PluviA (successor of Minecraft and Tetris with PhysX)

[Alienated Phreak]

Cool, by the way, are you going to have that jazz music in your YouTube video in the game? The music gives the game a nice atmosphere.

And on that note, have you considering syncing the raining of objects with music? I don't know just a thought.

[Jarro]

oohh I'm composing music myself and have some plans about sound
But I'm sure that this discussion would be nice if it was at the ending of development, because I have so much to do:
Multiplayer, Trees, Flowers, Birds, Transport, Saving, Market, Menu, Animations, Crafting, Controls...

Dont lie that it is cool If I was a bit better in UDK and diligenty I would make much and much more at previous week.. I hope I will post a video of the rain tomorrow.

[Jarro]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b27esMu97Rs
that is what I was talking about

[Hellclown]

So, you just build things from the blocks falling from heaven?

[Jarro]

Clouds

yep in general..

But not so simple. You can use tools built by another blocks and make another shapes. By these shapes you can modify your style of building and architecture. That is not a point of the game though..

By many different tools you will have an ability (i'm working on it now) to construct vehicles (bicycle,car,plane,boat,spaceship), another tools and weapons (knife,shield,clothes,axe,pickaxe,chainsaw), some installations(artillery,ropes,wires) that can perfrom even more. These random words at brackets are not so random .. I planned these many weeks ago.
For example, wires can transmit energy from its blocks to another installations or energy recievers (like a battery). Or, just the example, bicycle I'm planning to use as a basic rideable object... Construction, to be honest, not the point of the game. The point of it is enjoying creations you made.

Sky, Sun & Clouds at the attachments. I really didint know that sky and clouds can be performed by HeightFog and Particles lol It lags a bit but after optimizing it should be very beautiful..
White Clouds appear in a position where blocks are falling (on the second picture).
Gray clouds will appear at the watery rains and the black clouds will appear at the thunderstorms and lighting..

P.S. [SHOT] tag isnt working for me

[Jarro]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4SoHOsZwSI

Here is some progress I made. Destruction looks ugly because I didnt solve the problem yet. Need work some more on the clouds and other things like sound of the rain..

http://youtu.be/-4SoHOsZwSI?hd=1 < HD Link ^^

[Alienated Phreak]

Very good so far. But your poll made me think, and it hurt:Pnah jk.

If you do a good job with the water, food, energy, etc. I think it will be a VERY fun game.

[erwilly]

I don't see gameplay anywhere yet, i vote .. It would be better to add something moar into gameplay ..

[Jarro]

lolol I just made the pool for the times when gameplay will be available. to be honest I didnt know that this pool cant be deleted or changed :<
sorry for so much confusion

I plan to make crafting and tools at this week. The such tools as a standart pickaxe (for stone), an axe (for wood),a hammer and fire (for metal) will be used to make from blocks every shape you want. For example, you can destroy a 36 cube by a pickaxe and make from it different shapes like triangle, 4x18 cubes and etc. Special screen will appear and by pressing numbers 1-5 you can select needed shape.
Very strange game for such engine as UE3. But it works perfectly !

[Jarro]

Thats it.

Example: Tetris-Styled block is at the top (near the STONE text). It was ruined by an axe and there is a choice how to modify it. PLUS-block is just like symbol of plus..
If you press number 1, block will be destructed to 4 cubes with the size of 36. If you press 2 it will spawn angle block with one cube with the size of 36. By pressing 3 it will spawn two 36-cubes and one 72x36x36 block. Number 4 will make two 72x36x36 blocks !

[Bob_Gneu]

Interesting. I am glad to see inspiration going quite a ways around here. Bravo! I look forward to the future of this project.

[Dany0]

I love, I love and I love your idea! What a magnificent, no marvelous, no! Spectacular and original idea

Yeah so a few suggestions:

You should choose some style you'd go with. Currently looks like FortressCraft which is NOT what you want. Believe me. Here are a few suggestions:

1.) Vibrant, high contrast, in udk game "hazard game of life" style. However no idea how would that work with the terrain though. 2.) Pixelated minecraft style ofc. 3.) Futuristic Tron style. 4.) Arcade tetris style. 5.) 16 bit tetris/dr. mario style. 6.) Vibrant, childish lego style. 7.) Low-tone low-frequency style, I'd refer to it as "spongebob style". 8.) UT3 futuristic style. 9.) Silent Hill style. 10.) Ultra vibrant, very high contrast, monocolour style. Or no texture, just the colour. 11.) Comic book style, particulary 60's comic books style is very easy to do. 12.) Mario Galaxy style. 13.) Deep space/moon/asteroids whatever you can think of.

The main character can be done very easily and fun - rayman style! Box head, egg body, and triangular bipyramid for limbs.

The blocks shouldn't bounce off the ground, instead they should dig a hole in the ground while all kinds of dirt particles are surrounding them. When you survive near-hit by a block the dirt particles show up on the camera.

The blocks should leave a trail while falling down to easier determine where are they going to fall.

They also should leave abnormally big shadows straight(or no necessarily 100% straight) down the ground when high up in the sky.

Structures that are made of more layers of blocks should become much stronger. Supporting pillars should be required for roofs larger then 4 players would fit under. They should also exponentially enhance roof durability.

Durability of a structure could be displayed as healthbar when hovered over.

And at last, the most important thing, you should heavily modify the physics gun. It's inaccurate and heavily unsuited I think. Also you should playtest a lot, so much until it's perfect. Or your game will die in a cactus pit With alligators.

EDIT:
And last one, it would be nice if things that would "enhance" your house, naturally useless in this kind of environment, they should somehow also make it easier for you to survive. I don't know, for example, increased health for refrigerator, shield for player for TV, shield for house(or whatever) for parking space, a golden axe for putting your national flag on top of the roof for as long as it survives, a cell phone that calls the rain whenever you want if you force your GF to play the game with you et cetera et cetera et cetera

[Jarro]

O_o

Hey dude, you wrote really good ideas there. You maybe didnt know it, but I spent much of time (relatively ) literally at my table and I was writing ideas, the style, and other strange things about gameplay etc. To be honest, the cartoon-styles went off from my idea when I chose that the game will has more of phylosophy that it can be looked in my screens.
Yes, it has neon-looking board with SYSTEM font text, but I made it only for crafting to fill out the material textures
Thats my first public game project ever so I dont really understand what can be amazing and what can be like died 'pictures' in a cactus pit with alligators as you said

And for my luck, I'm going through the way that was already "trampled" by Minecraft and his respective creator... That game turned off every of rules which everyone knew before and made itself the best rule. That is why I dont really think that if houses doesnt make big sense (but it will has sence. Huge sence in my project or wutever i'm doing), players wont stop build that.. Why is nobody dig 3x1 hole at the ground and dont sleep there to survive from monsters every night at this game ? That is what I'm talking about..
Also, year ago I had some expirements with Hazard: The Journey Of Life style ( but I really didnt know anything about this great project ). Idea was failed because usually nobody thinks with acid colors and huge deep pink/blue/yellow lighting and other gamma like that.. I dont really know why, but noone of your styles doesnt really look like what I want to reach (the current pictures arent really the final stage, it will be rewrote 20 times or moar ).

The terrain is uneditable (except some things like placing special blocks right at the ground that can be used as piling or placing trees etc.). UE3 doesnt like editable terrain. I went some another ways and decided to use holes and even big caves at my playground maps. Also I will try to explain in a game somehow that terrain is a thing that cant be changed like sky, like space. (that is phylosophical part, not physical of course but it will fit all of UE3 abilities and its absence to the gameplay).

Im sure that i'm not right in couple of decisions. But that is my look.

[Dany0]

Dude, as I said already, it's all about the idea and I really really like it

Next, so why don't you go with more then one style, and let the beta testers decide which one is the best.

For the holes - you can simply make that by making an asteroid crater, you know you can make it actually above the ground but it will appear as a hole, doubles if you add all kinds of displacement mapping and so on.

Also you can try experimenting with the style. Look at TF2, they were testing a lot styles, turned out that all they needed is better, unique lighting model.

[Jarro]

thx, by the way I was planning already special asteroids (not usual block-rain though) that will have all the effects and other things. They are rocks and minerals without shape falling on the ground. People have to mine it and then, like from trees, some shaped blocks will appear
I'm to the fact that the ground full of gray holes from recent block-rain or mining and diging the terrain arent the best idea so I found a compromise and then noone will be sad