Flint Pickaxe embedded into Stone

Introduction

Hey everyone! It's been quite some time. Let me be the first to say, I do not like waiting this long for blog posts. Sometimes though, it is necessary. We had a lot of things we wanted to re-do and fix and school and life sometimes slow us down. This is bound to happen, even when we do not want it to. Our community here and on Discord are some of the most supportive and patient people we have ever met and we all really appreciate you. Thank you for waiting for us while we worked hard to make the multiplayer experience better and improve our servers, as well as blast some MAJOR bugs. We've made a lot of progress since the last post and we're really excited to share it with you! We still do not have an estimate for the release date of the closed Alpha, however, we have really outlined what else we want to get done before then. We'll share our plans with you towards the end of this blog post along with some other cool things we are planning on releasing! As always, thank you all for continuing to support us and share in our love of Nightfall. The game is slowly but surely beginning to shape up to what we imagined. We hope you enjoy this blog update and are looking forward to what is to come!

Tools

Stone Hatchet held in Work-In-Progress First Person Hand

A long time coming, we are proud to say that tools are finally fully in the game. We've had bits and pieces of the tools floating around in internal builds for awhile now, but all parts have made their way into the game. This includes the models! While all of the functionality is now there, tools are still in their infant stages. We have a lot of plans for the way tools will work in Nightfall and we're only just getting started.

Example of Tools Breaking at Different Speeds

But, as you can see, they do work. Stone is faster than Flint, and Flint is way faster than your hands. Honestly, your fists won't work for punching much (other than each other) in Nightfall. It does not really make sense to us to allow you to knock over a whole tree with your fists, especially once trees fall. You'll need a Hatchet or an Axe to actually chop down trees. When the game starts off, you'll have to look for some resources (like sticks and pebbles) lying around to make some basic tools to get started with. Obviously, there are currently a lot of placeholders in this GIF. The hand itself is a work in progress, but we have a lot of plans for the animation of tools that have not yet been worked on. Eventually, we'd like to have you swing your Hatchet to chop trees or swing you Pickaxe to mine stone. This will hopefully be reflected in both first and third person!

Flint Pickaxe

Flint Hatchet

Stone Hatchet and Pickaxe

Right now, we're heavily focused on some basic tools including Hatchets, Shovels, Pickaxes, and Knives. From there, we'll continue on to some more basics like farming and combat tools. There will be a very wide variety of equipment in Nightfall, each with its pros and cons. You'll have to choose the right tool for the job to maximize your efficiency, but you'll also have to choose the tool that feels right to you!

Building

Directional Placing (Vertical Slabs, Stairs, Slopes, Etc)

We've made a lot of improvements to building in general since our last blog post. Directional placing is a major change that has come to Nightfall. Slabs, Stairs, Slopes, Roofs, etc, can all be placed in complex directions. Yes, this means vertical slabs! It means vertical placing for a lot of things, not just slabs!

Vertical Slabs!

This is a change we are really excited about. It means a lot has become possible for building now and we are excited to see what people can create. Next up for building, we'll be working on allowing corner pieces to form automatically when you place a stair or slope in the corner of other stairs and slopes. This will save a lot of inventory space and time, as well as allowing you to create even more complex builds.

Roofs

An example of Roofs, Roof Inside Corners, and Roof Caps/Tops

An old Nightfall build showcasing roofs when they were first added in early January.

A Dev Experimenting with Block Placing/Roofs!

We've also taken the time to add some Wood Roofs to the game. These function essentially the same as slopes but give you lots of options for building. There are generic Roof Slopes, Inside and Outside Corners, and Roof Caps to put on the very top. Blocks and Slabs also work very nicely instead of a Roof Cap. They will be available in many colors but are already available in Blue, Green, and Red.

Colored Roofs shown off as the sun rises.

This is really just the start of roofs and we already are experimenting with Thatch and Stick roofs as well as many other designs.

Multiplayer

As you know, we spent a large portion of the past month improving the Multiplayer experience. Jacob and Shelby spent countless hours improving the servers and you can really feel it when you play with your friends. We took some time last week to do a team-wide stress test. It was a lot of fun and helped us to test some Multiplayer features as well as look for new bugs. Of course we found some issues, which are now fixed, but some things worked flawlessly like…

Chat!

Nightfall's Pre-Alpha Chat System

These were some of the first ever messages sent by our players/devs while we were stress-testing. How exciting! Here are some additional photos from the stress test!

Chunk Loading Error

Stephen was very proud of the entrance to his house until someone rolled a grenade down the slope… couldn't have been me! ?

Stephen got fancy with his interior floor.

Jacob stopped to pose for a picture.

Alix and Shawn built a tower into the sky and then someone threw a bunch of grenades off of it and crashed everyone's game. That was fun. (Also peep Shelby smiling for a picture in the screenshot, bottom right)

None of us are all that great of builders and most of the time everyone was just killing one another. It was very chaotic.

A crater left by the numerous grenades thrown during the test.

Inventory

Player 360 in Inventory!

Shelby added a nifty little way to view your player in a full 360 degrees! This will be great for viewing what you are wearing and allow you to see how thicc you-- I mean… how nice your gear is!

Dirt in Hand

The tweaks we made to allow for tools also mean that blocks are now visible in hand again. Yay!

Movement

Stamina

Stamina Energy Bolt!

While stamina has been around for awhile, Gavin added a visual indicator to make it easier to see when you're almost out of juice. You will use up Stamina when you are sprinting, climbing, or doing other energy-intensive movement. High-power combat moves may require some use of Stamina. We're still toying with it and will continue to for awhile. Stamina replenishes naturally overtime and you will be able to expand your stamina cap with gear and accessories.

Crawling

Pre-Alpla Crawling/Block Breaking Animations

Crawling is now in-game! By pressing the “X” key, you can lay down and crawl through one-block spaces. You're quite a bit slower than when you're walking so it probably wouldn't be efficient to travel like this 24/7, but it makes fitting into cramped spaces possible! We can only imagine the possibilities of fun traps, puzzles, and transportation that will come from this!

Colliders

Stairs in Nightfall Pre-Alpha

I spent a lot of time working on colliders. Jacob added in custom-block colliders over the past month so I have been going back to each block and improving/adding the proper colliders. This applies to stairs, slabs, and slopes, but also to plants and other non-full block things. The world feels much more reactive now and it's nice to see things roll down slopes or correctly highlight when hovered over.

Item Drop Improvements

A randomized number of clay lumps drop from one clay block. (Clay Block/Clay Lumps are Programmer/Placeholder art)

We've also recently improved the way block drops work. Now, more than one item can drop from a block, but we also have the ability to make some drops rarer, random between two constants, percentage based, and more. We really have a lot of freedom here. This GIF demonstrates it in action. Clay can drop a randomized amount of clay when broken. If I recall, the minimum is two and the maximum is six but these are just experimental values. We've also applied something similar to leaves, and now they have an uncommon chance to drop sticks when broken. Some things also just look a lot better. Here is a GIF to demonstrate what I mean.

Grass Leaf being broken and placed.

Sounds

Over the past month, we added a new SFX artist to the team! Make sure to send a warm welcome to, Scott! Scott is an accomplished SFX/Composition artist with credit on and work featured in TNT’s Rizzoli and Isles and Disney’s Mech-X4 among other things. We are really excited to have him as a part of the team and working on Nightfall. Nick and Scott have been working on sounds for the game and this clip features some early takes on block breaking and the inventory sounds, as well as a few other small things! Expect a lot more from the SFX department in the coming months!

New Art

Foliage

New Grass in Nightfall

We've made a lot of subtle art changes to the game over the past month as well. James has been hard at work swapping out old textures, placeholders, and things we feel just didn't quite fit. Grass got an entirely new look and we have a lot of new plants cropping up in different areas of the game. We now have block variation working which allows us to create variant textures of the same block. What this means is you'll see slightly varied textures of blocks and plants in game that all make up the same block/plant. You might be able to spy this in effect with the “Grass Flower” in the image below that showcases some of the new foliage in game.

Pre-Alpha Foliage

Blocks

Oak Wood Planks - New Improved Texture

As mentioned, James did a lot of general improvements to textures as well. Oak Wood Planks are finally at a place where we feel satisfied and the Stick Block now has a non-placeholder texture. All of these textures have been applied to their slab, stair, and slope variants as well. Thatch has also gotten an exchange of it's placeholder texture and looks a lot more like dried grass.

Stick Block and Stick Pile

New Thatch Block

Workstations

We've talked a lot about having a lot of different ways to craft things. While the crafting grid is the generic way of creating your items, we have a lot of other workstations in store. There will be multiple tiers of the basic workbench which will give you a larger grid to work with, as well as some specified workbenches for certain things that may have an odd grid shape. While we do like the idea of grid recipes, Nightfall will in no way be limited to just that. We have a lot of workstations currently in their alpha phases and plans for more on top of that. We like the idea of being able to cook and brew by literally throwing things into a pot or using workstations that are larger than your normal block. It is likely that all of these things will eventually be in Nightfall in some form, but we're already implementing some new ways to create things in the next few weeks!

Carver

The Carver!

The first of these new workstations is the Carver. The Carver will allow the player to create block texture variants of their favorite building blocks. Want a specific type of Stone Bricks? Do you like skinnier Wood Planks? How about Stone Tiles instead of Stone Bricks? Rather than adding a billion different crafting recipes, you'll be able to just toss the base block into the carver and it will spit out all of the different variants of that specific block at a 1:1 ratio. The possibilities for this really are endless and will allow us to give you so many different designs to work with in your buildings. Just throw the block onto the table and hack, saw, chisel, and hammer away to get something brand new! (But really, all you have to do is put the block in and pick the variant you want… it's that simple ?)

Carver Alt-Design 1

Carver Alt-Design 2

Smeltery

Smeltery - Tier 1

The Smeltery is something else that we are super excited to be adding to Nightfall. Smelteries will be used to melt your ores down into ingots and other more usable forms. When you mine some deposits, they will drop chunks of ore which you can then melt down in the Smeltery to get a more pure form. Similarly to the Workbench, the Smelteries will come in multiple tiers. We're holding off on telling you about a lot of the bonuses that will come with upgrading your Smeltery, but so far James has modeled two additional tiers which we will show you in this blog. Each Smeltery will build on the advantages offered by the previous Smeltery.

Smeltery - Tier 2

Smeltery - Tier 3

Oven

We don't have any models to show you in this post, but the Oven is another new workstation coming to Nightfall. It will be made with clay and is one early-game way to cook your food. You can try to cook your food on a Smeltery but because of the immense heat put off by the Smeltery it will be much easier to use the Oven!

Explosives

Your eyes do not deceive you. We started playing with some explosives for testing purposes and we will soon be adapting these as a feature. Some of the basic explosives we are planning right now are Bombs, Dynamite, TNT (larger radius Dynamite), and Sticky Dynamite. We are straying away from explosives being actual blocks because we want them to be easy to use for combat purposes and for mining. We will likely add some sort of combat only explosive that does not damage blocks (grenades?) and a detonating charge for blast mining/controlled structure demolition.

Placeholder Bomb Test

Monsters

Harvester Concept Art

Our unnamed monster concept now has a name… meet the Harvester. Harvesters are a creature we teased awhile back. The image above was the original concept art for the Harvester which we shared on Twitter and Discord. It has been our plan from the beginning of Nightfall's creation for night time to be much more difficult than daytime… and scarier. That is actually where the name “Nightfall” comes from. The Harvester is the first of many horrors to make their way into the game and we could not be more excited. As mentioned, the Harvester originally started out as an unnamed concept. We gave you the option to help us name it through a vote and while the other options put up a fair fight, Harvesters were the clear winner.

GIF of the raw Harvester Model

So what are these things? How will they work? Are they a mini-boss? These are questions we get all of the time and in this post we would like to go a bit more in depth about the Harvester's behavior. Harvesters are chaotic beings. Their entire existence mingles between the living world and the void. They feed on lifeforms, but more specifically, on you. While it wouldn't be uncommon to find a Harvester gruesomely eating passive creatures, Harvesters hunger for the souls of intelligent life forms. These help them stay more grounded with the living world and keep their energy levels high. While this monster is not as common as something like the Undead or the Spiders, seeing one of these at night is not the rarest thing that could happen. They typically hunt alone or with a partner. If you come across a group of three or more of these… you're in serious trouble. Harvesters are fast and raptor like. They will use their spindly claws to propel them up walls and to hang from your buildings. Harvesters also have long reach. It's best to keep your doors and windows shut when they are around because if they can't fit in they may try to reach their hands inside to pull you out. We're still fleshing out how all of this will work in game but we are considering allowing them to break glass as well. Almost in a predator style, Harvesters have a chameleon like camouflage they will use to blend into the night. When attacking, hit, or moving fast, Harvesters will become more visible and solid for the player to strike. The good news is, they are essentially blind to you when you are quiet and indoors. They use a mix of smell and echolocation to track their prey and if they can't find you or get to you, they will eventually lose interest. The worst thing you could do is try to run from one of these. So, to conclude, these are not mini-bosses. This is just one of the horrors you may face at night in some biomes. There will be bosses in Nightfall eventually, but for now we are sticking to more common peaceful and hostile creatures.

Dark things coming…

The Harvester is not the only “horror” monster we have in the works. Here are some previews at concepts, rough draft models, and internal work on some additional monsters that may or may not make their way into Nightfall some day.

$1R#NH@D - Nightfall Concept

G4@#SNL4G - Nightfall Concept

G4@#SNL4G 2 - Nightfall Concept

The creatures in the second and third image may or may not be taller than a tree! ?

Lore

Yes, you're reading that correctly. Lore. This is something that we have gotten a ton of feedback/suggestions about. While we never intended for there to be any main story line to Nightfall (and we still don't really), we have always planned to subtly hint at some things through dungeons and boss fights. However, we have seen a very high demand on Discord for NPCs, settlements, factions, war, story, quests, (etc, etc, the list goes on and on), since day one. And we've heard you. We took some time over the last month to go back and look at some of the story elements we have planned for Nightfall. I admit, the idea of NPCs/Settlements is fun and we would like to tie some more story/lore into the world. Please let me emphasize this clearly before I say anything more, THERE IS A 99.9% THAT THERE WILL BE NO NPCS IN NIGHTFALL'S ALPHA OR IN NIGHTFALL FOR QUITE SOME TIME… however… we understand the desire and have worked on quite a few plans for the future that we would love to see in game. These include but are not limited to; NPC races, Settlements, Trading/Relationships with Races, and Tasks (Quests) from NPCs. There are already some races that we have names and ideas for but I feel that it is unfair to share them with you at this time. At the end of the day, we're focused on the base game of Nightfall. We want to get the very core of the game finished before we start exploring these ideas no matter how exciting they are. At the same time, you can expect us to hint at this lore and these races as early as the Alpha release through things generated in the world, items, blocks, and other elements of the game. Regardless of if/when these NPCs do make it into the game, the races and lore behind them will be unrecoverable by just playing the game. Now onto the part you have all been waiting for…

Closed Alpha

Nightfall Pre-Alpha Version 1.2

Let's talk about the release of Nightfall's Alpha version. Some of you eagle-eyed viewers will instantly notice that the version number has changed from 1.0 to 1.2. This is not actually insignificant. We've been updating the version every time one of the big features we consider “Alpha required" are added to the game. Since we originally dubbed the game in it's 1.0 state, we've changed the version twice. “Version 1.1” came when we rewrote the bulk of the networking code and improved servers drastically, and “Version 1.2” came just recently when Tools, Sounds, and a lot of general improvements came to light. Before we release the closed Alpha, there are a few more of these major things we need to improve/add so that we feel that we are comfortably releasing more than just a base block-game engine. These things are as follows;

- Dynamic Trees

We have a lot of work left to do on our trees. They are very basic right now and we have a ton of plans for them. We want at least the bare bones of our more dynamic trees to be in Nightfall's initial Alpha release.

- The Underground

Right now, we only have very rudimentary caves. Now that tools are in-game, this is something we will be improving very soon. We expect this to not be major hurdle, but it is something that will take a little time for us to get right. We want to flesh out at least the normal (temperate) underground before we release any sort of Alpha version.

- Workstations

Right now, the only workstation in game is the Workbench. This will change very soon as the Carver and Smelteries make their way into the game as well as some of our other new workstations. Since the base of crafting already exists, this should not take forever, but we want to give you more stations to work with in the base Alpha than just the workbench. Some things like the Smeltery and Oven will be necessary for progression so they are something we'd like to include early on.

- Enemy AI

This is not meant to be an excuse in any way, but our current AI developer has unfortunately not been able to work on enemies for quite some time due to a very personal diagnosis. It is not really our place to share what is happening here, so we won't, but please know he is itching to get back to the game. With that said, AI is not dead. We will be working on it again soon but it will require us to shift some of our developers onto different priorities so we want to make sure a lot of other things are good first. This will probably be one of the last things we do before releasing an Alpha version of Nightfall. In our opinion, there needs to be at least two or three functioning enemies in the initial Alpha release to provide some sort of opposition to progression. Otherwise, Nightfall would not be Nightfall. I can almost promise you that these will start small with things like the Spiders, Drainers, and the Undead, but we will then shift our focus onto more intense creatures like the Harvester.

- Water Physics* and Hunger/Thirst*

The asterisk next to these two features is because, while we would like to have these in the Alpha version of the game, they are not absolutely necessary to give you the base experience. We will not postpone the release of an initial Alpha if all we have left is these two things, but we also will try to make sure that both of these make it into an initial Alpha release. Hunger and Thirst already exist in their early forms and we know how we want to handle flowing water. Water already has a viscosity level and a lot of these things have already begun to fall into place so this should not be a huge concern.

While this is by no means not a list of EVERYTHING we need to complete to share a closed Alpha version of Nightfall with you, these are the major things we have left on our list. Of course we are still exploring things like combat, adding more tools, building blocks, etc, but the listed features are our major milestones we have left to hit before we will announce a release date for the start of a closed Alpha. There are also huge features we want to add (like Y-Chunk infinite generation) that we need to think about, even in this early stage of the game. When we started working on Nightfall in October, we never thought we would be at this point so soon. While we always hoped people would be following the game, it was hard to imagine this many of you checking in on us every day to see when the game will be ready. We want it to be public just as much as you do, and we are working as hard as we can. The fact that we are as far as we are should tell you just how much we want to make this game. Once again, we can't thank you enough for your support and we promise to continue to be as open about this process as possible. We will let you know as SOON as we know what date the closed Alpha will start. As a reminder, the closed Alpha will be made available first to our Patreon supporters, and then shared for free with active members of our community for testing purposes. After the Alpha phase is over, we will discuss the future of the game and where we go selling/platform wise from there. <3

Creation Tools

We're working hard on Nightfall every day. We know how passionate you are about the game because we are too! A common question we get is about modding or creating assets for Nightfall. We're excited to announce that we are working on a system for the latter. We've talked about our dungeon creation tools in the past but we actually have a lot of cool creation tools coming!

We want to give you easy ways to create beautiful assets that the community can vote on to have added to the game! That's right! Things you create could get added to the base game. Right now, we are planning to allow submissions for three main things.

- Weapons

- Armor

- Modular Dungeon Pieces

You will not have to create these entirely from scratch. Eventually, we will be releasing tools/guides to help you design these things. The weapons and armor creation tools will likely be a guide that give you the dimensions and art restrictions of what Nightfall's models consist of. Our dungeon creation tool will be a bit different and we're aiming to have it be similar to a creative world where you'll have an empty canvas and all of our blocks at your disposal to create modular pieces (or entire dungeons) that we will add to the procedurally generated pool.

WAIT! How will we screen for quality?

We don't want random things added to the game that do not fit the vibe of Nightfall either. We will look to the community first and foremost in a voting system likely done on our Discord. If the community reacts positively to it and it reaches a certain threshold of votes, we will make sure that it fits the vision we have for the game and then proceed with implementing it in the near future. We will always retain the final say. Things that are copyrighted by other games will not be accepted. We may also offer revisions/advice to your submissions and if you make changes, then it may be resubmitted and reconsidered. If you use the creation tools/your creation gets accepted, you will have to agree to some sort of terms of service that Nightfall owns the assets from then on out. That may sound scary but we'll put something like that in place solely to protect the game you love. Once something is submitted to Nightfall/Venatus, it will be ours to use as we see fit. We have no planned release yet for these tools but you could see some of them before Alpha! We will likely release most of the tools once the game is more polished.

Since the beginning of this journey, lots of you have been submitting ideas and suggestions to us. We know that the creative and modding community are important and this is just one of many ways we hope to make Nightfall feel more like you're game too! As of this blog post, #submissions is live in the Discord for you to learn more. <3

Music

As usual, we have another incredible piece of the Nightfall OST going up on our YouTube channel along with the release of this blog post. This time, the song is called Awake and is again written by our incredibly talented composer, Jay. Make sure to send him your love on Discord as he works really hard on these pieces to give music to those of you who enjoy having a soundtrack to your adventures.

Discord, Patreon, and Social Media

Discord

Use the link above to head on over to our Discord. This is the absolute BEST way to communicate with myself, any of the Developers, and the community. We have dedicated areas for you to suggest features, give feedback, learn more, and most importantly - ASK QUESTIONS (and get an answer too!) This is the easiest way of supporting us and is totally free! We are so happy to see so many of you already taking advantage of this by joining, talking to each other, suggesting features, and grilling us with questions! It's been great!

**I know I mention Discord in every blog post, but seriously, this is a great place to get to know us better! You can earn in-game profile tags, suggest features directly, and we do different things throughout the week for you to participate in like Feedback Friday with more to come in the future! You're missing out if you haven't hopped in yet! ❤️

YouTube

Check out our YouTube channel for other pieces of Nightfall's OST. We will also be posting Devlogs, Trailers, and more here in the future!

Click the link above to head over and subscribe so you don't miss future videos!

Patreon

https://www.patreon.com/vgnightfall

While we don't require it by any means, Patreon is a great way to support us directly. You can pledge to monetarily support us monthly here. We do have various tiers of support that each provide unique rewards like special roles on our Discord server, access to even more direct communication with Developers, and of course, eventual early access to the game to help us test. One of the tiers even lets you work with us directly to add a creature to the game! You'll also get bonus development content and an even closer peek into our development process directly through Patreon and Discord when you subscribe! We've already posted a lot of extra content on our Patreon!

Thank you to our current Patreon supporters:

Basic Supporter - iDraws

Patreon+ - BOWSER0897

If you don't like Patreon, you can also choose to support us directly with one-time payments through PayPal.

You can donate through PayPal by clicking here.

Thank you to those of you who have chosen to do this in the past or through Patreon.

Twitter

https://twitter.com/venatus_games

Our Twitter is a great way to keep track of weekly updates to Nightfall! We post screenshots, GIFs, videos, art, job positions, and more! Twitter is free to use and an awesome way to stay up to date with all of the Nightfall news! Head on over to the link above and give us a follow to learn more!

(Closing)

And Night is Upon Us!

It's been another fantastic blog post. Every time I get to this part of the blog I like to take a minute and reflect on how much has changed since the last one and how much as changed since our very first blog back in October 2019. It really is humbling to know that so many of you are supporting us through our rises and our falls in this journey. This is truly a passion project for us and we will continue to work on bringing Nightfall to life – no matter how long it takes. Thank you all so much for the positive messages on Discord, financial support, creative suggestions, and so much more.

As for what's next, here is something I am currently working on. Do you know what it is for?

???

Over the next month we plan to keep tackling the things we mentioned in the Closed Alpha section of this blog post. We will continue to share things with you frequently on Twitter and Discord as often as possible. Stay tuned on Discord for the release of some creation tools as I expect those to become available sooner rather than later. Thank you again for loving Nightfall as much as we do. I better hurry up and get going. I think I hear the Harvesters getting closer. Until next time…

Humbly,

Jack and the Venatus Team