Changes in December

Here you find my changes in the game during the last weeks.
It is still far away from a real playable game, but with every change I made it is going one step further.


Edit: 12.12.2012
- Feature:    First try of a simple Weapon / Bullet system (handled like particles)

Edit: 12.12.2012
- Bugfix:        Chests should now work properly on opening

Edit: 26.12.2012
- Bugfix:        Selected screen resolution in Startmenue-Options is now correct
- Added:        Version Info in Startmenue / App-Title shows game name
- Changed:    Particles optimized
- Changed:    Items lying on ground optimized (now only calculated when visible)


In Addition to the listed changes I had a lot of fun playing around with some simple "mobs" in the game (I added them allready a few weeks ago, but that version was unplayable buggy).

These baby chicken are currently not created by the game enviroment. They are only placeable with a shortcut. But it is funny to watch them walking and jumping around....and sometimes they pick on the ground searching for food....very cute.

I created this little chicken as an first test for the mob system in the game. The chicken are small, so the collision detection system is very simple and easy for them. At the moment there is no chance to interact with the mobs. But they have a functional Hitpoint System like the player so they can die, if they fall deep enough.
They are only updated by the program if the player is near and can see them. If the player moves away the mobs will be standing still until the player returns.


OK, this was the funny part....
I still have some very nasty light bugs in the game.
Some only appears in the daylight system, but most of them are visible on the lights the player can place.

Sometimes the light looks very crappy.
I did not recalculate daylight and other lights for every single tile everytime a tile is build or removed. This would be to slow. So only the tiles in a special radius around the modified tile will be recalculated every second if something has changed.

Until now I did not find a satisfying solution for this problem...


After having so much trouble with my daylight calculation on the surface some weeks ago, I wrote a simple map-screenshot function wich shows me the daylight values on the map. Very helpfull for finding incorrect calculations.
Here are two details from the map screenshots.
On the left side the map on the surface and on the right side the light values for the tiles (blue is sky = lightsource).

I think I also should write this function for placeable lightsources for debugging.


Very difficult.....especially because I am not a trained programmer....but I won´t give up!

Video current Alpha

I created a video from the current Alpha to show you a little bit of the gameplay.

Also you can see some of the bugs in the game...

Unfortunately I forgot to remove the screen cam window....sorry for that.

Escape from blocky planet - Alphaversion: 04.12.2012


Hello, my name is TheoTheoderich and I am an 37 years old hobby programmer from Germany.

Heavily inspired from the games Terraria and Minecraft I´m trying to develop my own 2D blockgame.

"Escape from blocky planet"

You are playing a space fighter pilot who was shot down and crashed to a planet of blocks.
On the face of it this world looks friendly and harmless, but you are feeling alone and you don´t want to stay here.
Now your job is to survive and to get away from this planet.....

Starting with some simple items you should develop better tools until reaching a tech level wich allows you establish contact with your comrades in space.

The game is still in an early Alpha stage (wich means that is very buggy), but it is possible to play around a bit.
It´s not easy, everytime I fixed a bug, two others appears.
All graphics had been done by myself, so please do not expect an high GFX game.
Until now the game has no sound or music. 

Language: BlitzMax
Platform: Windows, MacOS, Linux


Here´s a (short) list of features wich are allready build in:

- player movement and simple collisions
- mining and placing blocks (fore- and background)
- different kind of blocks (stone, dirt, glas)
- (buggy) light engine
- procedual map generation incl. hills, cliffs and caves
- placing lights (torches, candles, laterns, bulb and other kind of light sources)
- placing items (for now only for decoration; bookcase, shelf)
- storing items in chests
- other usefull things like doors and trashcan
- saving and loading a map

Now a list of unready features (in brackets info about what is build in allready but incomplete)
- animals (chickens, walk and jump around)
- prebuild objects (for example a simple dungeon or treasury)
- animations (only a simple walking animation of the player)
- particles (at some light sources and at the mining of blocks)

From time to time you can see my progress in this blog and hopefully you can download the Alphaversion at the end of this year. But up to this there are many, MANY Bugs to remove.

Thank you for reading 
 

Here you find some (older) screenshots from the game:

Inventory, with open chest

expanding my dugout

another dugout

a nice tower house (first glas windows)

extremely bright

exploring caves (old graphic style)

a nice dugout in the old graphic style

first try with other hero and bigger tiles