Playing with soundtracks, here is the one for bone\ivory biome:

Introducing the Ninja

Hey guys, time for my new post has come. I'm done with all exams I had this half of year, so I was working on the new engine's design for some time. The new engine was given the code name of Ninja. We decided that its main features must be support of cross-platform and multithreading technologies and also it must be modular. The engine's core is be combined from several manager objects. Each manager represents definite system that do its own work. Some of them are: platform manager (platform-related functionality), task manager (multithreading and work tasks), system manager (handles external systems' modules, which will do all the gameplay work - rendering, sounding, physics, AI, etc.). BOOST and SPARSEHASH help a lot with memory and objects management. I made about 1/3 of the planned work to make a limited but working alpha. Stay tuned for more news.

Development process.

As described in previous posts, game style is going to be designed as abstract, something people have forgotten in the 3D era of video games. And gameplay is going to be designed to provide a deep strategic experience, richly rewarding players with extensive knowledge of game mechanics.

These design choices reflect two main points of the development process of this game.

As a developer - clarity as a quick way to formulate what to do in our next step of development at any given time, and rationalism as an effective distribution of resources will be prevalent. To reflect these two key attributes of development, the game world is an abstract, comical presentation of basic laws of physics.

As a gamer - main questions are "How can a game improve my understanding of our world and what original ideas can it raise?" and "How can the efficiency of games be improved? How can both players and developers make them more enjoyable as an art and as an information medium?". This is why the gameplay concept is designed to stimulate and reward player logic and imagination.

We are not making a game to waste our and our players time. We are making a game to improve ourselves and to provide an example of how to improve the industry. This is our main goal and we intend to follow it clearly and efficiently.

The game itself

While working on the game engine, we slowly formed a concept-like structure for the game world. Which eventually led to this "event history"-type description that we will use.


It begins with empty 4-dimensional space that contains dust-like substance.

Dust attracts to itself, forming 3-dimensional pockets(bubbles) where dust condenses into dense force-field-like crystals made of dust orbiting within the crystal.

Resulting 3D pockets have a finite volume, within which the crystal asteroids are scattered, and an "atmosphere" layer with winds of dust flowing around the 3D bubble in 4D space. A "lithosphere" layer (around which the 3D bubble is wrapped) also exists, made of solid crystal.

In the bubble, simple compounds form in the crystal asteroids. Different combinations of dust orbitals give parts of crystals properties like propulsion, dust detection, signal processing. Without propulsion, which throws out unused dust orbitals back into space(thus cleaning the inner orbital structure) a crystal quickly gathers dust onto itself and loses its functions, thus becoming inert. Through this process, natural selection slowly creates simple crystalline lifeforms, that are able to propel themselves within the 3D pocket, evade collisions and areas with high-density dust, grow and multiply by adding complex orbital combinations to their structure, communicate within themselves sending signals about known dangerous areas, etc.

Sentient lifeforms eventually evolve on this crystalline basis. Settlements are formed in the pocket, and an industry based on mining crystal asteroids begins. As a byproduct of harvesting useful dust orbitals from crystals, large amounts of dust are exerted into the pocket and its atmosphere layer.

To get rid of high dust concentrations in the pocket, this sentient life builds regeneration plants that transform free dust into lumps of organised miniature mechanisms, capable of maintaining the resulting jelly-like substance. Regeneration plants are launched into dense clouds of dust and left there.

Generated substance develops in a similar manner to its creators, and begins showing signs of intelligence.



As a result, we have an ecosystem with three components - dust in its free and compressed forms, intelligent life with settlements and mining operations in low dust density areas and near compressed dust asteroids, and wildlife with tribes near regeneration plants in high dust density areas.

Ideally, we would like to create this world as a whole, real-time ecosystem. We will start with high-density dust areas and regeneration plants that grow wildlife. We are planning to then add low density areas and crystal asteroids, then intelligent life with mining bases and settlements. Most of these objects will be player-controllable in-game. When the whole ecosystem is done, we will think about journeys through 4D space including the atmosphere and lithosphere layers.(the atmosphere layer will most likely be included early as it is essential to the ecosystem)

Gameplay concept.

I think it's important to write down specifically what you want to create. Because in the long run it's surprisingly easy to forget what you were actually trying to do.

So, basically, the game we are trying to make should have something in the lines of:

-No grinding. We should try to avoid boring and overall numb activities. Gameplay should be dynamic and provide variety. If we manage to make a smart enough AI, there should be an option to assign most simple tasks to NPCs.

-Complex gameplay mechanics. It should not be in any way simple to master. Newtonian physics, air friction, resource management, a variety of tools and materials. A fully working ecosystem in-game would be great.

-An element of freshness and discovery. Reading wikis should not be mandatory. For a game to not feel like some tool with a manual, basic controls and elements should be simple and readily available at the start of the game. Figuring out how to use these tools should be a part of the experience, not a chore.

-Providing a tough challenge. For both tacticians and engineers. Travelling vast distances through the vacuum of space. Stealing resources from enemy factions. A heavy requirement for strategic thought should be in place, inexperienced players will not make it out of the starting area.

-No victory/loss/munchkin conditions. Amassing unimaginable power and crushing your foes with an iron fist is nice, but there is a lot more to games(and life) than silly win/lose situations. The main currency in the game should be knowledge of its mechanics, and an experienced player should be able to rebuild from zero in a matter of hours and evade any conflicts he doesn't consider necessary. Especially with players and NPCs that go out of their way for no other reason than to annoy someone.


Obviously, most of these points contradict each other and can go horribly, horribly wrong. We shall see.

Mesh editing!

Finally, I've managed to write a fast enough algorithm to regenerate the mesh real-time. Woohoo! What that means is we basically have deformable landscape(or whatever that is on the screenshots - you can bite a piece out of it now, yay!)

Here are a few screens of me eating holes through stuff. Hopefully, Anry will tape a video soon. He's working on some awesome music tracks right now btw.

Testing physics

Ok, the object physics is done. Mostly. Still have them clipping through each other at low speeds when too many contact points are checked. Anyway, it looks great in most cases except when the annoying camera starts going through solid objects. Have to remember to fix that.

Basically, we can finally start doing some gameplay coding now.