created (ie, still pending on the client jobs queue)

[TillEulenspiegel]

Yeah, works fine, looks like Minecraft. I'd be interested in an option to adjust the distance at which new terrain is generated, as I expect you could increase it significantly to reduce pop-in, and it might not kill performance.

[Comrade Commissar]

I walked around for a bit longer, teleported here and there and uncovered quite a bit of the map. I noticed that I walked significantly slower when there was more stuff rendered. I walked and jumped in slow-motion.

The landscapes look great, though. Kudos to you, Gerb.

[Robert Swan]

MrWeed: you might want to ditch those pics. I can tell from the water that you got the"old" version. Basically I was overwriting that version when I posted it. I guess the ftp finished after the posting :( So the cracks will have gone

TillEulenspiegel: There's a settings.xml that has a draw distance option. Only to be used for fast pcs though...

[Comrade Commissar]

You're right.
All problems except for the slow rendering are gone, got the newer vesion now. I can place brick blocks now, too.
But if I remove a block the lighting doesn't adapt the now empty space.

Rest is cool, I'll build a house on top of one of the mountains now.
Is there a way to change the type of material that is spawned by clicking? Perhaps in the XML file?

[Robert Swan]

this was just a demo to test if it ran at all really. Note there's no save/load so you might not want to build too much! Read the included readme.txt too!

[icupnimpn2]

Hi Robert. I like the look of the buildings and so on. Can you share some of your vision for the direction of the project and what will set it apart? Just curious.

[Comrade Commissar]

I read the readme alright and I'm not looking into building massive buildings. Made a small hut for fun and that's it. ;)

[TillEulenspiegel]

TillEulenspiegel: There's a settings.xml that has a draw distance option. Only to be used for fast pcs though...

I increased the fog distance, but that doesn't seem to affect the distance at which *new* terrain is generated. Am I missing something?

[Malawi Frontier Guard]

Hi Robert. I like the look of the buildings and so on. Can you share some of your vision for the direction of the project and what will set it apart? Just curious.

To hell with you. I wanted to ask exactly the same question.

[icupnimpn2]

To hell with you. I wanted to ask exactly the same question.

Something in me hopes the answer is "more blocks!"

[DRoseDARs]

Heh, The Void returns. Don't dig below bottom level... :D

Other than the aforementioned control issues, runs pretty marbles-on-glass-y on my laptop. When lag hits (during rendering new chunks) it's not that wretched herky-jerky crap Minecraft does, this demo just goes into bullet-time. I imagine that could be useful if fighting hostile mobs. I also like the simplicity of the graphics file (not really feeling Frenden's) so customization is straight forward. Could we get a explanation readme for the settings.xml? I'd love to tweak the mapgen stuff and know what it is exactly I'm doing. Also, what mapgen/render distances did you decide on? Just a refresher from past discussions: Minecraft does 256 block radius max around a player, and each chunk is 128 blocks in height. Is it something that can be added to the settings.xml for customization? It *is* possible to make maps deeper than 128 blocks in Minecraft, but Notch has made it damned difficult by burying the code deep in obfuscation. Finally, a suggestion for rendering: The Optifog/Optimine mod for Minecraft is experimenting with occlusion culling. The mod renders only the geometry the player can see, instead of the client rendering every damned thing within range, eating memory and causing lag.

[Robert Swan]

Thanks for the comments and questions! Asking a game dev to talk about their vision is a bit like asking a pop singer to talk about themselves - they'll never stop :) I'll keep to saying things that should happen in the next few months in one form or another...
Specifically regarding block types: while there should be loads supplied with it, ultimately they will be defined in a file that can be changed per level as you want.

• multiple themes - jungle, pirate, space or whatever...
• multiplayer
• big towns and cities
• factories - seperate areas where you can design your model and skin)
• simpler basic gameplay - mostly this means no inventory juggling)
• much smaller level saves - aiming for 10% the size of minecrafts so you can pass your creations to your friends

The overall "vision" is more about concepts like modability, sharing and customer input.

The aim now is to get out a simple multiplayer demo in a month with maybe an optimised single player demo in next week. The MP demo is just to check client and server robustness so I'll use the simplest gameplay I can think of which would be rocket launchers that destroy or create land and a grappling hook :)

Mostly I'm concerned about fun than fulfilling a cast-iron idea of the game. One thing I'd like to try later is letting players vote on changes to the gameplay.

[TillEulenspiegel]

Figured out that increasing columns did what I wanted. After the initial generation, my CPU has no trouble handling 12-15, but the graphics slow down considerably as more junk is available to be rendered. It seems like you're probably not culling to full effect, so some basic optimization should improve things considerably.

Really nice start.

[Robert Swan]

Technical response post! The explanation about the terrain generation is so long winded I've put it on my website here: http://www.aahgames.com/downloads/mi...rlin_noise.txt

• General slowdown is caused mostly by two things: as I'm not unloading land you are far away from it builds up, which compounds the second problem: my ray casting into the world is really really awful. I'll fix the second one this week, and the first one after the MP demo succeeds or crashes and burns.
• Temprorary spikes in performance (I think) are down to uploads of new meshes to the gfx card. These change a heck of a lot and need to be reduced and throttled too. Both will get fixed after the MP demo too.
• Map height currently is in code but very easy to change. I was conservative and settled for 128 in this demo to make it run faster. 256 is the target - any higher and the landscapes are almost too tall to be useful!
• I've just read up on optifog and optimine - everything in there seems common sense and I was planning to do anyway in a big round of optimisation after the MP demo *shrugs*. Am surprised MC is missing those features.

About settings.xml

• Adjusting distance at which new terrain is generated is handled by the (columns_to_load) tag only. Because I'm not unloading the level it is VERY easy to stress the PC by teleporting around when this value is set higher. If your PC can handle it up this to 8 or so, wait for "Client jobs" to reach 0 and then go for a walk!
• Fog settings are purely for effect, and have no bearing on loading or other visibility.
• As a bonus, try setting (spray_bullets) to true, and then using left or right mouse buttons :)

[ComradePenguin]

Had a quick go and it ran very smooth. Didn't have any of the render issues but I've just upgraded to a decent new PC so that may be why. I only noticed one minor bug, after destroying a mushroom in shadow the block below rendered as fully lit. Looks good though and it'll be interesting to see how your ideas pan out.

[Lightbulb]

So why should I play this and not Minecraft (which I already own?).

Unless you can answer that question I fear sales will not be brilliant.

However I wish you every success! :)

[Robert Swan]

Lightbulb - fair question. Personally I find Minecraft's updates are making it less and less fun as I'm a lego-style builder and don't want to play the game that MC is becoming. So with that in mind I'm seeing how I can make the game I want to play, while allowing other people the capability to make the sort of game they want to play too.

Cynicism is fine - there are so many MC clones out there I don't expect mine to grab attention right now. Onus is on me to prove I've got something different and fun and the MP demo should be a good start. I keep track of the other clones and so far I haven't seen anyone with the plans I have; now all I have to do is actually complete it... at least this tech demo has worked on 100% of machines!

Thanks for the wishes :)

Re: lighting bugs - yeah I just didn't have time to sort out recalculating light for cell editing. Will be fixed in MP demo.