Mikes Crazy Universe.

After i came home from work i ended up working on more of the game i have been thinking and creating for a good few weeks now.
Now i’ve kicked the pace up, it is clearly evident of how good the progress is going.
Today i have done alot of things. As you can see by the photos, they are mostly graphical changes. Being new to pixel art, i think i’m not bad i have to say haha.

Anyways, enough of that, bring on the update breif!

• Added a zoom function, this allows you to zoom in and out of the map (duh!) using “practical” keyboard buttons. I have decided to use the I key to zoom “In”, and O key to zoom “Out”. A much needed function for a game like this i think.
• Ability to switch the current height level you are seeing, this allows for other functions to be built ontop of this.
• View Distance is now taken into consideration for each render, this only applies to Height for now, for example, show current level 6 and the above 3 levels (The default view distance for height is 3).
• Added a new block type: Stone, this is found not far under the ground surface and gradually fades in from the dirt.
• Added Ores! (Yaaaaaaay!!!) - These are cool. This allows for alot of things i have planned in the game, at the moment there are only copper, iron and coal (See above for images) - These ores are only found in Stone.
• Trees and “baby-trees” are now added into the level generation, there are clusters of larger trees, and scattered around the map are the baby trees. In the future i want these to grow after a certain amount of time (Will happen in some farming update maybe?). Trees and baby-trees are only found on Grass and will not be found on Dirt blocks.
• Map heights are now treated as dynamic and can be changed relativly easily per level generation, i have also set a minimum height for the level generation too.
• Fixed the correct ordering of larger sprites on the map, luckily i found out this was happening because the trees would be layering ontop the trees from the height level above. Very handy for later on, better figuring it out sooner rather than later.
• Added the ability for “double-height” blocks on the map, the first example of this is the Tree block (Not baby tree!).
• I can now set the rarety of the ores when the world is generating, making it more difficult or easier to obtain resources below ground.
• Coal is now only found 6 levels below the ground surface, making Copper the only resource available untill you reach coal.
• Changed the way the Grass block looks (See above picture for the slight change), it basically transitions into the dirt alot nicer.
• Trees will not spawn ontop of each other anymore, neither on water, or in thin air.
• When moving around the viewport, it now has a “speed” variable where i can easily globally edit the speed of moving inside the viewport. Handy!

Of course there where quite a few bug fixes that where done in between that but as i said above. I am proud of todays progress, it’s all going very good - Soon i’ll get to be working on the AI for the Villagers or People of the world!.