StaudSoft's Synthetic World News

We had here a lot of discussions if it is ok to replace stolen keys.

What are you thinking? Is it unfair towards the gamers which bought the game on Steam?

My main argument was that the gamers who bought stolen keys did knew it. On the other side I never received any money and if I would need the earnings to finance my company I would be bankrupt now (this is not the case as I also create non gaming products).

A lot of keys of this game were stolen. I suppose this happens after the shutdown from IndieGameStand. I now disabled all non-redeemed keys. There were also a number of keys which I never put for sale. They were completely disabled.

If you bought an illegal key from a reseller and you cannot play the game now, just contact me personally I will give you a valid key.

You can send me a friend request and then a message via Steam. Or you can simply send me an e-mail to: [email protected]

Please be aware that it can take up to 24h until you get a new key. So do not worry!

[Update]: I only have a limited number of keys left. And as Steam does not want to give me more as my last keys have been stolen, this is fixed.

[Update]: So, as the gamers which want a replacement key has declined much, I am stopping the replacement now.

We did a lot of bug fixing and added new features to the engine. Here is an overview of our achievements of the last two months:

Train physic

The train physic is now working. We had some problems with trains which did not behave correctly when a collision occured, but this is now solved.

Car physic

Car physic is completely working and we already have one test car which can drive remotely controlled through the landscape. That the player
can enter the car and control it from within is the next step. For this we made a model of a basic 3D car which we will use in the game.

Particle System

The particle system got an update. There is no rain under water any more and we have now particles in the water.



More stuff will follow!

Better and more stable dungeons

There was a bug in the dungeons which create holes in the world. This is now corrected.

AI Planner

We finally have a working planner, which is really cool, because we can now give our NPC goals (for example: buy item xy) and it will automatically create a plan and execute it. We will also use this system in the quest generation system.

Navigation System

There were a lot of bugs in the navigation system. This is now corrected. We also improved it, so that NPC's can evade each other, that it can control cars and other complex vehicles like air planes.

Skeleton

Yes, the skeleton is finished and it shoots arrows. And it really looks scary.



Plugin System

The plugin system is also massively improved. It is now even possible to make total conversions.

Plant Rendering

We can now place plants and objects on every surface of the game. As an example we added small plants when dirt appears.



3D Editor - Plant Generation

We create a custom plant system which allows us to model plants down each leave and the use them in the game.

Other Stuff

So these were the features which you can see in the next release. Here are other stuff which is currently invisible:

- Better entrances for the caves (we created a complete castle set which we will use to create castles in the landscape).
- New tree system is implemented. We only need to create models
- Save / Load of AI Memory is working
- Improved Dungeon Designing System: We can now create complex levels which can be included in the game
- Improved Animation System
- Tested Reinforcement Learning for Game AI
- Memory Compression was successfully tested. This could reduce the memory consumption by the factor 10, which will also improve the game speed.
- Vulkan Support: 2D Rendering is working.
- Android Conversion is also started.
- Object Instancing is fully working in the game and editor: Faster Rendering!
City Generation:
- Lame AI: This is a simple AI which can deliver goods from one building to another
- Street Generation and street connections are working
- City Designer: This is a special game mode which currently allows the creation of streets and buildings via one click. In this way big cities can be created by hand
- Military AI: This is a simple AI which can control NPC's when they are in a war
- Metaballs: The editor now supports meta balls which we will use in the creation of NPC's

What is next?

The next step is to complete the plugin system and do again bug fixing regarding the city generation. Our goal is to create a stable community. And then there is still the problem with the driving cars. What should happen when one car leaves the simulated area or even worse when the player leaves the area within a car. Then I want to add a locomotive which can push or pull other waggons.

When all bugs are fixed I will upload a new version.

The connection of a carriage is now working, the collision too and most of the new icons are in the game!

I am currently working on some new entities (mostly traps) which I will put soon online.

Added a new savanna tree. Additionally there is now different grass / vegetation in the tundra, tropics, ...

There are also new paintings in the current unstable release!



And finally we added the first test version of rails / trains to the game. The minecart is the first example. Next we will add a small locomotive and wagons!