[Super-Development] 21/5/12 news - Crawle

First of all let me just apologize for the lack of updates. I've already mentioned that this is the time of the year where I have exams and can't really spend much time on any of my hobbies (i.e. programming) and since no one else on the team is able to program I've been doing small things bit by bit.

The first major change is the much cleaner and generally better looking world gen. This came about from doing a speed-programming session (however I found the bug that caused worlds to look ugly after the session). Things will no longer (or shouldn't) spawn in places where they shouldn't be, such as trees in water and flowers on stone. Here are a few screenshots of this 'new' world generation:

In addition to this new world generation, I've also added a new Swamp biome. The graphics for the plantlife and other things in the swamp are still in development, but here's a screenshot of it in it's current state:

On top of that, our new pixel artist, Gol3m, has created a brand new dungeon theme including a brand new monster: scorpions!

Although these were implemented in 0.3.0, they never really looked good or served a purpose. House interiors have been revamped with a whole new set a graphics, here's an early mockup (a few things have been added but it's still very much in development):

Our plan at the moment is to create a handful of interior styles and apply a random one to each house.

Now let's move on to something that has been asked for time and time again, the ability to name your worlds. It's finally here! To be honest, this took me two minutes despite me dismissing it as impossible almost 3 months ago.

As you can see my three worlds are named. And yes, there will be easter egg worlds for worlds with "special" names.

So finally, I've added a very basic NPC interaction system, you simply click an NPC to talk to him (like you would if you were attacking an animal). This will bring up this very culturally-aware written interaction box:

That's it for all the visual stuff, here's the changelog, it's got a load of fixes and changes. Oh and I'd like your opinions on whether or not world deletion should have a password system or simply a confirmation box:

0.3.1a --> 0.4.0
# GRAPHICAL CHANGES
- Updated the disease graphic.
- Fixed up the item description box.
- Completely new and revamped house interior graphics.
- New sandstone edges.
- New tree types: willows and dead trees.

# FIXES
- Hitting no in the esc menu in fullscreen mode should no longer quit the game.
- You can no longer create new worlds if you already have 3 worlds.
- World data folders should now properly be cleared.
- Various optmisations.
- Fixed random teleportation to dungeons (non-existant holes).
- Fixed the random tree leaves without stumps.
- The enter key should no longer break textboxes.
- Fixed some NPCs not having names.

# CHANGES
- You can no longer press the delete button if you have no worlds to delete.
- You can now only press the play button if you're in "delete mode".

# ADDITIONS
- The ability to name your world!
- Worlds can now be password-locked.
- House exits.
- New dungeon theme.
- Varied tree heights.
- Cleaner and generally better looking world generation.
- 20 new NPC names!
- Olaf the Farmer.
- NPC interaction (click to talk).