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Block Story -> Minecraft like RPG

@marc12868
is the slowdown happening when saving? If that is so, then I could fairly easily eliminate the saving overhead on FPS.

There was some slowdown at saving, but not much. But it seems kinda random other than that although it isn't too bad and it jumps back up to 30+ FPS fairly fast so it isn't a problem

I don't know if you guys have waited long enough. But I would like you to check out dawn or dusk with dynamic sky. The day lasts 12 minutes, so there a dawn or dusk every 6 minutes. I think on that version the day starts at midnight, so you just need to wait 3 minutes before dusk. This also took quite a bit of work.

There doesn't really seem to be a difference for me or at least not that much difference in FPS between the time cycles.
 
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I don't know if you guys have waited long enough. But I would like you to check out dawn or dusk with dynamic sky. The day lasts 12 minutes, so there a dawn or dusk every 6 minutes. I think on that version the day starts at midnight, so you just need to wait 3 minutes before dusk. This also took quite a bit of work.


I played for several (in game) days. Day cycle works flawlesly, and also didn't notice any fps changes during night and day.

When saving, it drops fps but its like for 3 seconds and on every 300seconds, so no big deal...:)

Also, would it be possible to make something between dynamic sky and fog, like in minecraft, to be able to see dynamic sky when we look up, but there would be also fog near the ground where our line of sight ends so that we don't see parts of land that are not loaded far away, if you know what i mean.:p

And thank for explaining this optimisation thing, alot of stuff is now clearer to me! :D
 
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There doesn't really seem to be a difference for me or at least not that much difference in FPS between the time cycles.

I wasn't clear enough. Dawn and Dusk don't affect FPS. I was just talking about how pretty and colorful the sky looks. That was not easy.

Vajsmilan said:
Also, would it be possible to make something between dynamic sky and fog, like in minecraft, to be able to see dynamic sky when we look up, but there would be also fog near the ground where our line of sight ends so that we don't see parts of land that are not loaded far away, if you know what i mean.

Yes, it is possible and easy to do. I actually had it that way in earlier desktop versions, but it got lost along the way for some reason. In fact, now that you mention it, it will help make the sparklies (blue dots) less visible in caves. We will take a look. The only thing I didn't like about it is that fog was not dark inside caves. Minecraft has the same problem.
 
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In 5:43 you can see that the sky had more stars (colourful) than now...:D Or is it just with my phone...? o_O

I think we had a higher resolution skybox back then. We reduced the resolution to save memory/make it faster, but the stars got lost when scaling the skybox.

I will try to regenerate the skybox for lower resolution instead of shrinking it so that we can have stars.

Good catch.
 
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So i noticed that on max if it doesn't lag much i get around 10-20 fps, but it gets to drop to like 3fps sometimes.

I think we found the source of this problem. It might be any one of these, or a combination of them:

  • the simple sky is actually slower than dynamic sky at min detail.
  • the collision detection system in there has large overhead, so sometimes when walking around it lowered FPS. I have rewritten the collision detection system from scratch to take advantage of the rectilinear geometry and it does not seem to suffer from this problem anymore.
  • loading chunks was using a _very_ expensive function from unity. This caused fps to take a nose dive every time a chunk was loaded.

We have fixed all three issues, and results are very promising. We have one last outstanding issue to resolve before making a new release.
 
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Amazing! Glad to hear that you resolved those problems and are progressing very fast! :) Can't wait for release!:D

I also gave my friend to try the game on his Xperia mini ST15i with 1Ghz proccessor and 480x320 screen with 350MB RAM and it runs damn smooth on all MAX 30-50fps.

1.So he tried it for few days and he told me that after about half an hour of playing, game just shuts down, and i think i experienced the same problem 3-4 times till now on my P500.

2.Sometimes lags when placing or breaking blocks, also experienced on my P500 sometimes.

3.And also a bug when placing blocks underneath you, but i think you already know that one, and probably the previous ones...;)
 
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I also gave my friend to try the game on his Xperia mini ST15i with 1Ghz proccessor and 480x320 screen with 350MB RAM and it runs damn smooth on all MAX 30-50fps. So he tried it for few days and he told me that after about half an hour of playing, game just shuts down, and i think i experienced the same problem 3-4 times till now.

This is the kind of things why I posted in the forum in the first place. I do not have the time to play with this thing for 30 minutes straight, so I would have never noticed this.

This sounds like there is a memory leak somewhere. Memory leaks are a PITA to find, but I will see if I can find it.
 
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@Vajsmilan & @marc12868

We have made our bug database public. You can go there and see everything we have in our pipeline, as well as keep up with each individual item we are working on. You can also submit bugs.

It is not the most advanced bug tracking system on earth, but we are only 2, and it is sufficient.

Wow, this is great! :cool: THX

Like the idea for hardware keys support, but will we be able to assign controls to move forward or placing/destroying blocks to buttons on our devices...? :D

Like the automatic placing blocks under the player, and added fog option to dynamic sky! :rolleyes: Also presistence world will be awesome so that we don't have to wait for already generated chunks to be loaded again, it will be like on minecraft, right...? :D

P.S. Started playing with Spacescape, and gotta say its simple and impresive program but 512x512 skyboxes look really squary, and i don't even wanna talk about the 256x256 ones...:p So actually you guys did impressive job with the night sky!:cool:
 
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Like the idea for hardware keys support, but will we be able to assign controls to move forward or placing/destroying blocks to buttons on our devices...? :D
Believe me, there is nothing I would like more than having trackball support, but Unity is not sending us messages from the trackball at all, so we have not been able to figure that one out yet.

As for making it configurable, I suppose it can be done, go ahead and submit a bug if you like. But it cannot promise we will get to it right away because I think the other stuff in the list has higher priority.

Persistence world will be awesome so that we don't have to wait for already generated chunks to be loaded again, it will be like on minecraft, right...? :D

Not exactly. Chunks will still be generated, I will never save chunks per se. I will only save your changes to the world. This way I can have infinite worlds taking up just a few bytes of space. This also will allow me to upgrade your saved world, so if on future releases we add extra ores, your saved world from previous version will see the new ores.

But the time it takes to generate chunks has been improving steadily. It used to take minutes on desktop, now it takes seconds in mobile. I will continue to enhance it as I find more and more optimizations.

Persistence means that you build something, walk away, come back and it is still there. It also means that you build something, exit the game and come back, and it is still there. This will be available only in the full version of the game, which you will receive for free :).
 
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Would you like to make a trailer? we would feature it in our web site.

I will make a web version available for you so it is easy to record video.


Heheh, i would really like that!:D But honestly, i don't have any experience in making trailers, and i don't have much free time because of college preperations...:/

But i will look into it, and if i get some awesome idea for trailer, and some spare time i will definitely try to make something great and worthy enough for this game!:cool: thx for suggestion
tho, definetly gonna consider it!

P.S. What are your thoughts for adding a dead zone in tilt mode...? So it can be used even while crafting and building.
 
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MASSIVE update. This is our biggest update yet. This is from our changelog:

Head over here to download

Please go ahead and test this thing. Try to break it. Also, please report if there is any change in FPS between previous version and this version.

You will need to uninstall previous version before installing this one.

  • Bodacious new GUI, based on the fantastic NGUI framework.
  • Now you can open inventory, and keep playing. Perfect for building since you can quickly switch between different items quickly and without fuss.
  • Sliders in settings page are easier to hit and easier to read.
  • The settings background is transparent. When you adjust sliders, you can see the effects immediately, as well as how it affects fps.
  • Completelly rewritten from scratch collision detection system. Now player cannot fall through the ground (I call upon all beta testers to break it). This rework was necessary in order to have monsters.
  • I get around 60% more FPS now in my phone. Will see what testers report.
  • Stars are back at night
  • Added a planet to night skybox
  • Now we can have fog even on dynamic sky. Configuration is simplified to a simple slider for fog density. Set it to 0 for maximum performance.
  • Dynamic, vs foggy vs simple sky is gone. Now there is a simple sky quality slider that trades speed for quality.
  • Building at your feet should work better now.
  • Improved rock, ore and leafs textures.
  • We have our first monster.
 
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OMG, thiz iz awesome! O.O

Like:
- HUGE performance boost, almost never drops below 15fps on MAX and average 20-25!
- Faster chunk loading
- New interface
- night sky is beutiful!!! And also like the planet!
- monsters

Dislike:
- Tilt option is now very bad, it spins like crazy exept on minimum, and even then it's very hard to make it work like in 1.5 version.
- Why are all ores now yellow...? I personaly liked the previous ones much better!:/
- And home screen was prettier before i think. Here's a screen shoot.
Imageshack - shot000012s.png
Imageshack - shot000001mf.png
- Also, my inventory slot is bugged i think...:/ http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/6163/shot000013.png

But overall it's really great progres you made! :D Love it!
When i started it for first time, i played it for like half an hour strait, couldn't belive how it runs smooth now...! xD
 
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- Tilt option is now very bad, it spins like crazy exept on minimum, and even then it's very hard to make it work like in 1.5 version.
We overlooked something, I submitted a bug.

- Why are all ores now yellow...? I personaly liked the previous ones much better!:/
Yellow ores are only for gold. Other ores will be different. For now, all ores are yellow until we get to more ores. We will support texture packs, which people can share in our website, so this can be a matter of picking a different pack.

- And home screen was prettier before i think. Here's a screen shoot.
Imageshack - shot000012s.png
Imageshack - shot000001mf.png
I agree, I added a bug.

- Also, my inventory slot is bugged i think...:/ http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/6163/shot000013.png
I added a bug, will fix soon.

But overall it's really great progres you made! :D Love it!
When i started it for first time, i played it for like half an hour strait, couldn't believe how it runs smooth now...! xD
Yes. there is a lot of optimization that went into this release:

  • The GUI. Even though it has more effects and animations, is significantly faster. We rewrote the whole gui using NGUI, and it alone is responsible for at least 5fps extra in my phone.
  • Loading chunks is faster now. I avoided a costly unity function I was using before
  • Optimized shaders, particularly for skybox.
  • Rewritten collision detection is optimized for rectilinear terrain. No longer using unity's collision detection.

On every single release, I keep thinking I cannot possibly optimize this further, but every single time I find something else. I have this sensation again, I think I reached the end of the road, hopefully I will prove myself wrong again :)
 
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Another release: 2.2.5.2 , fixing some of the issues reported:

  • Fix tilt mode
  • Main screen brings back the green Block Story label
  • Monster now comes in 3 sizes: Baby Giggles, Mr. Giggles and Grampa Giggles.
  • equipment icon now aligns properly at top left corner
  • Magic. Select the skull in the inventory, and tap Mr. Giggles.
  • Now you can kill Mr. Giggles
  • Mr. Giggles respawns after you kill him.
  • Monsters have a health bar and name above their head

I also updated the web version of it so that it is easier to make videos.
 
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Here is a beta 2.2 gameplay video i made, even it's filmed with HD camera, it's still quite poor quality, maybe photo cameras don't take good films even with 720p recorder...:D And sry for ocasional unintended moving of my phone acroos screen, i had to play on table, because i don't have stand for my camera so i had to improvise with 2 empty cans and a wood board to hold camera...xD

But i show almost all of the in game features: homescreen, Mr Giggles (lol, didn't know he had a name...:D), water, night sky, glowing ores, building, snow, caves, etc...

Plus added some extra music to make things more interesting while watching video...:)

When i get some time i will make new better one, cuz it needs a little room lightening, changing britness to the max and to try not to move phone a lot during filming...:D

Block Story LG P500 gameplay Beta 2.2 - YouTube
 
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I found a low hanging fruit:

Apparently when the game starts, Mr. Giggles AI or most likely the collision detection for him is taking a lot of CPU, causing the game to lag significantly. After a bit, the slowness goes away and game is fast. In other words: Mr. Giggles eats CPU.

Hopefully I can get this issue resolved today, just need to figure out why this happens :)

One thing I forgot to mention, we now have "tap to place" mode, so construction is much easier. But it does not work when inventory is open. I will try to fix that.
 
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