StaudSoft's Synthetic World News

Merry Christmas to you all. This has been quite a turbulent year. Sometimes I was afraid that I would have to play Fallout in the real world.

This has also affected the direction of Synthetic World's development. I am currently working on a hard survival game mode that is as close to Bush Craft (surviving in the forest) as possible. I have watched quite a few videos and have been in the forest myself. And don't worry the normal game mode remains.

Hard Survival Features:

• Simulation of poisoning and diseases. Injuries do not heal immediately, but have to be bandaged. If they are not bandaged the player bleeds to death. Balanced diet is necessary to keep the body at 100%.
  
• Campfires consume wood. They must first be lit with embers.
  
  
  
• Sleeping is necessary. To sleep well you need a shelter. There are several available for this purpose
  
  
  
• Camps can be built piece by piece in one place. To do this, the player must collect wood and leaves.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Fruits, vines grow on the trees and can be harvested by the player. This is how the player gets ropes
  
  
  
• Traps for animals
  
  
  
• Revised fire simulation
  
• Food decays
  
• Food can be cooked by placing it near a fire. Cooking takes time
  
• New tools that can be made: Axe, spear, ... :
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• These tools will be getting older when you use them. They have to be repaired or replaced.
  

But I also added other improvements:

• Less rendering commands: To render the same scene the engine now needs 3 times less commands. This makes the rendering much faster.
  
• Post processing effects (Flare, Bloom)
  
• Custom Shader Support
  
• Improved Mesh LOD
  
• Improved Mod Support. I want to support C# as an additional plugin language because many other engines do. Also, Lua bugs me because it doesn't have runtime type checking.
  

Artificial Intelligence:

• Economic simulation: I have developed a complex economic simulation for the game (similar to city simulator) that runs in the background.
  
• Planning algorithm: I have also developed a planning algorithm that is powerful enough to build cities/states that are economically plausible in this economic simulation.
  
• I am currently improving the performance of the planning algorithm with the help of neural networks. Then it will be put into the game.
  

I am currently still testing the features to be able to release a bug-free version.

And some more experiments ...

Hello, I fixed some small bugs:

• Damage of cross bow is increased
  
• Added impact impulse when object is hit by cross bow bolt
  
• Sheeps try to avoid water
  
• Enemies stop moving when dead
  
• Enemy may no hurt sound, when dead
  

Happy Easter, I have uploaded a new version of my game. This time included are many bug fixes that previously crashed the game.

• New Tree Textures + Higher Resolution
  
• Better Tree Rendering
  
• New Landscape Renderer
  
• Improvements regarding the cross bow
  
• Better Grass Texture
  
• Better Grass Rendering
  
• Updated "Start World"
  

The new forest. We fixed the bug of the "flying trees" (thanks to V.).


In the back you can the new forest with a building.


This is how the forest looks like in a flat landscape.

• Completely new rendering engine that supports Vulkan, OpenGL ES, DirectX 12, OpenGL and Metal.
  
• Ambient Occlusion + Procedural Materials (when this is done, I will rework all 3D models)
  
• Spherical Harmonics for Light Probes
  
• Radiosity (2 variants)
  
• AI: In a very small level 2 AIs could make war with each other (attack cities, destroy them, found settlements). That it works on a large scale will be a challenge.
  
• Improved memory management for framebuffers (will make Screen Space Reflections possible)
  

In the next month I will also tune the AI so that it can work on bigger landscapes.

Dear friends of Synthetic World,
I wish you all a happy and blessed holiday season. In view of the corona pandemic, I hope you are all healthy. An eventful year lies behind us: In the Synthetic World new cities were created and a new game mode was introduced in which you have to free the world from robots.

I have also laid the foundations for many other innovations. For example, next year all 3D models will be revised. I want to bring more exciting buildings, which are waiting to be discovered, into the landscape. Likewise, in the new year there will be the new crossbow, which of course you can make again yourself. I have also made progress in AI, the algorithm that brings cities to life is now designed.

The volcano renderer is also 50% finished. It is already working in low end mode. This will further increase the rendering speed. And then as a special experiment I started with a VR port. I can't wait myself to stand in the landscape in "real" someday.

Also I have now got another support, for my project. She will take care that the hunting and nature will be even more realistic.

In the coming weeks there will be a new release. I am currently in the process of eliminating all bugs.

Well then, good health to all of you, best wishes and thanks for your support!

Michael



Christmas vector created by freepik - www.freepik.com

This update finally brings cities, settlements and buildings. The individual settlements are connected with roads. The buildings contain beds, tables, chairs, lamps and zombies.

Updates:

• Automatically generated cities (big city, small city, single settlement)
  
• New Building Prefab system that allows you to create buildings in the 3D editor, which can then be used by the world generator.
  
• New Building Editor
  
• Better roads
  
• "EvalAI" mode where robots dominate the landscape. They can be defeated by destroying the computers in the fortresses.
  
• Street crossings
  
• Sleeping bag
  
• Many new furniture (stove, cupboards, lamps, bathtub, beds)
  
• Land generation
  
• Better HUD that displays nearby enemies
  
• Bugfixes
  

Actually I wanted to add a quest system, but currently I didn't want to do that because I might have created new bugs. Will be in the next update.