NEP v0.2 Release - The Lighting Update

The lighting engine is all fixed up, polished, optimized, and ready to go. It's not perfect just yet, but it's good enough for now. Have fun playing around with the new light blocks in this release. It took me forever and an extra week to finish the lighting engine! I think it looks ok for now, so hopefully it will pay off in the overall aesthetic of the game and help make up for some of my lackluster artwork. =) I still need to make a better texture for the stone blocks.

If you want to have some fun, press F5 a few times in game and you can see various debug renders for the sky light channel.

You can install the new version of NEP using your launcher. Find the info button on the main screen and then install the 0.2 version. Set it as default if you want so you can launch it next time from the main launcher screen.

You can put the new blocks into your hotbar using the currently-arcane default control scheme. Control rebinds are coming someday... Anyway, drop the blocks anywhere in the world you like using the builder tools and watch things light up. Your character will also be shaded the color of the lights in your vicinity.

This release also has the new wall layer in the world. By default, the buidler mode controls edit the blocks layer. These are the blocks you can bump into. Pressing the ` key will toggle wall mode, where you can put blocks in the wall layer. You don't bump into the walls blocks, but they can block sunlight and have a different visual look. Eventually, it will be possible to put things on the walls, like fun machines, but your walls will be pretty barren for now. There's no visual indicator for wall-editing mode yet, so you'll just have to keep track of it in your head for now.

The vast majority of the work on the game's engine is done at this point, so now I'm going to focus on fun easy gameplay features instead of hugely technical engine features. Thankfully, implementing gameplay features is typically much much easier than working on the engine, so progress from here on out should be quite a bit faster. I hoping to have new releases every week or so.

The first thing I'll be working on is a new gameplay mode that is more game-y than the completely open-ended builder mode. So, stay tuned for the actual game part of this game! =)

Private Pre-Alpha Phase

This post is about a private pre-alpha release for my upcoming indie game, Non-Essential Personnel. The private pre-alpha phase is a development/testing phase open only to friends and family for now. If you don't fall into that category, you won't be able to play the game today, but come back to the blog later for announcements about the public alpha phase where everyone can help test the game.