Introduction

We're a little late for this but – Happy New Year! Hard to believe this is our first blog post of 2021. Time really flies. As per usual, we've been caught up in the whirlwind that is life. Unfortunately, I had a brush with COVID-19 that was not so fun, and a lot of our team members have been hard at work with their schooling or moving residences. However, this has not stopped us from working hard on Nightfall. We've had a very productive Q1 of 2021, and we are excited to share some of the things we've been working on! In this blog post, we'll show you some of the new systems that have found their way into the game, new features, and tell you all about our brand new, custom-built lighting system in Unity! We have big plans for the rest of the year and we hope to continue to be this productive in the coming summer. Although we have not been posting on this Blog as frequently, we've been fairly active over on Twitch and normally stream at least 1-2 times a week! You can check us out over at twitch.tv/Venatus_Games. We stream a lot of our art and design process here and it is a great way to have your voice heard and interact with us in real time as we work on the game! The same goes for Discord! Alright – enough rambling. Enjoy the blog post!

Lighting

You may have already guessed from the banner and title of this blog post, but one of the biggest changes these past few months was lighting. One of our developers, KdotJPG, has been hard at work on our custom lighting system. Here is a little excerpt from him about how the lighting system works;

The common flood fill lighting algorithm used in many block games has two main properties that drive it's appeal. First, it enables light to propagate around corners. Second, it allows both light and terrain modifications to be performed efficiently. One shortcoming of it, though, is that its falloff shape isn't round. Light surrounding a source takes on more of an axis-aligned octahedral shape, appearing as a 45-degree square when shown on a surface. This is a consequence of the underlying premise of the algorithm, where it zig-zags from block to block, lowering the light level at each step. This in effect calculates a Manhattan distance falloff from each light source, rather than a Euclidean distance falloff. Inline with avoiding the terrain directional bias problems many block games exhibit, I thought it would be good to address it in the lighting system too.

I modified the classical algorithm to compute a Euclidean falloff, which required rewrites to some parts of it. The main change was that each node needed a more complex ruleset to compute its value, that depends on up to 3 neighbors' values. The brightness value is assigned as the brightest possible Euclidean falloff that could occur from any source considering the values of three neighbors: one along each cardinal direction. Because I did not find a fast formula that works in the general case, I devised a lookup table format that was somewhat manageable in size, but still provides all the needed information. I also changed when it's calculated, so it can check the neighbor values when they are already loaded. I then temporarily set a value in each block light state to prevent the duplicated queue entries that would otherwise arise from this change. In its current form, it requires four times whatever amount of memory of the non-Euclidean algorithm took. But as it becomes needed, I will explore ways to reduce this footprint while keeping the lights round. In doing so, it is likely I can reduce the size of the lookup table too.

For those of you unfamiliar with some of the terms used in that explanation, here's a summary: “Light turn on.” :P – but in all serious, kudos to KdotJPG. He is building an insane lighting system for our engine.

While our custom lighting system is still under development, we are pretty proud of how far we've come so far. We'll continue to share updates with you on how it is going and our progress on colored lights and day/night in the future!

World Generation Improvements

Another thing that KdotJPG has worked on since our last blog post is implementing some new world generation features through 3D noise. This allows for cool landmarks like overhangs, ridges, and cliffs and we will definitely be experimenting with this more once we have made some additional progress on the lighting system. These images are all work in progress from awhile back, but we never got to show them to you guys… so here are some examples of new world generation features!

Items in Hand

The long awaited return of items being held in your hand is finally here! We have moved this feature back into the current build and improved it while doing so. This is very exciting! Having this feature back allows us to really start fleshing out some of the other new additions that you will see later on in this blog (like fishing and farming). The way the system currently works is that any item that has a model/object will display that in your hand. Any item that does not will just display the sprite. The size of items/blocks in your hand really makes it feel great when you are picking up and placing a block or using an item. Here is an example of this!

At the time of this blog post, we are actually mid-way through remaking the first-person hand model to improve it's look and feel in the game. The remade version will give us more flexibility when working with items in hand and even allow us to curl the fingers around an item as you can see in the demo below.

Items in hand are still a work-in-progress but now that this feature is back in place you can expect to see a lot more of experimentation with it in the near future. This is especially true with things like weapons and tools which we have started designing and implementing to Nightfall.

Tools

Tools have had a pretty big overhaul since you last saw them. In a previous blog post, we showed you some rudimentary tools that we were planning to use but we have pivoted their design a little since then. While the very early game flint tools will retain their original look, stone tools and beyond have gotten a more clean design that we can really build on. Crafted tools will all follow this more uniform design while tools that are more unique or drops from creatures will have a more special feel to them. Pictured in the banner above are many of the pickaxes that can be crafted from the metals found in the Tier 1 Underground. The more fancy looking pickaxe with the metal rod handle is one of the highest tiers you can obtain in the Tier 1 underground. Pickaxes and tools crafted from better resources in the tiers beyond will also have metal or more advanced handles rather than using wood.

The original axes have also been replaced with better versions and James also created designs for the hoe and shovel. We're currently putting these tools in game as this blog is being written so stay tuned for images of this soon. The hoe is already functioning and in-game which you will see later on in this post. We modeled a lot of these tools live on our Twitch channel with a lot of input from viewers. If you want a say in our future design process you should definitely check out the streams!

Here are some cool renders of some pickaxes/tools if you want a closer look or to use them for a background! :D

Ingots, Ores, and Pickaxe Icons

Since our last post, ingots and pickaxes both got updated icons for the game. We also finalized a lot of the ores and alloys we want to exist in the tier one underground. In the GIFs above you can see these icons and the names of the ingots revealed for the first time ever. While a lot of you have guessed at what some of these are, here is the confirmation. Some of the metals/alloys could possibly have their names and looks changed in the future so don't get too attached just yet but we're very excited to be sharing these with you! There are two alloy ingots (Steel and Bronze) and the rest can all be found as naturally generating ores in the world which can be mined into ore chunks and smelted down into the ingot form. The pickaxe icons are pretty self-explanatory but using these GIFs you can see which ingots have pickaxe forms and which don't. James also did the icons for some of the chunks of ore that drop from ore blocks. This is something we mentioned wanting to do over a year ago so it is nice to finally have the art for them now.

Farming

Farming has made its way into Nightfall! Gavin and myself spent a long time fleshing out this system and making sure it was very versatile and expandable for future improvements. Gavin especially poured a lot of time into adding farming mechanics into the game and we are still improving them. As of right now , the farming system allows for the following;

• Tilling Dirt Blocks into Farmable Soil
• Watering Crops
• Soil Drying (Need to re-water semi-daily)
• Harvesting
• Reverting the crop back to a previous stage when harvested (i.e. Berries or Tomatoes)
• Various Beneficial Fertilizers

Farming in Nightfall will not be as simple as planting and waiting. You will have to care of your crops if you want to see all of them make it to harvest. This includes watering them frequently. We have a lot of plans to extend this system in the future to make it a bit easier to manage. By adding things like sprinklers, the player will be able to automate the process in some ways, however, we don't want farming to be entirely hands-free. You will have to worry about seasons and weather and other factors when it comes to ensuring a plentiful harvest. As a reference for complexity, our farming system would be more comparable to something like Stardew Valley than to other block game titans like Minecraft.

We've also updated the watering can and Stone Hoe icons since the first GIF featured at the start of the farming section which you can see here;

The Stone Hoe and Watering Can are currently the only two farming tools in the game. They are used to till land for planting and water crops.

One of the features I mentioned is that we are able to revert crops back to a previous stage when they are harvested. This is especially useful for crops that can be harvested multiple times like berries or tomatoes. We've actually used this feature to implement berries already which you can see here;

We actually showed the models and stages for these berries off forever ago but they are finally in game and look pretty good if I do say so myself. Berries go through five different stages and revert back to stage one when picked. When you break the berry bush, you get the entire bush and you can replant these bushes for a nice early-game food source.

Someone on Discord suggested glow berries which is something I had been wanting to add for awhile and with our new lighting system in process I figured – why not?!

Fishing

Over the past few months we've also been working on fishing. Gavin spent a lot of time working on this feature and while it is still in its early stages, there are already a lot of important pieces of the foundation laid that we can show you in this post. Keep in mind that a lot of this is programmer art and is still lacking animation. The actual “challenge” part of fishing is also yet to be added. So far, we have already implemented the following;

• Fishing Rods
• Fish
• Bait (The Basics)
• Fishable Crates
• Specific Catch Conditions (Biome, Time, Weather, Rod Level)
• Rod Durability
• Water Detection/Type
• Fishable Items
• Loot-table Rarity

While fishing may not look like a whole lot right now, there are a bunch of things going on under the hood. In the current build, the fishing process is just right-clicking on a water type block with a pole in hand. Here is a GIF of this…

When you use the fishing rod, you will get a random fish or item from the list of things that are fishable by that rod. Better rods can catch better fish and better items. Some fish are rarer than others and some may even require bait to catch.

The ability for different rods to catch different fish is already something we've added which you can see here…

Again, keep in mind that a lot of what you see here is placeholder – especially the water. While a good portion of what you see is just placeholder, the core functionality is there. Now that we have items being hold-able in the hand again, we will be starting to work on the actual fishing process of casting out your line and waiting for a fish to bite. You can expect to see this in an upcoming blog.

Because there will be so many different fish that you can catch in different biomes and under other conditions like time and weather, there will also be lots of different things you can do with your fish. We want to allow players to display their fish in tanks or other types of displays so that you can proudly show off your finest catches. With such a large variety of fish, we know that inventory space could be a problem. To combat this, all fish will be craftable into the same product – raw fish.

Raw Fish can be put in an oven and turned into Cooked Fish and other meals but it can also be re-attached to your line to use as bait for bigger creatures.

While working on fishing, we also did some work on crates. For now, the only way to obtain these crates is through fishing. When you catch a crate, you will be able to right click while holding it to open it. Each crate will have a different loot table of items that you can get from opening it. These include things like resources, crafting materials, and ores, tools, and armor that are exclusive to fishing. We have all of the code for this already in place and you can see an example crate here which has its entire loot table set to be sticks.

We are not entirely sold on the name crate yet either. This may change to something different in the future (like “Troves”), however, we are pretty happy with how the logic works for the time being.

We are currently brainstorming ideas for lots of various fish. If you have a fish or water creature you'd like to see in game, come share with us on Discord!

Crafting

So… we threw our old crafting system in the trash. Well, not yet, but we're going to. This was not a quick decision but it's something we've been thinking about for awhile. We've wanted to break away from the crafting system you've seen many times over in other block games for something more modernized and special. After some brainstorming and creativity, we feel like we've come up with the perfect solution.

When crafting in Nightfall, the workbench will now open to a large empty table that the player can drag and place items onto. Each item will have four nodes -- up, down, right and left – that the player can attach another item onto to create a chain. Chains are the new and more stylized form of recipes and to craft what you want you'll need to chain together all the items required for your product in the right pattern. Once you've created your chain you'll be able to double-click (or maybe right click – we have not decided yet) to signal that you are finished chaining and if you've made a recipe that exists it will form what you are trying to craft. You'll also be able to leave other items on the table while you are making a chain or even have multiple chains going at once. When you are holding an item while hovering close to another item on the table you'll be able to see a little blue dot to signify where you are able to attach that item to form a chain. Chains of two will be able to skip over this step and be formed just by dragging and dropping an item on top of another. The best part of this system is that the grid system of crafting is essentially gone and items and chains can be started wherever you want on the table. The grid is much more freeform and only really exists when you're chaining.

If this all seems a bit confusing, we've made a mockup for you to see this system visually that you can view below…

A few of you have already seen this on Patreon or through supporter channels and your feedback has been really great. We're just as happy with this system as you are and we're super excited to share it with the rest of you. A disclaimer – THIS IS NOT IN GAME YET. This is purely mockup footage and our old crafting system will stick around awhile longer. However, we are in the process of phasing it out and we are hoping to have this new crafting system when the Closed Alpha rolls around.

Another nice thing about this crafting system is that we can really expand on workbenches and offer multiple tiers that provide the player with a larger space for chains and other advantages that were not possible before. Crafting from inside your inventory will still exist but you will only have a small space to do so which means only one chain will be possible at a time. We'll share more on this system and our progress on it as it develops.

Mini-Games

Something we wanted to work on to include in the Closed Alpha were mini-games. When creating these “mini-games" for Nightfall, we want to focus on games that give the players a lot of freedom to create. What this means is we want players to be able to decide on the rules for the game, build the playing fields, and play however they want to. That is why we felt that Soccer and Capture the Flag were the perfect two games to start with. Players can create their own soccer fields and use the custom goal block and soccer balls to have matches in whatever way they would like. Want to use five balls at once, three different goals, and play the game all on a platform in the sky? Go for it! You get to decide how your games play out.

Capture the flag works similarly in that the player gets to choose the landscape and build the play space for their games. We wanted to give players the very bare bones of this mini-game so that they can decide almost ALL of the rules when they play with friends. You are able to craft an empty flag pole and, for now, four different flags to put on that pole. You can put a flag on an empty pole by holding it and right-clicking or pull it off by right clicking on the pole with a flag on it.

Players have total freedom in deciding how they want their Capture the Flag games to go. If you are doing a two team game of CTF, maybe you just have to rip off the enemy flag to win. If you are playing against three other teams, maybe you need to craft four empty poles and have all of their flags and yours displayed in your base to win. It is really up to you and the possibilities are endless. We cannot wait to see what players do with these tools. We're sure there will be many uses we have not even thought of. We have plans for more mini-games in the future, like Golf and others, that may make their way into the Closed Alpha builds or in a future build.

Backpacks

We've had the UI for the backpack sitting around for awhile and in the time since the last blog post we decided to model the actual backpack. Backpacks can be equipped in the “back” equipment slot. This is the same equipment slot used for things like the Glider so you'll have to choose what you want to wear. An advantage of the backpack is that it provides you with 25 extra inventory slots for you to utilize! You can fill the backpack with whatever you'd like for portable storage. We may also do some other backpacks in the future that are more specialized and can only contain specific materials but for now these backpacks will be one size fits all.

Tree System Progress Update

Not much to show here as far as media goes but here is a smaller teaser of our progress with our custom tree system. Hopefully we will be sharing more of this with you soon but we are currently working on this system. Having this tech for trees will be a game changer as far as making our biomes look that much more alive and unique and we're really excited to continue working towards this goal.

Character Customization Progress Update

For those of you who are not caught up with our stream, we did a lot of character creation work awhile back. We are currently in the process of creating assets for our character creator but we don't have much we want to show at this time. As you can see, we have developed the base for a female player character and will be continuing to explore other body types in the near future. Expect to start seeing different characters than just the original guy in a lot of our renders, videos, and screenshots soon.

Website

We now have a website!! Head on over to nightfalls.net to check it out! It is currently a work in progress but it is already a great place to find all of the links related to Nightfall. By the end of the year, we'd like to make it possible for you to sign up and reserve your username for the game and we plan to have a lot of other nice things here as just a general hub for the game. Keep your eye on the page! You never know when something might pop up!

Checking in on Alpha…

A quick update here as I know a lot of people like this segment. The short answer is – we're working on it. Our goal is still to have something by the end of 2021 but its all dependent on what life throws at us. We are working on it, I can promise you that. There is rarely a day that goes by where one of us doesn't do something Nightfall related. With that said, as always, keep in mind it is a hobby. We're trying our best with what we've got. We will keep you posted!

Discord, Twitch, Patreon, and Social Media

Discord

https://discord.gg/2BKtNks

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! While we post blogs infrequently – WE ARE VERY ACTIVE HERE! This is the best place to stay up to date with the game!

**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! ❤️

Twitch

https://twitch.tv/venatus_games​

Our twitch is a great place to watch the development in action! We're typically live at least once a week and more recently multiple times a week! Come tune in and watch us work on the game!

YouTube

Check out our YouTube channel for other pieces of Nightfall's OST. We also plan to post video dev logs there… eventually (hopefully this summer?)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb0eFml5-iRYt6mgG2k2LTw

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:

Patreon+ - BOWSER0897

Patreon+ - Ceaturtle

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)

Night is Upon Us!

ANNNNNNNNND that's the end of another blog post! Thank you all for tuning in for another entry in the development blog of Nightfall. We appreciate everyone who has been supporting us over the past ~1.5 years. We aren't going anywhere and have big plans for this summer. While the world sometimes gets in the way, we don't plan on stopping. Nightfall will exist in some form. I hope that we do not go another long span of time without a blog post. I will try to share things more often. The community surrounding our project never ceases to amaze me and I appreciate all of you who check in on us every day! Special shoutout to those of you who checked in on me personally when I had COVID. You all rock! We will catch you soon but we're going to head inside now. It is getting dark and I am not confident that our walls will hold off the horrors of the night. Hang in there survivors….

Take care,

Jack and the Venatus Team