Game Plans

One thing I get a lot from people when I demonstrate my current progress is, 'why are you making this?' They don't understand how a block-building program could be fun.

This is understandable. As of the moment, only structural and void elements are available to the player. Now that the interface is 90% good to go (for now, I'll add other fancy stuff like selecting blocks and duplicating stacks of blocks later), I will implement a component consolidation algorithm, which will render a consolidated image (ignoring blocks trapped inside, rendering adjacent blocks as one face, etc). This will let you save your creations and do creative things with them. These will be stored in a central location, and people can share them. However, that's not always very interesting.

From here, I will implement "block functionality logic", helped again by another, similar algorithm. This will make it so that you have more than just structural and void elements; you will have, for example, water elements that you can mine for, then move using a motor element attached to four structural rotors, to make a pump. The algorithm will detect to see if your conduit is leaky or not, then, having validated the conduit, you can bring the water to an electrolyzer, which is powered by electricity, and splits the water blocks into two hydrogen blocks and one oxygen block, going separate directions. Stuff like that... is the makings for a really cool game. :)

In my opinion, a game engine is nothing without an actual game. This is why Vektornye, although designed under the auspices of a game engine, is actually a game as well. I just haven't thought of a decent name for the actual game yet!

- Alex