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iOS approved

June 6, 2014, 3:16 am
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Finally Apple have reviewed and approved 1.25.8, which hopefully is the last bugfix release in 1.25 series. Apple device owners should be able to download it shortly, if not already.

Some explanation to do with ART runtime support on Android. I don’t expect you will get much speedup from running Survivalcraft under ART runtime vs Dalvik. The reason for that is Survivalcraft, being multiplatform, interfaces with the system libraries in a minimal way. Probably less than 1% of code can be speeded up by ART.

ART support is nevertheless important, because other apps designed specifically for Android can see more tangible gains. More and more people will make the switch away from Dalvik.

Anyway, it’s good to know that ART support seems to be working. Thank you for all the feedback!

 


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Community Content Ranking

June 8, 2014, 1:49 pm
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I think you noticed that already, but a couple of weeks ago I made a large change to the way community content is ranked. This roughly coincided with 1.25 release.

The problem was that the old algorithm was putting too much stress on number of downloads and ratings.

The new system takes into account a lot more factors than just raw downloads. Most importantly, the older the content gets, the more it gets downranked. I think this is good, because once something gets to the top of the list, it starts amassing hundreds of thousands of downloads and ratings. It then becomes even more entrenched at the top, other content never has any chance of dislodging it.

Now, with time working against it, anything near the top should not stay there for months on end as it was before.

I am still occasionally tweaking various parameters in the algorithm, but it’s not a major change, just small corrections.

I wonder if Google guys feel the same when they tweak Google Search ranking algorithm :-)


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Memory Issues

July 15, 2014, 3:59 am
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I haven’t been writing for a while, but that does not mean nothing is happening in the world of Survivalcraft.

First of all, I am going to make another interim release in 1.25 series before 1.26 hits the headlines. The are many reasons for that, but the most important one are memory issues. I discovered a fairly nasty memory bug in the game that causes some serious leaks from time to time. I am aware that people have been reporting more frequent game crashes with the latest version, especially on memory constrained devices such as iPods and older iPads. As of today I stopped work on 1.26 features and applied myself to fixing that.

Another thing is a new blocks texture and icon:

Icon

When Survivalcraft was created in 2011, mobile devices were much slower and their screens much smaller than today. As a result, the game was designed for a 4 inch 800×480 screen, which was high end back then. Obviously, it’s no longer the case in 2014. Therefore, I decided to up the resolution of the default blocks texture to 512×512.

You can already find the new blocks texture in Amazon version of the game. Other platforms should receive it soon as well.

 


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Memory Changes

July 15, 2014, 11:14 am
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The new build with fixed memory leaks and new texture is already on Google Play (1.25.15).

I also decided to completely change the way terrain memory is managed. This should result in large savings in memory usage at the cost of more frequent allocations. As a result, the game should be playable (without running out of memory and crashing) at higher visibility ranges than previous 1.25 releases.

Because it’s a large change, there’s always risk of screwing something up. Please download and test, I want to publish for remaining platforms as soon as possible and get back to work on 1.26.

I’ve already completed work on a bunch of smaller new features for 1.26, but there is a new large coming as well. Has been requested many times. Guesses welcome as usual :-)


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New default skin

July 31, 2014, 1:48 pm
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You will not believe it at first, but there is a new default skin for the player coming in 1.26.

Here’s how it looks like at the moment:

NewSkin

 

I know it looks spartan, with just boxer shorts and no other clothes. But there is a good reason for that – it’s the new major feature coming in 1.26. Because of it, the player will not look like that when he disembarks the intro ship, despite having a half-nude skin texture. The new feature will also hopefully make survival mechanics a little more complex.

With this monster hint I am sure you will easily figure out what the said feature is :-)

The default skin is still in work in progress and I may change it a little.


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Clothing

August 28, 2014, 9:09 pm
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Have a look at that:

Clothing

 

Yes, the new, big feature coming in 1.26 is clothing. Obviously, clothing will be integrated with survival mechanics. The basic stuff, like armor (certain types of clothing protecting against hits) and temperature effects on health (wearing thin clothing in the snow) should be included. Suggestions for anything beyond that welcome!


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New Animal Behaviors

September 14, 2014, 1:22 pm
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Windows Phone 7 does not support shaders. This is true. It is probably the cause of largest amount of pain of all the things to do with Survivalcraft. WP7 is the lowest common denominator platform for me, and is giving me shivers. Because of lack of shaders, I am still working on clothing/armor. If I could only do what is trivial with shaders. But I can’t. It’s nigh on impossible to render clothing properly without them.

However, I will do it somehow. So sleep well :-)

If WP7 keeps pissing in my cornflakes like that, I may eventually ditch it and switch to supporting Windows Phone 8 only.

In the meantime, to cool off, I want to talk about something more pleasant. 1.26 will make a substantial change to how animals behave. I won’t spell out the details yet, but the changes were requested by you many times. And they make the game more interesting. For now I’ll leave you to guess what exactly these changes are, I will likely do a video to show you what I mean before the release. For once, they are already done and partially tested, unlike the clothing *&$%#^.

Survivalcraft

Now something else. A friend of mine has recently started working on a mobile game of his own, and (how the time flies!), he’s now released it to Google Play:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jakegames.wreckinrobot

It’s a cute physics based game and he’s still updating it, so needs all the feedback he can get. Here’s a link to his blog: http://www.wreckin-robot.blogspot.co.uk

 


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New Cetacean

September 19, 2014, 12:40 pm
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Traditionally, there is a bunch of new animals coming in 1.26. I know that the Orca is very popular and cool, so one of them is also a cetacean. And a cute one, too. See for yourselves:

Cetacean

Calling all zoologists out there, can you tell me what animal is that :-)

People are crying out to get spawner eggs for Orca in creative, but I think it should stay inaccessible as it is. At least there is something you have to get the hard way, even in creative! So, this new beauty will also have no spawner egg. To get one you have to go far into the deep ocean, find it and lure it.

I still have a fair amount of work to do on the clothing, the largest chunk being linking it up with the survival system. After that – release.

Have you heard the news yet? Notch sold Minecraft to Microsoft. It’s a bit of a shame, I don’t fully understand why he did it. Apparently, neither does him: “I’m aware this goes against a lot of what I’ve said in public. I have no good response to that“. That sums it up, really. Certainly, not for want of money…

I don’t know what effect the sale will have on Survivalcraft. Hopefully none. Hopefully, Microsoft will not go onto a legal rampage to extinguish “Minecraft clones”. In theory game mechanics (such as blocks) cannot be copyrighted, only tangible assets can, so we should be safe. But God is always on the side of better paid lawyers :-)

I was happier when Notch owned Minecraft. At least he was a sensible guy. Multinational corporations are scary.

On a more jolly note, my friend from Jake Games made a free version of Wreckin Robot for anyone to try – and the paid version has 5.0 stars! Here’s the link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jakegames.wreckinrobotdemo. Try it out and give him some feedback.


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Whale Watching

October 8, 2014, 2:10 pm
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Some time ago I tweeted that I am working on a cool, small feature to do with whales. Here it is:

http://youtu.be/40hxT1Lkn7U

I could not resist adding this little gem, even though it took me an entire day to tweak the blowing particle system and add a new AI behavior to make whales surface.

In 1.25 and earlier, whales are fish, which is embarrassingly unrealistic. No longer! In 1.26, it will be possible to drown a whale.

To digress a bit, the AI in Survivalcraft is a fairly complicated affair, but it’s structured into multiple, simple behaviors, making it easy to maintain and extend. Only one behavior may be active at any time for a creature. As a result, each behavior competes for “activity” with others. The behaviors do it by advertising an “importance value”, and the behavior with highest one is activated.

For example, breathing reflex behavior in whales bases its importance on amount of air left in the whale lungs. When a whale is near drowning, the importance of breathing behavior is so high that it will trump anything else. The whale will abandon whatever it was doing, including chasing or running away from the player, in order to surface. As soon as the air is replenished, breathing importance drops to zero and next most important behavior is resumed.


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Animals Aggression

November 7, 2014, 2:06 pm
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I made a new video for you, have a look:

http://youtu.be/bIzymLy7yB4

I made some modifications to the AI behavior responsible for attack target selection. As a result, animals will now attach each other! This has been requested multiple times, and I always wanted to add it. Now it’s here, just need to wait a bit more for 1.26.

The predators become more aggressive at night and will come from further away to get a kill on something tasty. They generally don’t attack each other, but anything with hoofs or feathers is a fair game. What it means for survival is that you will now have to protect your herds and steeds.

I also added a small chance of non-predatory animals retaliating when attacked. In 1.26 even a lone cow can ruin your new jerkin :-)


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Nokia 1520 invisible animals

November 11, 2014, 11:10 am
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For some time now I have been aware of a rendering bug affecting newer Windows 8 Phone devices. Definitely happening on Nokia 1520, maybe others as well. The problem is that all animals are invisible – the shadows are there, the animals will attack and make noises, you just cannot see them.

I have finally found the source of the problem – it was a skinning vertex format! I used byte sized values as matrix weights. Apparently this is not universally supported. I have switched to 4-byte floating point values and it seems to have fixed things. at a small memory cost. The fix will be out with 1.26 – once you get it and have one of the affected devices, please let me know whether the problem is gone.

Btw. in 1.25 and earlier versions there is a workaround that makes the problem go away – go to Settings/Compatibility and switch on “Invisible Models Workaround” option.


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FPS meter

November 20, 2014, 11:05 am
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It was relegated to the back of the queue for a long time, but it will finally arrive in 1.26. Meet the FPS meter!

Fps

It’s in the top right of the screenshot. You can enable it in the Performance settings.

Apart from frames per second, it also shows memory usage (this does not include GPU memory though, which is the biggest hog) and a CPU usage percent.

For the knowledgeable, the CPU usage is a measure on how much the CPU has to wait for GPU to finish rendering. If it is close to 100%, it means your framerate is CPU limited (i.e. CPU is not waiting at all, but working flat out). You can gain more FPS only by reducing visibility range.

If it’s low, like in the above screenshot, it means it’s GPU limited (or hitting the FPS limit), and you can gain more FPS by reducing your screen resolution or removing the limit.

I’m working on heat calculations now.

[EDIT]

Adding coordinates is a great idea. But I don’t want to add them to the FPS display, which is for geeks only. And I only want them to be visible in creative mode. Getting lost in challenging is part of the experience.

Here’s what I came up with:

Location

Location is displayed in game menu, only in creative mode.


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Killer coal chunks

November 23, 2014, 5:26 am
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There is a bug in 1.25 version of the game, where throwing mundane items (such as coal chunks) will deal disproportionate amount of damage. It is a case of silly omission on my part when adding bows/crossbows, and is being fixed for 1.26, so don’t worry. It won’t stay like this.

Thanks to Mrshots and others reporting this on the forums!


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More visibility

November 29, 2014, 1:54 pm
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I keep working on the temperature stuff. It’s nice how lighting a fire or enclosing a thermometer in a box makes the reading go up. In 1.25 thermometer was tied to fixed environment temperature and not affected by such things. And remember, you can use thermometers as electric devices, so it opens up way for some nice temperature-dependent mechanisms. For example the door will only open if you light a fire in front of it or make magma flow near it.

The next thing to tackle is temperature effects on the player. I spent a long time thinking about it. My worry is that adding too many complex effects will make the game too tedious. You don’t feel cold/hot in the game as you do in real life, you’ll need to rely on messages and on-screen effects to even realize that you are freezing. I don’t want to overdo it, it must be something simple that is not annoying, but at the same time having a definite impact on the gameplay.

That’s still in progress, though.

In the meantime I am adding a new notch to visibility range slider: 256. My recent memory usage improvements and general trend of devices getting faster makes it worthwhile. It makes a lot of difference, have a look (animated gif):

VisibilityRange256

 

256 is equal to “far” viewing distance in desktop Minecraft, and some computers struggle with it. So it’s not too bad that we can now do it in Survivalcraft on your phone :-)


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Family Album

December 6, 2014, 11:42 am
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Here’s clothes progress update.

I am now past the visual stage, which is working and looking nice. There’s a few little niggles, but the heavy lifting is done. The clothes render in all viewports, inventory, as pickables or projectiles, and look good.

Here’s the family album, various clothes and armor combinations:

FamilyAlbum

As you see, you can wear multiple clothing and armor items in each slot! I think this is the coolest feature of them all. You can wear underclothes, then proper clothes and finally top it up with armor. All the effects combine.

Almost turned the game into a “girly” dress-a-princess game :-)

I am rushing towards the release, hopefully not much longer to wait now.


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No clothes on respawn

December 7, 2014, 3:31 pm
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Because clothes are now a normal item like each other, it would be silly to give the player a new set every time he respawns. In no time he would cheat his way into a huge stockpile.

So in 1.26, you only get your tattered clothes on first spawn. Every respawn after that, you appear naked. Or rather in the boxer shorts :-) Tough.

I’m working hard to get the game released for Christmas. There’s a new plant coming, with 3-stage growth setup. Almost finished working on it. It is to do with clothes. I’m sure, as usual, you can guess what it is:

ClothesPlant

 

 


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No ads

December 8, 2014, 3:13 am
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I’ve just purchased ad removal from the blog for a year, so you should see no more of those ugly peskies when reading, at least for the time being. I also removed ads for 3 months from the forums.

I hate ads.

And yes, it is cotton. You’re brilliant :-)

Work on 1.26 is going on. My todo list is still too long for comfort…


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New crafting table

December 8, 2014, 9:16 am
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Looks a lot better:

Crafting Table

There are more small changes like that.

I am now adding more clothing. I think the game now really beats some dress-a-princess games. Even if only because you can’t take your new outfit to bear wrestling in them :-)


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Ready for anything

December 8, 2014, 4:03 pm
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How do you like this guy:

ReadyForAnything

Real caveman, with armor made of wooden sticks and a club, ready for anything to come his way :-)

Stick armor will be easy to make early in the game, you just need to find some wood and ivy and make a crafting table. It’s not very durable (one hit from a rhino will waste it), but better than bare skin. 60% of hits lands on the torso, so having it protected is better than any other part of the body.

After today, there are 24 different items to wear in the game. I’m now off to finish other things besides clothing, if I get some more time at the end I’ll add socks :-)


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Clothes dyeing

December 9, 2014, 11:58 am
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Most clothes can be dyed (with 16 color buckets available in the game), so you can create nearly infinite variety:

FamilyPhoto2

 

Really close to release now.

[EDIT]

This is post #501 on this blog, so a small celebration is in order. Unfortunately I have no time…


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