Time seemed to slip away from me again but this update has some changes in it that could do with more time to confirm them so its live on the Beta branch only for now. Multiplayer is still coming along nicely but nothing new to report on it yet. Its just very slow to make progress on, especially as a solo dev. Bamboo, Ebony and Cherry Wood As usual I work on something slightly creative to give…
A fairly big bug cropped up with the last water changes so this update is coming out a little early to make sure its fixed. If you saw a whole mess of green stuff whilst in the Lost Civ or Dungeons, this update should fix that. Charcoal Hut This one is long overdue and its a way to turn wood into coal. This recipe is currently available from the start and will turn 5 wood into 1 coal for those…
I didn't quite plan to work on a lot of what is in this release but here we are! Multiplayer is still coming along nicely but still has a ways to go. Water A few things about how water renders has never really sat well with me so I eventually took the time to give it another pass. It all started with me continuing work to improve performance and water being shorter than a full block meant that…
This took a lot longer than expected but a Lot has changed in the backend of Aiyana and it needed some time to stabilise. Steam Cloud One of the big changes is that Steam Cloud has been removed and your worlds etc are stored only on your local machine instead. I've done this for a few reasons. · Worlds in Aiyana are fairly big and storing them on cloud means a lot of data Steam needs to sync ·…
Just a quick one to say I'm still making progress on multiplayer but nothing to share as an update yet. Its typical that just as I say that I can make smaller updates I get stuck into a can of worms that its taking a while to sort out! I'll go into more details for the patch notes themselves once its ready but as a quick summary: · I've removed Steam Cloud for various reasons but its meant rech…
Since my last post I've been focusing on Multiplayer and making pretty good progress. The nice thing about it is that I can make progress without feeling like I need to hit milestones for a release. This means I can easily swap between bug fixes/improvements and multiplayer so I plan to continue releasing smaller updates like this one whilst I make progress behind the scenes. Excessive Animal S…
It seems like things are going well with the Enchanting update so far. I do need more feedback on it though so I still plan to tweak it over time as I see how people interact with it. For example I've been told the Energy Drain enchantment feels underwhelming, which is fair. However there is a big difference with it applied to an Iron vs a Gold sword as well as once its levelled up a few times.…
Well I had hoped this would be the combat update but it wasn't meant to be, more on that below since its a big wall of text! Instead there are still Plenty of changes in here and it means Enchanting is now available. I've already touched on most of the changes in my previous posts but I will summarise them all here for anyone that missed them. Since this update turned into me focusing a lot on…
Things are coming along nicely but I'm settling into the slower parts of development which is testing/balancing all these changes. To be honest I'm also second guessing myself a lot and struggling to decide what needs to be in this update now vs later. Overall enchanting is feeling pretty solid with all its features working. Equipping armour and the new armour types is also finished. A.I has ha…
I've made a start on the next big update which, as expected, is going to take a while so I thought I would drop a progress update since its turning into a bit of a can of worms. Please note that none of this is live yet and it will be a while before it is. Tech Rework The first thing I tried to do was to lay out where Enchanting would sit as part of the Tech tree as a way of deciding when you w…
I've not had any complaints about Dungeons so far so hopefully they are working smoothly. Their enemies do need an A.I pass to better handle the tight spaces but I'm holding off on that for the combat/enchanting update. I'm considering making them travel through walls since they are more ethereal now and it makes a bunch of logic a ton easier. However I'm concious it will make both dungeons and…
I was planning on releasing dungeons and Enchanting at the same time but decided to do one at a time and start with dungeons first. This is mainly because some nasty bugs had come up once I made a start on the breaking changes. As a note, after this update I'm going to spend some time starting a fresh repository with a branch structure to make it Much easier for me to do hot fix patches. I've b…
I hope everyone had a good Christmas/New Years! I took some time off myself and rather than diving headfirst back into dungeons I wrapped up what I was working on and spent some time tackling bugs. After this update I might start on the final changes for Dungeons that are harder to come back from so it might be a while before the next one lands. This is also because my personal life has become…
Not much has changed in this release but since its been a month from the last patch notes I'm using it as an excuse to keep folks updated on my progress. I ended up releasing a few hot fixes since 0.4.2.0 which I added to the bottom of the last notes as usual if anyone is curious. Dungeons This month most of my time was spent on the algorithm to place dungeons nicely and have rooms connect prop…
I had intended to bundle more into a larger update but the last hotfix was easiest for me to include one of the changes to move Rock Volley as the starter spell and Energy Blast as the later game spell. So for this update I've focused on making that change more cohesive and laying foundations for the larger update. I've had a few blocks almost ready to go for a while but I wasn't sure how they…
This release is mainly another hotfix, 0.4.1.2 released earlier in the week but its patch notes are at the end of the previous update. However since things are feeling stable I'm trying to plan the next update so I thought I should lay out my plan a little and prewarn that it might be a while before the next update lands. I'm still not sure exactly what it will contain but the aim is to add mor…
It might seem like a couple weeks since the last update but I've done a whole bunch of mini updates in the meantime to make sure everything was as stable as possible. Rather than making a post for each update I edited the previous patch notes and added the changes onto the bottom. However a couple of weeks of intense bug fixing in a row takes its toll so for this update I've thrown in a couple…
So after many months of hard work the Beta has Finally made its way onto the main branch! I've done this slightly earlier than I would like but for good reason and I'm hoping the benefits of this build make up for its flaws. I'm doing this because there could be an influx of new players soon and there are a few too many major fixes in the Beta that I would prefer to be live. Also since world ge…
This release is still Beta only but I've removed the limitation for loading worlds since things are starting to feel stable and less bugs are coming up in testing. This one took a little longer because my PC decided to die on me. At first I thought it was just a PSU but it of course turned out to be the most expensive component the GPU and I ended up having to wait a few days for shipping. Gras…
This release brings the Beta another step closer to a full release and as usual its mainly full of bug fixes but I did also add a new performance feature (for good reason). A huge shoutout/thanks to Spike for reporting/helping me debug a bunch of these issues! World Auto Updater One thing I want to point out is that I've added an auto updater for bringing existing worlds into the beta. I've nee…
I've made a bit of progress optimising the Post Processing (PP) effects (which are basically like filters for pictures on social media) but ultimately decided that these updates have gone on too long and to come back to this later. PP is still probably about 25% of the overall rendering time for Aiyana, which is really huge and I have made some improvements with this update. However its also vi…
To start on a positive note I've got fish back in and rendering in a much nicer time using my new systems, so its one step closer to getting all this work onto the main branch. The next and hopefully final things I will be looking into is post processing effects such as Ambient Occlusion and Volumetric Lighting. So... I knew cloud shadows would be complicated which is why I didn't try to includ…
(Beta Branch Only) I was making good progress having animals run their AI logic on Jobs but it was taking far longer than I was happy with. Bottom line, its just a ton of work to convert every single bit of logic for the animals and to then check/debug each scenario. So I've shelved my progress to return to later and instead focused on insects. I laid enough of a foundation for animal AI that t…
Since its been a couple of weeks I thought I would drop what is becoming my usual dry/technical updates. The next area of focus for me hitting that draw distance is animals. I had mentioned fish in my last update and I'm still working towards them but the fish use the same animation systems as the animals. That system is one I bought online that allows you to animate purely on the GPU (your gra…
So...its been a long journey for this update. Frankly far too long and its been the most difficult thing I've ever had to code, and its still far from finished. Honestly, I was close to giving up and reverting this update multiple times because there where points where despite literally months of hard and stressful work I was seeing the same FPS as the currently live build. I've decided what I…
*TLDR, another very technical and dry post about performance ahead! I'm playing with different techniques that could potentially double draw distances. Still not sure when it will be done* I'm still busy on these huge performance changes and, well its been a ride to say the least! Since my last post, Cubic Worlds released so I gave their demo a try and I have to say, their draw distance is impr…
Since its been a couple of weeks and I'm still not sure when I'll be done with this next update I thought I should give a progress update. As forewarning, this one will be more technical than most in effort to explain why its taking so long. I wanted to go back to a performance feature I mentioned a while back around occlusion culling, and since there are more animals now it felt like a good ti…
I've wanted to see a Deer in Aiyana for a long time, in fact I first bought their animations back in 2018! So it felt a bit overdue to get them into the world. Of course as with most of the wildlife in Aiyana it becomes corrupted and much more dangerous at night During the day, Deer are quite elusive but at night they will hunt you down and charge without mercy. I was hoping that deer would fit…
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