AVWW Beta 0.552, "Parallax And The End Of The World" Released!

[Toll]

It's down in the gem vein, right below the leftmost jade.

[tigersfan]

So how exactly does one complete the intro mission now? I've gotten to the part with the neutral Ilari and the red/yellow slime and gotten the gems from underground, but I can't find any way to craft a different spell since there isn't a spellcrafting workbench where there used to be one.

There's a crafting bench in the caves.

[tigersfan]

As far as the liquids go, doing a more dynamic/realistic type of liquid model would be nice, but, I'm not sure that there's time for that prior to 1.0. It's not really a small feat.

[KDR_11k]

I don't see how that would be very useful. The games with flowing liquids that I know about (Terraria, Clonk, Pixel Junk Shooter, From Dust, Maelstrom) have dynamic game worlds where you can breach the basin that the liquids are in and cause them to flow that way. AVWW has nothing like that. The only reason weird lava "falls" like that exist is because someone drew them in a level editor.

[Dizzard]

I don't see how that would be very useful. The games with flowing liquids that I know about (Terraria, Clonk, Pixel Junk Shooter, From Dust, Maelstrom) have dynamic game worlds where you can breach the basin that the liquids are in and cause them to flow that way. AVWW has nothing like that. The only reason weird lava "falls" like that exist is because someone drew them in a level editor.

I don't think this is really about usefulness though, it's about liquid doing what it's logically supposed to be doing.

[Coppermantis]

So how exactly does one complete the intro mission now? I've gotten to the part with the neutral Ilari and the red/yellow slime and gotten the gems from underground, but I can't find any way to craft a different spell since there isn't a spellcrafting workbench where there used to be one.

There's a crafting bench in the caves.

Must have missed that, thanks.

[keith.lamothe]

Re: dynamic water/water physics: We made a decision very early in this project to not do morphable terrain.  It's not destructible, it's not changeable, etc.  Minecraft had already done that pretty thoroughly.  Sometime after we made that decision, Terraria did it pretty thoroughly in 2d-side-view.  And it's a feature that involves all kinds of big nasty implementation pain even when it's in the design from the ground level.  So leaving it out let us save a ton of effort and pain on a lot of things.  Where AVWW is now, morphable terrain with decent water physics (which requires morphable terrain) would be harder to implement than multiplayer was.  No way it's getting into 1.0, and I'd be pretty shocked if it ever made it in.  I'm not aware of any change we made to AIW that was that drastic in workload, including the engine switch to Unity.

Just wanted to let you know that your feedback efforts will be more fruitful on another topic

[eRe4s3r]

But as you use the unity engine you can "easily" make water a 3d object, and thus it does not require any morphable 2d terrain

The 2d terrain could be used to define the boundaries, the water is then rendered first as a 3d object and the level interior over the water. That way you can code an entire different set of dynamics for 3d-water without affecting the 2d levels at all (and it being 3d, you could even do proper refraction). Not to mention that this would be a pretty good idea to do because you could just define where water spawns and it spawns in the levels dynamically, you could even randomize this then and remove water tiles entirely from the levels. And even better, you could connect outdoor water with indoor water levels, define "leaks" and "sinks" to the interior and thus create a fully immersive world.

It sounds like a good idea to me

And i am not saying this just to bicker. atm AVVW is fairly well done but it does nothing extremely well in the immersion and visual category, liquids, ambient particles (yes i know.. it comes when polish comes), debris and some more "physical" destruction would do wonders. Just because its 2D with tiles doesn't mean you have to forgo every interesting feature of 3d-engines. In fact you already did something fairly similar with the "fancy" clouds (which i think need a better particle sprite, hopefully its not hardcoded or a 1-pixel pixel shader ;p)

Well if not then thats ok but i really have no suggestions besides flavor right now, i can't really say what the game is gonna be until the current base is somewhat balanced and features are all in... after all it was quite like this with AI War...

[Baleyg]

I'm fairly certain that games don't use dynamic water unless it's a key gameplay element.  Sure, many engines can probably handle dynamic water, if for no other reason than it can make an impressive tech demo.  But a volume/flow accurate simulation is a computationally intensive task for very little benefit to a game.  It's much easier to statically define regions that are filled with water and then use scripts to modify the water regions if needed.

Immersive water would be much more quickly obtained by adding some visual splash/ripple effects, and probably adding underwater slope blocks, to round out the bottom of pools a little more.  Changing the grass for underwater blocks would also help, now that I'm thinking about it.

[eRe4s3r]

Yeah thats true as well, but you can't do changing water levels with water that floats in the air..

But now that you mention it, thats actually whats really bugging me right now, the "non-smoothness" of the landscape. I mean, hard edges are fine (sometimes) but stuff like grass growing on the bottom of things.... and water pools being so weird edgy and stuff, it makes it look all so disconnected. One of the main things i hate in terrarria is that characters can't walk up a 1 pixel block without jumping.... and in AVWW i feel as if the 1 pixel blocks just got way larger (128x128 blocks..).. the scale feels off... it feels too scaled out.

Also i am kinda shocked to say it but i am really missing a sun and sunglare in the background, and dynamic day and night cycles (and a moon) if AVWW doesn't want to be realistic then one has to wonder why we are jumping through contemporary art instead of psychedelic one ;P

But honestly.. i am just not sure what to think of AVWW right now, it just doesn't feel very.. you know, addictive. Not like AI War anyway. When i first played AI War (way back, pre 1.003 ) i played the demo and was stunned. It didn't leave me anymore and i bought it eventually (post 1.003 though ,p) AI War now is of course way more complex with 3 expansions, or was it 4? So the comparison right now would be very unfair. My point is basically that i was never burned out from AI War until a while ago but i am already from AVWW, i just don't feel like being there. And thats not only "polish" stuff. ^^

[superking]

dynamic water dosn't have to follow a high level of realism, it just needs to follow a few simple rules eg, no blocks of water suspended in the air

[c4sc4]

Here, I made you all a map I think you'll like.

EDIT: I think the second one is better.

[x4000]

New one: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,9610.0.html



Regarding dynamic water, for waterfalls and such my plan is to do something similar to what we're already doing for the magma traps, just with a better density flow.  The current kind of water was never meant to be used as anything except pools of water.  In terms of a full dynamic water simulation, that's definitely not in the cards.