October 13, 2015

Chugging away towards alpha, here’s the latest:

Eric – eric@strangeloopgames.com

Work on the UI, crafting tables and stores continues. Very soon the full initial tech tree for alpha will be coming together.



(Check out the ‘fee’, this lets craft table owners make profit per-hour by sharing their crafting tables publicly, and does a huge amount to jump start the economy of the game.)

Fuller – nfuller@strangeloopgames.com

Did a ton of work on network-related systems. Lots of technical, not-so-fun flowcharts were made. I’ll spare you the screenshots of my scrap paper.

On the other hand, building authorization is coming along nicely. We slightly re-ordered the building process to make it flow a bit smoother. Construction deeds are back, so you can now swap the ownership of land by passing around an item. Remember to keep it locked away tight, else you’ll lose the rights to your property.

We also added, then subsequently removed, the ability to change how the client responds to user input regarding tools and items. This is a part where modding and networking collide. Good news is, it’s now figured out automatically based on some pre-processing magic I got going for the items. Bad news is, there’s a few tools that don’t quite fit in this spectrum (I’m looking at you, bows) so expect to see it revised in a different form post-alpha.

John – john@strangeloopgames.com

Built out a rough draft of the tech tree for alpha, consisting of buildings, skills, items, and research, and the graph for how each unlocks the other. Will wait to share this one as we get it a little further.

It’s going to be heavily weighted towards early tech, with most of the later stuff placeholder as we fill in the mechanics required (electricity, transport, waste, machinery), but the goal is to have tech implemented all the way to destroying the meteor for alpha.

K – klim@strangeloopgames.com

Serialization was being serious.

Made tool follow animation to act(almost.)

Working on search and select item UI for crafting table, store, etc.

Keegan – keegan@strangeloopgames.com

I’ve been working on effects for the meteor impact sequence, and many other preparatory art tasks and research for the new building types and materials. First up will be the whole-log building type, and then stone will be next.

Milenko – milenko@strangeloopgames.com

Exploring the overall look of the game still. Waiting for the code to get on top of their alpha task and then we will start looking at the way we implement terrain in Eco. Also, doing a bunch of remaining icons for the UI. Some rough sketches follow:

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We’re targeting end of October for alpha, but as mentioned before we may push into early November, just so we have a more solid experience when we start. Can’t wait to share it with everyone.