Upcoming Test
Unfortunately the content for the first slice demo is not quite there yet. But with all the new additions to the game so far it has significantly drifted from the previous test that it is almost time again to ask for those interested to test out the performance and find any bugs in the current build of the game. I’m expecting the next post will be about this test.
Ranged Basic Spells
Basic Spells are essentially your main weapon. They have no cooldown and so there’s no real limits on using them. As has been showed off before, we have melee basic spells already. However, some people might prefer to keep their distance from enemies with a ranged basic spell.
Here we can see Rock Pelt a ranged basic spell:
On top of this, a ranged buff spell, Earth Pummel, that goes with it very nicely:
Of course as a buff spell it can be used with any basic spell, including other elements. This is also one piece of a viable path for a build focusing on a basic spell as the primary damage dealer.
Cave Generation
Caves now generate more complex paths. Here below is an intersection of multiple caves:
Liquid Containers
The first container we have is a flask. It allows you to store up to 1000 units of liquid currently. Simply stand within a liquid and the flask fills up. You can then use the flask to dump liquids elsewhere.
This is useful for alchemy but it’s also useful for some of the new crafting recipes. Cooking pot recipes make use of units of water to create soups.
Food
Food has been implemented at the basic level now. Each food has an effect that lasts until its portion of the satiety meter expires. Each food is part of a food group and you cannot eat two foods from the same group (e.g. raw carrot and cooked carrot are both “carrot” so cannot be consumed together). Food are essentially a limited set of fairly powerful buffs, of which you can only have a subset due to the satiety meter.
Different food has different effects, in some cases like simpler soups, this combines effects of its ingredients. For example, the below is night vision granted by a carrot and potato soup. Night vision doesn’t allow you to see through darkness (notice the cave is equally dark in both), but it allows you to see better on the surface at night time.
Alchemy and Heat
Water can now be heated into steam. Alchemy is not simply just a fun piece of the material system but plays into both combat, building and crafting.
For example, in order to craft certain water spells you must make purified water. This requires heating water into steam and then cooling it, but it cannot mix with normal water or other liquids or it will itself become normal water again. Purified water is thus unlikely to occur in large amounts naturally, so the player must find a way to create it themselves.
Here you can see purified water turning back into water:
States of Matter
Material is defined currently to have up to three states: solid, liquid and gas.
The following are three states of water:
Ice ↔ Water ↔ Steam
For example, heating water:
Cooling steam:
This is driven by two things:
- Ambient Temperature: the temperature of the biome
- Local Temperature: the temperature of nearby thermal sources (e.g. fires)
The starting biome is essentially a middle ambient temperature. This means without any heat sources, water will stay as water, and any steam will cool down into water too. If you set a fire or use a hot enough block, and put some water on it (in the case of fire, you might put something in the way to stop the water from putting out the fire first) then the heat will turn it into steam. If you keep it near the heat source, it will stay as steam. Equally if you allow it to escape the heat source it will eventually cool down into water again.
This changes of course with other biomes. The Ice Biome has a low ambient temperature. This means water will start to freeze in this biome. A fire may be enough to turn it into water, but not steam (depends on how hot the fire is).
The Fire Biome has a hot ambient temperature. This means water will start to turn into steam if you dump it there. There you have the opposite issue which is insulating water against the ambient heat to keep it cool.
This of course means depending on what you are trying to achieve some alchemy options might be easier to do in one biome than another.
Graphical Updates
Fire Bloom
Fire now has a bloom effect applied to it. This gives it a distinct glow especially in darker scenes.
Water Shader
Water now has a distortion effect on anything inside of it, as well as occasionally some light caustics.
Gas Shader
Gases now have some movement: