Friday Update 6 - and end of early access!

Hey! Massive update this week, before I go on holiday next week and unwind! But first, a word on early access:

Early access is ending


Back when I first opened for early access, Blox was much slower and buggier. You guys (yes, all 200+ of you) have been instrumental in working out all the flaws and bugs - thank you! :sparkles:

Blox has come a long way since then, and it’s almost time for the big release. I’m finishing up some of the last big components as we speak! I’m going to be ending early access soon, and moving on to the pre-release stages.

The price of entry will drop to a much more affordable 50 R$, but pre-release players will not earn early access privileges. Instead, you will get a pre-release tester badge and 100 free reward points, which will unlock a good few blocks for you! Blocks in the higher reward tiers will have to be earned, either naturally through playing in-game, or purchased directly via donations.

So if you want the best deal on everything in Blox, there’s no time like now! You unlock every block from the start and get an exclusive early access tester badge, plus some really cool perks in the future as I build the game!

If you can’t afford it tho, don’t worry - nothing in game is a Robux exclusive! I love my non-paid players as much as my paying ones :heart:

The exact date for the end of early access and start of pre-release isn’t set in stone yet, but I’m aiming for next update (Friday Update 7) to be the first pre-release version. So, unless something changes, make sure to get your early access before then!

Back to the update!


So, this is a huuuuuuge update. An absolute unit. I’ve really taken the time to rework lots of parts of the game, as the extended development time might have indicated!

You can play with this right now, in Blox: BLOX - build anything! - Roblox

Without further ado, here’s the full changelog from the Blox Wiki (which I accidentally posted about 12 hours too early):

Changes


  • Implemented a new entity system, which was used to represent off-grid and physically simulated objects in the game world.
  • Implemented a custom physics system based on AABBs, used for physically simulating entities.
  • Blocks could now have separate collision boxes to their visual geometry within the physics system.
  • Added AABB pooling, to reduce memory allocations when dealing with them internally.
  • Added block breaking particles, which would be generated when blocks are destroyed by the player. They were implemented as particles under the new entity system, and so were the first entities to be added to the game.
  • Blocks could now be display-ticked locally to emit effects such as particles or sounds.
  • Fixed a bug where some blocks didn’t have a default texture.
  • Implemented a new audio system.
  • Added in-game music, which would play randomly in the background as you built.
  • Tweaked the wording on the credits screen slightly, and renamed it to ‘Credits & licenses’.
  • Added audio licenses to the credits screen, which could be browsed for all audio in the game.
  • Added attribution to ClassiCube on the credits screen, for providing the open specifications used to model parts of Blox (e.g. the terrain generator).
  • Implemented a new components system for the GUI, which allowed the easy creation and reuse of common components and widgets.
  • Buttons now had hover effects and would emit a click sound upon activation.
  • Fixed a bug where the text caret would be positioned relative to the top left corner of the text box, rather than the top left corner of the rendered text.
  • World loading was revamped for both the client and the server; now, the processes would happen in their own centralised modules rather than being handled by the main scripts for each.
  • Fixed a bug where numeric seeds were rehashed before use, which created worlds with the incorrect seed.
  • Some GUI views, which previously had permanent backgrounds, would now become transparent when viewed while in game (e.g. donation and rewards screens).
  • Increased the opacity of transparent backgrounds for full screen GUI views, to increase contrast.
  • Added a new Options menu, which was accessible from the main menu or in-game menu.
  • Added a ‘Generate new world’ option, which would be accessible to VIP servers.
  • Points for the reward tiers could now be earned at a rate of 5 points every 15 minutes.
  • Renamed the Donate button to Rewards, to better reflect it’s new purpose.
  • Tweaked the reward tiers to be fewer and fairer.
  • Shortened and tweaked description text on the rewards screen.
  • Reduced the frequency of cave generation in the world, to allow for easier underground building.
  • Changed sky rendering to use fog instead of the skybox to colour the horizon.
  • Added a maximum message length for the chat box, of 80 characters.
  • Trees would now ignore leaves when testing for free space to grow.
  • Fixed a bug where the world boundaries would not line up with custom sized worlds.
  • The main menu animation would now play every time the screen was navigated to.
  • Fixed a bug where plants could be placed unsupported on the sides of blocks.
  • Colour-corrected the game world to offset the bright HDR tone mapper, and make colours more accurate.
  • Switched to a new mesh rendering technique for blocks, to reduce the triangle count.
  • Fluids now render with a downwards offset, and with backface culling disabled.
  • Switched to using game lifecycle events instead of the task scheduler for time-based yielding internally, improving efficiency.

Bugs


  • Attempting to place a block while facing directly upwards can fail.
  • Touching the game world on a touch enabled device would always break the block you were looking at, even when dragging to look around, and placing blocks was impossible.
  • The dynamic thumbstick and jump button overlapped some in game UI.
  • The game loop could occasionally crash on the server, stopping blocks from updating.
  • Ghost air blocks could occasionally form on the client when placing a block.

As always, please leave any feedback, bugs and suggestions! I take the time to read every one, and put in my best effort to reply to them all :slightly_smiling_face:

See you in a few weeks :pineapple::ocean: :desert_island:

You can read the last changelog here.

2 Likes

This topic was automatically closed after 1 minute. New replies are no longer allowed.