Vox Windows game

So it has been a long time coming but finally the new update is available to download.

The biggest change to the game is the new HUD/GUI graphics and functionality that should make the game feel totally new and fresh as well as make it easier to understand and more intuative.

The character create screen has also been vastly improved and the ability to modify the scale and offsets of your character parts has been returned:

The questing GUI has also been updated to allow you to better see what quests you are currently tracking and also displays any previous quests that you might have completed.

Here is a list of the full patch notes:

New Features:

• Fog rendering for far distances.
• Better biome generation.
• Better enemy and item spawning.
• Enemies can spawn in different biomes.
• Proper 'Alive times' on tombstones.
• Pulldown menu for particle effects in the creation editor.
• Add fire status effect to weapons and attacks
• Enemy sonar shots (purple concentric rings).
• Bats now fire sonar projectiles as an attack.
• NPCs attack back enemies that are harassing them.
• Better trees and scenery for intro.
• Include seconds on tombstones.
• Multiplayer Lobby screen.
• Multiplayer coding - threads and sockets.
• Multiplayer configuration IP/port/etc added to configuration manager.
• Add support for UDP as well as TCP communications.
• Game chat available once joined a multiplayer game from the lobby.
• Player Idle flag. Dont do same idle animation if we are already idle
• Online player nameplates.
• Proper animations used by online players.
• Block explosions sent over multiplayer.
• Sending shots across the network in multiplayer.
• Don't spawn block items on clients.
• Better fire wand accuracy.
• Damage and respawning sent over the network.
• Better creating and freeing of OnlinePlayer class data.
• Better respawn handling for players joining an existing game.
• Don't send refresh request to serverlist if we are not in the multiplayer lobby.
• Add a leave game button to the multiplayer lobby.
• Better world seeding for multiplayer synch support.
• Sending game params over multiplayer games.
• Rendering Online Players on the minimap.
• Dropped collection blocks are scaled sensibly.
• Collectable blocks dont stay in the world forever - disappear after a time.
• Reduce the magic cost of fire wand.
• Remove combat slow time during jump attacks.
• Add equip change support for multiplayer.
• Remove chat textbox focus when we leave the lobby.
• Allow reset focus functionality on master GUI class.
• Also add helmet and shoulder items to online players.
• Add scale and offset to online player body and weapon/item rendering.
• Send health for online players that have already spawned.
• Building with world blocks in multiplayer!
• Spawn block explode particle effects when other online players destroy blocks.
• Add arrows to multiplayer.
• Send velocity with shots.
• Allow clients to update shot velocity.
• Better player disconnection handling.
• Handle clients crashing out of a game.
• Handle server disconnecting from the clients point of view.
• Scenery objects get dropped when world scenery is destroyed.
• Scenery creation over multiplayer.
• Typing into the chat window from within the game.
• Enter key to start typing a message.
• Arrows and shots disappear on the client after a delay of no data being sent from host.
• Add items to multiplayer traffic.
• Client items created on host when clients drop them from inventory.
• Send interact presses from online players.
• Online players HUD display render.
• Proper scale x,y,z offsets for network sent items.
• Proper tombstones on clients and hosts.
• Picking up items on the client during a multiplayer game now works.
• Sending melee attackings over multiplayer games.
• Removing items from clients when the host erases them, for whatever reason.
• Bombs in multiplayer.
• Dynamic texture support for icons in the GUI - paperdoll.
• Quest GUI improvements, Rewards, Quest tabs, Quest text.
• Health up animation as player is respawning.
• Quest rewards and reward information on quest GUI.
• Better quest journal. only record the last 5 quests in proper completed order.
• Castle parts are now made out of stone block types.
• Proper animation state for using the rocket boots.
• Underground indestructable blocks at bottom of world.
• Better shadow rendering, additional simplified meshes for shadows.
• Mirror mode in creation editor.
• NPC set type in constructor.
• Support for idle miner NPCs.
• Remove item interaction code for NPCs.
• Arrow buttons for model rotation on the character GUI paperdoll.
• Smooth player facing rotations, twist and turn when changing direction of movement.
• Make the create custom character screen use the creation GUI - shared code.
• Add coins and money display to the new GUI design.
• Create dropped item from quest reward, if inventory is full.
• Random ore rotation.
• Vapid Mask and Indie Beard cameo items added to random loot.
• Reduce actionbar slots to 6.
• Remove all transition animations from the HUD.
• Use proper SSAO rendering for dynamic textures in the HUD - characters, portraits, item icons, etc.
• SSAO rendering for companion HUD portraits.
• Items and bombs get affected by blast radiuses.
• Reset button in the weapon editor.
• Drag items to the Weapon editor window for quick editing.
• Allow crafting GUI to be opened from the inventory.
• Crafting recipes when openeing the crafting GUI from the inventory
• Better primitive block types for wood, stone, grass, sand, dirt, rock.
• Cactus blocks.
• Leaf blocks.
• Snow blocks.
• Exploding arrows now make an explosion sound effect when blowing up.
• Improvements to the create character screen.
• Better common button icons.
• Improved GUI and HUD textures and functionality - Offsets and label colour changes.
• Better popups for select world screen.
• Confirm/cancel on delete world button.
• Tutorial and introduction help guide added for new characters.
• Tutorial prompt added to select world screen.
• Completed tutorial stat added to player profile.
• Better world create screen.
• Different World types - tutorial, story, creative, hardcore.
• Re-enable depth of field renderer.
• Allow non-SSAO rendering.
• Better shadow and SSAO rendering.
• Vastly improved item library screen, proper scrollbar for items.
• Move characters directory out of export folder, for better item library functionality.
• Change terminology for left/right weapons to left/right hands.
• Sort out proper left and right handedness.
• Equipment highlight icon shown on paperdoll screen to show where to equip.
• Equipment highlight also shown from lootGUI.
• Proper edit and delete background textures.
• Allow 10 letters for character name, up from 8.
• Add folder display to the item library.
• Add folder and up folder icons to item library screen.
• Faster 'reload' time when placing scenery - allows faster placement of multiple scenery.
• When crafting items with a full inventory, items get dropped on ground.
• Remove HUD buttons for inventory, character stats and quest journal.
• Crafting GUI - improved handling of draggable buttons and button label management.
• Add crafting bench.
• New crafting recipes added to all crafting stations.
• Make sure to remove crafting items before adding to inventory.
• Better GUI rendering, allow for more depth for GUI Windows!
• Support for connecting and disconnecting to the server list.
• Allow multiplayer games to be created and hosted even when not connected to server list.
• Allow for joining games via direct IP address entered.
• Open chatGUI when connected to multiplayer games.
• Chat GUI in the multiplayer lobby screen.
• Connect To IP window and controls on multiplayer lobby screen.
• 'Other' window on create character screen for other character params.
• Reset default button added - Create character screen.
• Randomzie button added - Create character screen.
• Presets pulldown added - Create character screen.
• Increase fidelity of create character sliders.
• Add snow biome and snow world objects.
• Better tress and more variety of trees generated.
• Tree stumps.
• Better block detection for creation mode - More precision on mouse cursor.
• Better loading screen - Graphics and progress bar improvements.
• Remove front-end transition animations.
• Don't spawn NPCs and quests givers in multiplayer games.
• Add create game dialog box popup to multiplayer lobby screen.
• Different game modes and server params when creating multiplayer games.
• Add gametype and max players to server game param data send.
• Add the filename textbox to the voxel editor in ItemLibrary.
• Make new directories if not exists when saving voxel objects.
• Show the filename textbox if we are using the voxel editor from the item library.
• New crafting items - Slime jelly, bones, bee wings and bat fangs.
• Make sure to use shadow shader on frontend graphics.
• Lots of new audio effects and tidy up lots of sound effects.
• Player hit sound effects - different for sword skeletons.
• Better organisation of GUI windows opening and closing.
• Stop intro music when launching multiplayer games.
• Use proper character name, or multiplayer name in chat GUI.
• Clear biome data on game mode changes.
• Only erase when wing animation has finished on flyign enemies.
• Max load distance value used in the chunk manager.
• Better load and draw distance management for chunks.
• Add max load distance to the options menu.
• If in multiplayer game return the multiplayer name as the player name.
• Snow/Tundra scenery flowers and grass.
• Dont import or export chunk data in multiplayer games.

Bugfixes:

• Don't spawn voxel particles if we are not exploding a voxel block.
• Only allow 3d world text rendering if we are within the camera frustum.
• Don't display the speech bubble arrow texture if we dont show portraits
• Remove window focus hack.
• Also update item manager in front-end.
• Explosions can NOT spawn items/blocks sometimes.
• Fix bug on quest GUI closing when having a quest.
• Fix for creating a ghost when getting killed by a ghost - dont do during iterator update.
• Add mutex to stop crashes with particle effects and socket close.
• Remove player hover target code.
• Make placement blocks sprites larger when held in hands.
• Fix container event listeners - adding and removing.
• Only if parsing is successful do we do the JSON processing.
• Only do JSON processing if root is an object.
• Split up multiplayer code in serverlist, server and client files.
• Scenery objects don't use full path anymore for filename.
• Remove chat window when we unload the multiplayer lobby.
• Fix creation grid render BUG. Now renders proper grid when modified object.
• Better configuration file, nicer descriptions in file.
• Loading / Setup chunk tweaks.
• Stop items magnet to player if we find out we can no longer pickup the moving item.
• Fix actionbar bugs.
• Make sure that action bar items are unloaded when putting in chests.
• Fix crafting GUI item placement when dragging items to the crafting GUI.
• Fix speech bubble management - include signposts and tombstones.
• Set pipecolour functionality for textboxes.
• Better crafting button interaction, setitng proper vertical index.
• 3D Text effects use proper game viewport.
• Allow offset for pressed and also label colour changing when pressed/hover.
• Allow for stopping label colour changes in buttons. - select character screen.
• Better world profile deleting.
• Allow checkbox and options to not change label colour.
• Fix NPC scale and size, better particle effect on respawning and exploding.
• Fix for speech bubbles where the last word was not word wrapping properly.
• Fix for inventory being full when trying to accept a quest that has items to give.
• Value changed callback on scrollbars.
• Fix for ore nugget pickups when inventory is full.
• Fix for picking up dropped items when inventory is full.
• When clicking on a dropped item when inventory is full, wont trigger magnet and then be suppressed.
• Fix create button on crafting GUI label offset.
• Tidyup the multiplayer lobby screen - common chat window used.
• Make sure to remove the scrollbars from create character screen when we unload.
• Fix loading progress bar filling up twice.
• Various fixes for creating files and directories from the voxel editor.
• Fix some item locking in multiplayer games.
• Fix for player health respawning above max_health.
• Skip EXPORT file in item library.
• Allow Creation GUI to save in custom character creation.
• Properly setting audio params for children of containers.
• Quicker intro animation delay when returning to main menu.

That should keep you busy for a while and don't worry, more frequent updates are going to be coming very soon now.

Have fun!
AlwaysGeeky