Good Reviews!

I've got no way of thanking the people who've left a good review for me, apart from through the medium of this blog. It's always gratifying to know the people actually enjoy playing the apps and games I've created, and these people seem to be having a great time with Worldcrafter:-

So a big thank-you to Thomas and James!

Worldcrafter Update

Phew, it's been a while but I finally got round to updating Worldcrafter.  There are a few changes including new animals and a new way of eating, but by far the most important is the new ability to save maps and then share the files with other people. 

Map files are saved onto the SD card in the 'Worldcrafter' directory.  If you've created any interesting worlds, please pass them on!

My sprites and other animals

There's been a bit of gap with updates to Worldcrafter since I've been working on an Android client for Stellar Forces, which is being released imminently.  I've been creating a few new creatures though, like cows and chickens; the chickens will probably lay eggs, and the cows might do something with milk if I can work out some kind of gameplay into the process.

Worldcrafter 0.8 Released!

The mini-crafting guide

Worldcrafter 0.8 has been released with the following new features-

* Lots of new crafting options
* New blocks: furnace, clay, glass, bricks, cobwebs, wool, bones, bread, bed
* Sheep & Pigs
* New game mode: Farming
* In survival mode, you can only see baddies that your avatar can see
* Mini crafting guide
* Mobs are saved with the save-game
* Guide accessible from inside the game

Worldcrafter: Farming

Part of the big update coming soon to Worldcrafter includes a new game mode: Farming.  Now, as well as being able to grow crops, you can now farm pigs & sheep.  It's turning into Farmville!  Except you can get wool from the sheep and use it to make a bed.  And you get some nice lamp chops if you kill them.

Worldcrafter 0.7 Released

Get off my laaaaand!

Worldcrafter 0.7 has been released with the following improvements:-

* Skeletons
* More "helper arrows" on screen.
* Can now walk "through" trees and jump on branches
* More trees
* Can grow wheat
* Now player throws seeds to plant them
* Can return to the same map when killed
* Slowed down the sun & moon
* New block: Girder

Keeping track of thousands of objects

The image above is a cross-section of the randomly-generated map in Worldcrafter.  You can see tunnels, dungeons (some with floors of lava, mwah ha ha!) a lake and a lava river running along the bottom.  Other purple specks are things like monster generators, tangleweed and maybe even a chest of treasure.  It's pretty big, and yet the program has to keep track of a lot of the map blocks since they need processing to check if they should do anything, e.g. if they are water or lava, then flood.

The way the software does this is to have 3 lists of game "objects":-

1) Objects that need processing every game tick, e.g. a zombie.
2) Objects that don't need processing straight away but every few seconds at least, e.g. water blocks.
3) Objects that don't need processing until the player can see them.

So the first group of objects get processed every game tick, since it wouldn't do to have a zombie just stand there while the player throws rocks at it's head (although that might be realistic).  One or two objects from the second list are processed every tick since updates aren't as urgent.  And of the third massive list, one to two objects are checked every game tick to see if they are in range.  If they are, they are moved to the second list.

Easy peasy!  Look out for the new Worldcrafter update towards the end of the week.