Going Through a very long Tunnel

Our development train is now going through a vastly long tunnel: Refactoring the physics system.

The current physics system is old and rudimentary, it does not even support relatively basic stuff like rotational mechanics, custom mesh collision and ragdoll physics.

So we are remaking the physics module, I may use PhysX or some full physics sdk otherwise I'd take forever to remake it.

This was part of the roadmap as my current physics engine is over 10 years old, so the time has come to replace it. 

I'm basically working on transplanting this module, so nothing is building correctly right now, hopefully next update we are out of the tunnel so I'll have some cool screen captures to share.

The game is 20.3% complete and 67.7% ready for editor alpha release.

New Physics System & Estimations/Dates

Wow, this was quite a big refactor in the game engine, we now have a brand new physics system. Faster, better and all kinds of shapes are now supported.

Gameplay mechanics are not fully upgraded yet, I'll leave this part for after Biomancer (game engine/editor) release.

I'll be back to Biomancer itself to start the level editor next!

Now...

ESTIMATIONS!

To be a bit different this time, I'll disclose some information about the release dates according to my planning calculations.

There are 10 releases planned for our roadmap.

• 2 first releases are the Game Engine release.
• 2 next releases are a sandbox version of the game, with almost all gameplay mechanics available
• 6 last releases are all related to the game itself.

I'm still considering if I'll release as 3 different projects or not.

Here is the estimation breakdown:

This are quite artificial estimations, they were generated by spreadsheet calculations based on how much of my free time I can dedicate to this project. Later down the line, after the first release, I plan to open it for collective funding and if all goes well, I may be able to dedicate more time to it, as I always wanted and expedite.

The game is 20.6% complete and 70.0% ready for editor alpha release.

Material Editor

I'm back developing the game engine, this time I completed the first iteration of the Material Editor:

Sorry for the choppy animations, all due to the size limitation in here.

Right now you can customize color, roughness, metalness and sub-surface translucency, I'll add more options in the next iterations.

Now for the next weeks I'll be back on the 3rd and hopefully last iteration of the engine's 3D procedural geometry generation.

The game is 21.0% complete and 72.6% ready for editor alpha release.

Procedural Art Maker

As I promised, the art of the game will be 100% procedural (with the only exception being part of the characters only).

On these 3 part update I did a procedural geometry editor via coding, which is nice but not very useful as an Art tool.

So, I'm solving that by upgrading that scripting tool to work directly via 3D editing:

Now it's real time, unlike before, you can see how you can combine in lots of ways several 3D shapes into one.

In that GIF, I combine that ellipsoid with the rest of the surface smoothly creating a pleasant curvy look. There's also a"stairs-combiner" that literally create stairs in between the Ellipsoid and the other shapes.

For that I used a math concept called Signed Distance Fields. I can dive more in details about it in the next updates if you want :)

Keep in mind that this maker is not ready yet, there's more features to come. Now imagine the possibilities! And just you wait once I get into domain repetition.

(I said domain repetition, not domain expansion, but it's going to be as cool as domain expansion, I promise)

The game is 21.4% complete and 74.5% ready for editor alpha release.

Infinity

A very important aspect of the game is the infinity. Some levels will be infinite, and for that I will need a math concept called Domain repetition:

With that I can repeat any procedural geometry in any way I want.

We are getting close to release the first alpha version of the Editor.

The game is 21.7% complete and 78.9% ready for editor alpha release.

More Design Possibilities

Sorry for taking too long to post this update, I had a lot going on in these last few weeks.

However, I haven't stopped working in this project during my free time.

So I've been adding a lot of functionalities for the 3D Editor.

I'm planning to port all these to the game itself so the player can create anything in game via this procedural editor, this will make content creation much easier and way more fun!

Here is me playing a bit with it in the editor:

The game is 22.1% complete and 84.5% ready for next editor release.

Planning & Estimation Review 4

It's time for another round of estimations review.

This time decided to change one big thing: Instead of presenting the game engine as a release, I will present the Sandbox (Demo) version of the game. This is because if I take your precious time, I'd like to make the most of it and show how the game will look like instead of how the tech behind the curtains works. The issue was that from my engineering side, 75% of all work is going to the game engine rather than the game itself, that's why I felt like releasing the game engine/editor first. However from a marketing perspective, it doesn't make any sense for me to show deep technical features for gamers prior to presenting the game itself. That doesn't mean I'm not going to publish the game engine, I surely will, that is the main mod tool for the game itself, I'll make sure to make it available for modders.

The estimations are becoming more solid each review, now here are the new estimation dates:

As always, it's important to remember that, these are quite artificial estimations, they were generated by spreadsheet calculations based on how much of my free time I can dedicate to this project. Later down the line, I plan to open it for collective funding and if all goes well, I may be able to dedicate more time to it, as I always wanted and expedite.

As a progress update, I've been working on a Class System Editor, even though very important it's unfortunately nothing visual, so no fun screen capture this time :(

After this Estimation review, the game is 22.1% complete and 82.1% ready for Sandbox Pre-alpha release.

Scripting

I've been busy with a module of the engine called "Class Maker" that allows me to create any entity in the game (like, enemies, camera, NPCs...). I'm creating my own scripting language to help me fully create the game in the engine itself. The reason why I'm creating mu own scripting language is to be flexible and efficient at the same time, as this language will be converted to other languages behind the curtains depending on what is the purpose of its execution call.

Now, not to kill you of boredom here is me creating a 3D House in 3 minutes using my game engine:

I said it before, but I really want this content creation to be part of the game itself :)

The game is 23.6% complete and 88.0% ready for Sandbox Pre-alpha release.

Bioscript: The Engine's scripting language.

I'm finishing up the basics of the engine's own scripting language. I believe that it may be complete by the next update. Here is how the syntax looks like

With this language I hope to code the game live within the engine. For that the language is converted to Lua at run-time and to C++ when exporting the game, so it's fair to say that this language is a "scripting" language as fast as C++.

If you are here just to see some cool gifs, I've got you covered. Here is me punching a hole into a solid surface.

Now, this is the same thing but in the middle of it, I make the surface is now hollow inside in a flick of a second:

The game is 24.6% complete and 91.6% ready for Pre-alpha release.

Destructible Scenario & Physics 

Setting up the scenario in the engine I'm now able to do this:

That blue square "explodes" the ground every time it touches it, making a crater, the other brown ball just collides with the scenario normally.

I will also make the opposite: creating object and making them interact with the scene at play time.

We are getting close to the first alpha version of the game engine release, I will tell details in the next posts.

The game is 25.1% complete and 95.0% ready for alpha engine release.

ALPHA RELEASED

We hit Alpha!

Right now it's Closed Alpha, but you are free to join our discord and test it yourself!

We also finally have a page for the Game Engine

The game engine is 43.0% complete.

The whole project is 26.3% complete.

Biomancer (Engine) 0.1.3.0 Alpha Released

♥(ง☉‿☉)ง ♫♩ 乁(☉‿☉乁) ♥

Biomancer (The Game Engine) is 44.3% complete.

The whole project is 27.0% complete.

UI Editor - 0.1.4 Alpha

ヽ(⌐■_■)ノ♪♬

Minor trypophobia warning!

Biomancer (The Game Engine) is 45.5% complete. 

 The whole project is 27.8% complete.

Bioscripts: 0.1.5 - Alpha

I completed the engine's script editor, the scripting language is called Bioscript.

https://fearcode.itch.io/biomancer/devlog/876634/bioscripts-015-alpha

You can load the test project by clicking in Open Existing Projects and choosing "./samples/TestProject/TestProject.bioproj"

I owe you a tutorial, I'm aware, it will come once the engine is feature complete :)

Meanwhile here is me fooling around with the engine's 3D Editor.

That's like a bulding done 1 minute, and Here is me navigating through the building:

Biomancer (The Game Engine) is 46.7% complete. 

 The whole project is 28.5% complete.

2 Years of Shine (And Biomancer)

A few days ago we hit the 2 years mark of me posting about the game and my game engine online.

I want to thank everyone who has followed the the project over the past two years! It means a lot!

Here is a full dev log:

https://fearcode.itch.io/biomancer/devlog/890417/two-years-of-biomancer-a-major-...

And here is a discord invite in case you want to download the game engine and try it yourself!

Biomancer (The Game Engine) is 47.9% complete. 

The whole project is 29.3% complete.

We hit the 30% Mark!

The project is 30% complete and that's a hell of an accomplishment!

Here is a new Devlog for you!

And here is a cool preview of what's in the Dev log! I'd be glad if you checked it out!

And here is a discord invite in case you want to download the game engine and try it yourself!

Biomancer (The Game Engine) is 50% complete. 

The whole project is 30% complete.

Today Biomancer is in Open Alpha!

https://fearcode.itch.io/biomancer/devlog/960820/open-alpha

You can now download the Game Engine on Itch:

https://fearcode.itch.io/biomancer

You can join our Discord to get more regular releases:

https://discord.gg/nrZeYy3UM2

Biomancer (The Game Engine) is 57.1% complete. 

The whole project is 33.5% complete.

Human-like AI

I just finished the first version of the Game's AI. It's based on LLM (the same tech as ChatGPT, it's llama actually), so you will be able to fully talk to it in the game! 

It's all offline, no connection to any AI server.

To test this new AI made for the game I create a discord bot and powered her with it!

She is called Matriel and you can talk to her in our discord!

Here is me asking her to explain the 3rd and last big feature of the game:

Here is the full dev log: https://fearcode.itch.io/biomancer/devlog/987475/human-like-ai

Biomancer (The Game Engine) is 59.8% complete. 

The whole project is 34.6% complete.

Talking to multiple NPCs

I'm still in AI land making sure the game engine can produce a very immersive AI for Shine Fall (The game).

Now, the player can talk with multiple NPCs "at the same time".

Here is the full dev log: https://fearcode.itch.io/biomancer/devlog/1012971/talking-to-multiple-npcs

The game is not out yet, but I made a Discord bot to test the game engine's AI, she's called Matriel, you can chat with her in the project's discord server.

And just to keep up with my tradition of showing something cool from the engine:

Here's a screencap of me testing Biomancer's (The game engine) infinite scenario:

Biomancer (The Game Engine) is 62.3% complete. 

The whole project is 35.7% complete.