Category: Uncategorized

Username changes

In an upcoming update, I will be restricting some of the text characters that you can use in a username.  This will affect extremely few people, but if you are affected, please contact me to get your user name updated.

Allowed characters in usernames will now be:

  • a-z
  • A-Z
  • 0-9
  • space (but not at the start or end of a username, and not more than one consecutively)
  • dash
  • underscore
  • dot

PS – if there’s a specific character you really want, I can look into supporting it 🙂

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New buildable items

Build 372 is up and adds a bunch of new buildable items!

That includes:

  • Brick (full size & half size)
  • Wood (full size & half size)
  • Carpet (new sets of red and purple, and existing blue set is tuned to be more cyan to prevent it looking like water)
  • Bed
  • Table
  • Stools (originally these were chairs with backs, but the collision got complex)
  • Theft resistant grass (note the lighter shade)
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Now with Blog!

Woo, we now have a blog!  I’ve imported the old content from my previous posts at IndieDB so it doesn’t look so empty 😉

I’ll continue to update both locations, but IndieDB usually takes about a day until my posts are approved.  The blog will auto-import from Twitter/Facebook, so this page makes a good one-stop shop for both short and long updates.

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RPG-style dialog boxes and FPS boost

Hi all!  I’ve just released Build 344, which has a couple big changes.  There’s also been a few other updates since the last post, so here’s an overall update:

The RPG-style dialog boxes I’ve been hinting at are now live.  Right now, they’re only visible when you read a sign, but in the upcoming major Quests update, they’ll play a big part in NPC dialog:

RPG-style dialog box

Framerate Boost:  I know a lot of people have had issues with framerate.  I’ve done some pretty major changes to the engine rendering subsystem, which on my laptop has actually nearly DOUBLED the framerate.  Additionally, there was an issue which caused framerate to leak as you explored the world.  I’ve found the source of that issue and fixed.

Easier use-key:  You no longer have to look at signs & doors, and they have a larger radius — this makes using them with the E key much easier

Server migration:  We’re now up and running on a new server.  Performance should be about the same, possibly slightly faster.

Well, that’s it for now!  Look forward to the upcoming Quests update — it should be a lot of fun.  I’ve finished most of the engine code for quests, and now it’s mostly up to me making quest content.  In the meanwhile, play 8BitMMO and don’t forget to tell your friends 😉

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Edge Shading

I’ve added edge shading to the latest build, 298 (click here to play).  It’s not perfect yet, but it’s actually quite handy for seeing which items are on which height levels.  I also made a small optimization to lighting to help render somewhat faster, although there are additional optimizations to speed this along.

Here’s a screenshot with edge shading and lighting turned on:

And here’s the same area without it:

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