Sorry for the long wait! As mentioned in the video, I the original video I was working on had delays in development, so I made one with less programming instead! Hopefully, with good time management the next one will come soon. Also, the textures in the video are (probably) not final, so don't be afraid to critique them, I encourage you to do so, as with all things in the series.
Don't worry about the long wait! take the time you need!. may I request a feature though? minecraft has a feature called: cit packs. that are texture packs that use name dependent 3D textures, but it is not so easy to make, can you maybe make such a feature in your game? take it as one of the lowest priorities because it is more advanced and isnt important to the base game
Can you do the optimisation tactic of the Minecraft Distant Horizons mod (rendering less details farther away) The only thing I don't really like is that on farther distances with block group rendering it looks strange, but you can make so the blocks don't group and only textures have lower resolutions farther away
I feel like larger thick-trunked trees with branches, similar to the trees seen in elven forests in Dwarf Fortress, would be a great way to easily distinguish the look and feel. Minecraft has *highly* recognizable trees, and you're currently using them. Modern Minecraft has dense forests, but not variated forests.
In addition to this: Minecraft does have thicker 2x2 trunks, but most if them don't have a root system like custom trees A bit thicker at the base, branches that reach out further, and stair-like bark blocks to add texture would be amazing to see (All features of "custom minecraft trees" people create, just with regular wooden stairs)
This is why i consider DynamicTrees my favourite mod ever. It completely transforms the bland look of vanilla forest into a truly magnificent sight of, i'd say, somewhat more realistic-looking one. I'm not sure if he'll consider a similar approach, but i find that entertainig such thought gives me great joy. I'm looking forward to his opinion on this, if he ever expresses any
I agree, minecraft's trees are quite repetitive as they mostly don't change anything except for their height, granted there are the 2x2 and the bigger tree variants, but 2x2s don't feel really that different and the bigger variants are just annoying. It would be cool the design trees around the theme of the new cherry trees in minecraft as the branches could provide for more variance in randomly generated trees.
I'd like to add that most trees in Minecraft are relatively small to the player, if you compared trees in real life to humans. If trees in this game are more realistically sized, stuff like treehouses would be much more feasible.
If bigger and more varied trees were a thing, I just hope that you can actually chop them down easily and automatically instead of having to manually destroy every single log block. Just basically do it what Terraria did.
for reducing the grid repetition of textures you could rotate the top face of the grass based on some seed and the world position, this is how the optifine mod for minecraft handles it
Absolutely, also, Minecraft now has built in support for block texture variations, where you can create multiple textures for the same black, and then the game will randomly pick one for each block placed.
Random rotation is a vanilla thing, you're thinking of Optifine adding support for texture variations (giving one block multiple, usually slightly edited, textures)
@@crunch.dot.73 Yeah Optifine adds that feature to stuff like the ores. That being said, a vanilla Minecraft resourcepack can still rotate any texture you want using the blockstates .json, which is very nice.
I understand how you fell into the trap of thinking a more saturated what's the direction to go. Something that a lot of people don't realize is that 3D games are less saturated than 2D ones, because 3D games employ real time lighting. The more saturated a texture is, the less effectively you can cast light and shadow on those textures. In my own experience making 3D art, if I'm going for a very high saturated style, I need to stick with very stylized like cel shading in order for it to look nice.
I've always really liked the look of cel shading, and really want to see what that would look like in a minecraft clone. Not sure how that would be made tho.
I am really happy to be here through the journey of this game. We seriously appreciate your work towards this and your ability to implement community suggestions.
It's really impressive to see someone approach art from this kind of engineering perspective, working in iterations every time detecting and noting the issues, then improving it. In the end, even with minimal art experience, the result is still amazing, being both easy on eyes, looking lively and having personality.
Changing the grass textures and their colors has already done a lot to help your project stand out from Minecraft. It looks great! One note, the distance the grass goes down the side of the block is pretty iconic to Minecraft, so I might make it go down a bit further, or have small patches growing on the side?
yes, minecraft's grass block has dirt sides to indicate that it's interchangeable with the dirt block. grass spreads to dirt; covered grass becomes dirt; breaking grass without silk touch gives you dirt. if the game does not work like this then the dirt sides of the grass texture perhaps become misleading
@@joevdb9232 I know that. I'm not saying to completely remove the dirt from the side texture, I'm saying to add more grass to it to make it look more different from the one in Minecraft.
This is probably my favorite dev-log series at the moment, maybe ever to be honest It just feels so down to earth and chill, and reading comments after every video makes it feel that much more engaging
Throughout that design process, you had multiple stages that looked really cool to me which blows my mind that you were able to discern away from them for valid reasons. Your end result looks visually stunning especially when you began to pan through the world. Very Nice Video as Always!
If I were to suggest things I would say that for a block game like this achieving a unique visual identity will come down not to individual block sprites but the overall atmosphere with things like fog, lighting, weather, biomes, the look of the worldgen, and the decorations being way more important Overall, it seems like it's too early to think about visual identity too seriously There likely will be a need for it to be reimagined and reworked down the line (maybe even multiple times)
Separating the game from Minecraft and making it stand out should be done early so developing on the initial systems put in place won't have to be artificially tweaked in order to make them "less Minecrafty", since good and unique systems should improve naturally and give the game it's own identity. This may need questions like "Does tile crafting fit this game?", "Should trees look like that and should logs become separate pieces of wood?" or "should the game even have a hunger bar/offhand/tiled inventory/dimensions?". I'm guessing this is already evident, and maybe the plan is to make this game as similar to Minecraft as possible, but comparing the game to only Minecraft for too long will definitely lead to large chunks of it being scrapped in order to redistribute it as its own thing
I’m so incredibly excited for this project, every video, every update. I love it! If you need any textures or anything I’d be happy to without credit, if not no worries still love seeing this project
As a person who has done some pixel art work for a minecraft mod and personal projects I think yours looks quite good especially coming from a beginner, keep up the good work!
in terms of recipes, you could go with something like how Factorio does it - an organized list of all possible recipes you can make, but with multiple tabs and a search function so you can find what you're looking for more easily. (Or just have a crafting system that works like the recipe book in minecraft, but you can only use that for crafting and there's no grid).
One tab needs to be a _Favorites_ so we don’t have to keep using the bloody search. (Alt click in the crafting recipes to toggle them as a favorite recipe.)
I've been following this series from the start and I always get excited whenever a new episode is out, you're doing amazing progress and I hope you don't burn out or abandon this project because it's looking really promising. Also you could use Minecraft textures as a base and edit them from there, so you have a reference on how the pixel artists painted the textures and apply it to your own
I am very invested to see how far you are going to take this, I love it. From the ground up already surpassed minecraft in its early development. However I don’t want you to feel pressured into making this game for us, it should be done on your terms alone. It’s a beautiful project you’ve started and I hate to see you get burnt out because of it.
2:28 RE:Pixel Art As someone who's made a fair bit of pixel art for his own minecraft mods, mainly fumbling through and finding his way with no real guidance, and uses GiMP just like you, here's my advices: 1. The Dodge/Burn tool is your friend. Works for shadows, highlights, and those tricky sub-pixelling. 1.5. Once you have your base colour in, you can add other details with the pencil tool like normal, but set it to a 50% or below opacity, and tweak as needed then paint over to incrementally adjust pixelling. 2. After you got your contrast/form, try using Hue-Chroma, Hue-Saturation, and Brightness-Contrast (they all do the same thing, but in slightly different way) to fine-tune the colour to your liking. Generally it will look different in the game than in the editor due to lighting and such, so these tools are pretty essential in keying in the final look. 3. Filter > Noise > HSV-Noise is great for adding that extra crunchyness. You can tweak the parameters to meet your needs exactly. 4. Filter > Render > Pattern > Checkerboard is also a fun tool to play with for adding texture
I was worried at first looking at the dirt as you were doing it, but it actually turned out really good, I think it's going to look great once its all done
I cannot wait to see what is done with this. This seems like such an incredible project with so much passion behind it, and I am honored to have found this channel in its early state. Best of luck to you!
very minor bug I noticed: trees are placed on top of grass, which looks kind of strange from the side (this could be a good opportunity to consider a detail such as roots, I think it could end up being an interesting challenge to farm trees if trees created roots, or roots could have crafting uses. could also make forests more interesting if roots could sometimes end up on the surface)
Maybe make dirt have gravity, but rooted dirt and grass not have gravity. So if you want to dig under a bunch of dirt, planting a couple trees on top holds it all together. Just a thought for making roots useful and making the game different from minecraft. On that note, maybe gravity works like in the mod TerraFirmaCraft where most natural blocks like dirt and stone not only have gravity, but also fall to the side if there's a neighboring block that's lower. It's fun needing support beams in your mines :)
@@thearizonaranger7376 I also like TerraFirmaCraft, but I had to resort to reading about it really often. It didn't really bother me, but I don't think everyone would want to be forced to read a whole page of information just to know how one aspect of one mechanic works. That being said, I do think dirt being affected by gravity could be interesting and not too hard to learn about without reading, unlike cave-ins.
What makes Minecraft's system good to me is how intuitive it is in how so many object recipes are shaped like the thing you want to make. Very imaginative to set it up like that compared to a lot of crafting just being "here's these items you need"
I really liked your idea for making the textures more saturated to set them apart from minecraft. I think that a more cartoony/bright style for your game would really set it aside from others like vintage story, the new grass block you made at the end is good but I genuinely think you were on to something with the LOSPEC palette. You're doing great work and I can't wait to see more.
i wont lie, i was dreading this episode. I love minecrafts textures and didnt want you to change them, knowing you had too. But I really love the textures, they are really nice and look great. Thank you!
Wow, amazing grass and dirt texture :D. Btw maybe in the near future if you gonna start making a mobs, try to experiment with procedurally generated mob/monsters species :) that would be extra interesting to explore and that would make your game unique, because Minecraft, and Vintage Story doesn't have any procedural content except terrain and eventually noise... imagine now you starting a new game world and the game generates for example 300 unique animal/monster species, 50 unique tree species, 100 unique plant species, 200 unique ores and the game doesn't even need a mod support hah, because it's soooo exciting to discover. But of course mod support is always great. Think about that please :). Even if some randomely generated mobs will be strange, that's fine, everyonen will understand it, that it's' just a game... well really original one :D and always you can make a backup if the results are too strange
i think that the block size itself is something that makes it look like just a retextured minecraft. it would be possible to divide the block size by 2. i know that it would slow the program down so maybe you could treat it more like a mc block with block state(similar to mc stairs and slabs but with all 2^8 options) and you could use 8 bytes of the block data to store it. love the series btw❤
Some feedback while it's still early enough to make a difference: something that will help distinguish from minecraft would be incorporating connected textures from the beginning. Specifically I've always found the grass overhang and heavy aliasing that comes with dirt blocks to be a strong negative in the art style. Accounting for connected/contextual textures while it's still easier to to implement may be worth considering.
the blocks under a tree are grass, it should be dirt, or a log to represent a tree root, also check out the better than wolves mod to see how early game content can be expanded (although to a much less difficult degree than the original mod)
I'd recommend making the texture 32x. Not only does it help differentiate the game from Minecraft, it also provides more detail while still being "retro". Something to think about.
To drive home a theme for your textures, youll need a defined palette and a maximum number of colors per texture. I recommend using a pallet called ressurect 64 from lospec, its vary vibrant
I have a thought for the side blocks. If you have dirt covering 3/4th of the sides on a grass block, you'll only see dirt when you look up at a tall mountain. You will see more dirt on blocks closer to the horizon because they're level with the player, but you'll see it most of the way up. That effectively makes the mountains solid brown, with slices of green running through them. For minecraft, that's acceptable for a few reasons. 1; the hills are relatively shorter, and 2; the hills do have plenty of blocks that have a single solid color on the sides like stone or snow, snow, or ice. For a game where the hills have smoother slopes with more grass, it might be better to have the grass cover more of the side. That way players will see more grass and less dirt when they look at the large gently curving hills.
I love that your focusing so much on optimisation. I played a game recently which seemed really simple but it ate away at my computer resources. It is always nice when I don't need to close my other tabs to play something.
it's looking really good! as for not wanting to use noise, i don't think it's fully avoidable exacly because of these grainy materials like dirt, but otherwise, it shouldn't be hard to bring in those more defined shapes in blocks that are supposed to look solid. i'd recommend using highlights and shadows in the texture for that, like the polished stone type blocks in minecraft do. but anyways, was thinking about providing ideas for this, since i got lots of them. it's maybe a little early, but looking at what you made so far, the big grassy hills with the tiny trees, the colored lights, the massive caves, vast oceans, and the bridge, or wall or.. whatever it is, all has a distinct, inspiring vibe already. and gives me an idea for a kind of.. more defined theme? for the game. im thinking of... the scale of things. and impressive landscapes. small player, looking up from the bushes, small trees and grasses, and, like a little mouse, seeing a dauntingly massive world above the shrubbery. where every other hill is like a mountain, and the large roots of some biomes join into large tree trunks bearing even larger crowns, filled with vines, moss, and strange, colorful wildlife. stone ruins stand forgotten, hiding odd machinery and chambers full of monstes in the caves below. the peaks of the actual, huge mountains may grow glaciers, and forests of more ice than plants, their biggest caverns home to odd beasts, like bugs of sizes to rival a dog, or even horse. seas, water or lava, groves of mushrooms, and tunnels covered in crystals or lichen may be found here too. the oceans would be best described as strange, their depths particularly desolate and dangerous, and even on the shores there may be beings such as man-eating crabs, in sprawling landscapes of dunes, or cliffs, or of shallow rock pools like small, complex lakes, filled with life much like a normal little tide pool would be. and you, as the player, are tasked with navigating this immense world, gathering it's resources, exploring and building all you want. initially armed with nothing but your hands and their ability to create, you make your home here, eventually flying from tree to tree and cliff to cliff with the hookshot or glider you almost forget you didn't always have, clad in armor you wear like a second skin, looking for some moster to slay for meat, bones, and hide, or a new place to mine. maybe both. that's quite a long explanation i have here, but it makes for good writing practice, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . having a unique theming would help a lot to set your game apart from minecraft, and this is what little worldbuilding loving me came up with. what do you think?
Thing that would look good, making the water have a color palette linked to the sky, so that it changes color depending of the time of day or the light around it.
My first impressions on the grass are it looks really nice, it stands out, it's unique and it has it's own character to it. However at the same time, it feels very depressing for a lack of better words, I'm not sure what exact idea you have in mind for the end result of the game but with the grass block respecting such subtle things as the grass giving the grains of dirt below it shadows; I get a realism vibe or light-medieval fantasy from it rather than a full fantasy or dreamlike feel. That said It's genuinely impressive how much you've done and the scope of the project as a whole, I really hope you can see this through to completion! I never thought about how to craft items in minecraft's 3x3 grid, I suppose I looked up most of the recipes as a kid and felt a sense of wonder when I found something new to craft, but in my recent years have turned to the JEI mod to help me with recipes. For the topic of movement, something I've realised lately is, why does Minecraft have a sprint button? What gameplay purpose does it serve? There's no punishment for sprinting outside of increased hunger consumption which is a non-issue very early into the game. If sprinting purely lets you move faster with no decision required from the player, it would make more sense design-wise to just increase the player's base movement speed.
Hey dude i'm loving your videos, they are really interesting, and kinda helps eliminate the thougth that many people have that programing is something that is too complex and out of their scope(myself included), i will try to follow it closely as some day i would like to play your game, and considering the amount of optimization you are doing it migth even be able to be played in cellphones. I will try to coment on every one of your videos, so that the algorithm will try and recomend your videos to more people, because you seriously deserve all the atention.
Making the Grass sides lower could be a good idea, in my opinion it helps with the landscape look + It seems your game has bigger or larger terrain in general which could be improved in my opinion
I have to say, I have not commented on youtube, or anything really for maybe over a decade. But I really needed to say this. I am enjoying every single video you release about this project. So, keep up the amazing work, I will be here for every single video you post.
Oohhh I have been waiting for another one! Already can't wait for the next one. I love your videos and I'm really curious what this will eventually turn into!
Your videos are always a treat! I don't mind getting a simpler video because the main project ran into some setbacks, this happens all the time while coding. keep up the amazing work!
i have to be honest, so far with the grass and dirt texture, it's been the first minecraft clone that replicates original feel while still being completely different, at least to me. i found other clones had too clumped up textures, extremely saturated colors or simply just noisy which really showed obvious patterns when looking at a flat landscape. the textures here are made just right so that it doesn't fall into any of these categories, and i'm excited to see the rest of this project come together!
Have you considered taking an approach similar to Optifine in regards to the textures being too repetitive, where one texture can have many random variations?
@@finalforeachYou cooould probably change up the orientation randomly too. You might be able to get away with slightly repettitive textures if you do that
I love your video so much ! you're an aspiration ! Both as a programmer and video editor. Keep up the amazing work dude ! I can't wait to see "I was there when he begun" to my friends
I really like this project, I hope it will be able to run natively on Linux, especially if you're considering a permissive license. Take care and stay safe!
I used to be into making minecraft texture packs and I am a big fan of having the grass on the side of the grass block reach down almost or completely to the bottom, because that way grassy hills actually look like grassy hills instead of dirt mounds with green patches :D And once there are two block tall inclines you can still have the terraced look with dirt showing on the side. I believe this makes for much nicer landscapes because **most** one-block-inclines are essentially supposed to represent a smooth slope/curve with one continuous surface so the dirt should really only show once there's a two-block jump.
Also, since you said you wanna go for a more vibrant look this might help with that. Minecraft has a surprisingly different feel once it's surface is a little less brown
My offer still stands for game textures however even if you supported custom packs I'd be more than glad to port it over for your project as an optional download/mod, would love to see support for higher resolutions one day
Omg I've been using AI image generation to help as a baseline for some tileable textures I'm working on (for mc), then editing in GIMP. I HAD NO IDEA A TILING FEATURE EXISTED! I have just been overwriting desired texture file, ALT+Tab to the game, then F3+T to reload textures. I could have just glanced at tileability within GIMP itself!!!
Great video as always! I read the comments giving suggestions so I'll throw in my 2 cents as well: Have the blocks be on a smaller scale than minecraft, as the "scale" of the blocks is too similar imo
For the grass, leaves, logs and other repeated texture you could maybe look at using textures containing only its alpha channels to allow for texture repetition without using extra space (I dont know if this could cause any performance issues implementing it with your render code, though i have used this kind of idea before with great success).
that grass block while still looking pixel arty, looks really smooth. At the moment it looks out of place with minecrafts sharp textures, but if the rest have that sort of look, I thin it will be pretty cool
One thing that I noticed is that when you look into the distance, it just ends abruptly, it'd look more smooth if it faded out so it wouldn't just end. Kinda unrelated but is a good idea.
The question for a style and lore is what do you want to make a medieval sandbox or a futurisitc (satisfactory\factorio) sandbox. With some futuristic blocks it would be easy to get a own identity from minecraft. Maybe with blocks in different states of development like stone bricks, refined stone bricks to up scifi stone bricks with a clear epoch structure -> stone age, medival, current, future...
minecraft is so iconic i find it hard to even imagine textures very different from its! id probably just need to stare at the outside to get an idea of what i wanted to go for (for example in minecraft dirt is dark brown and in most minecraft like games dirt is dark brown but where i live at very least all the dirt is very light brown and full of clay with huge plains where no grass except tiny clumps grow)
the very low contrast between the grass blades and youtube's video compression makes it look a lot like green mush in some parts of the video, same with the dirt itself. Other than that, it would be great to implement texture packs into the game and just see what the community does on their own over time.
Something that will help a lot with repeating textures would be to have a pseudo random texture selected for each block from a group. E.g. have 5 grass block textures and apply them to each block based on their position in a chunk.
Sorry for the long wait! As mentioned in the video, I the original video I was working on had delays in development, so I made one with less programming instead! Hopefully, with good time management the next one will come soon. Also, the textures in the video are (probably) not final, so don't be afraid to critique them, I encourage you to do so, as with all things in the series.
always an interesting watch, keep it up!
are you ever going to make a community discord or something?
Don't worry about the long wait! take the time you need!. may I request a feature though? minecraft has a feature called: cit packs. that are texture packs that use name dependent 3D textures, but it is not so easy to make, can you maybe make such a feature in your game? take it as one of the lowest priorities because it is more advanced and isnt important to the base game
Can you do the optimisation tactic of the Minecraft Distant Horizons mod (rendering less details farther away)
The only thing I don't really like is that on farther distances with block group rendering it looks strange, but you can make so the blocks don't group and only textures have lower resolutions farther away
ty final! i love ur vids!
I feel like larger thick-trunked trees with branches, similar to the trees seen in elven forests in Dwarf Fortress, would be a great way to easily distinguish the look and feel.
Minecraft has *highly* recognizable trees, and you're currently using them. Modern Minecraft has dense forests, but not variated forests.
In addition to this:
Minecraft does have thicker 2x2 trunks, but most if them don't have a root system like custom trees
A bit thicker at the base, branches that reach out further, and stair-like bark blocks to add texture would be amazing to see
(All features of "custom minecraft trees" people create, just with regular wooden stairs)
This is why i consider DynamicTrees my favourite mod ever. It completely transforms the bland look of vanilla forest into a truly magnificent sight of, i'd say, somewhat more realistic-looking one. I'm not sure if he'll consider a similar approach, but i find that entertainig such thought gives me great joy. I'm looking forward to his opinion on this, if he ever expresses any
I agree, minecraft's trees are quite repetitive as they mostly don't change anything except for their height, granted there are the 2x2 and the bigger tree variants, but 2x2s don't feel really that different and the bigger variants are just annoying. It would be cool the design trees around the theme of the new cherry trees in minecraft as the branches could provide for more variance in randomly generated trees.
I'd like to add that most trees in Minecraft are relatively small to the player, if you compared trees in real life to humans. If trees in this game are more realistically sized, stuff like treehouses would be much more feasible.
If bigger and more varied trees were a thing, I just hope that you can actually chop them down easily and automatically instead of having to manually destroy every single log block. Just basically do it what Terraria did.
for reducing the grid repetition of textures you could rotate the top face of the grass based on some seed and the world position, this is how the optifine mod for minecraft handles it
Absolutely, also, Minecraft now has built in support for block texture variations, where you can create multiple textures for the same black, and then the game will randomly pick one for each block placed.
It's not optfine. it's the vanilla game that does that random rotation.
Random rotation is a vanilla thing, you're thinking of Optifine adding support for texture variations (giving one block multiple, usually slightly edited, textures)
@@Mate_Antal_Zoltanoptifine has a feature that makes all blocks rotate not just grass, thats what they mean I think
@@crunch.dot.73 Yeah Optifine adds that feature to stuff like the ores. That being said, a vanilla Minecraft resourcepack can still rotate any texture you want using the blockstates .json, which is very nice.
I understand how you fell into the trap of thinking a more saturated what's the direction to go. Something that a lot of people don't realize is that 3D games are less saturated than 2D ones, because 3D games employ real time lighting.
The more saturated a texture is, the less effectively you can cast light and shadow on those textures. In my own experience making 3D art, if I'm going for a very high saturated style, I need to stick with very stylized like cel shading in order for it to look nice.
I've always really liked the look of cel shading, and really want to see what that would look like in a minecraft clone. Not sure how that would be made tho.
I am really happy to be here through the journey of this game. We seriously appreciate your work towards this and your ability to implement community suggestions.
It's really impressive to see someone approach art from this kind of engineering perspective, working in iterations every time detecting and noting the issues, then improving it. In the end, even with minimal art experience, the result is still amazing, being both easy on eyes, looking lively and having personality.
Changing the grass textures and their colors has already done a lot to help your project stand out from Minecraft. It looks great!
One note, the distance the grass goes down the side of the block is pretty iconic to Minecraft, so I might make it go down a bit further, or have small patches growing on the side?
yes, minecraft's grass block has dirt sides to indicate that it's interchangeable with the dirt block. grass spreads to dirt; covered grass becomes dirt; breaking grass without silk touch gives you dirt.
if the game does not work like this then the dirt sides of the grass texture perhaps become misleading
@@joevdb9232 I know that. I'm not saying to completely remove the dirt from the side texture, I'm saying to add more grass to it to make it look more different from the one in Minecraft.
This is probably my favorite dev-log series at the moment, maybe ever to be honest
It just feels so down to earth and chill, and reading comments after every video makes it feel that much more engaging
This project is insane. Each episode it gets better and better. Keep going!
Always struggled with pixel art. Love the work.
Also, the PMD soundtrack is an instant win in my book. A man of taste
Throughout that design process, you had multiple stages that looked really cool to me which blows my mind that you were able to discern away from them for valid reasons. Your end result looks visually stunning especially when you began to pan through the world. Very Nice Video as Always!
Honestly, it kinda just looks like minecraft grass at a glance, I don't see how it builds a strong identity
If I were to suggest things I would say that for a block game like this achieving a unique visual identity will come down not to individual block sprites but the overall atmosphere with things like fog, lighting, weather, biomes, the look of the worldgen, and the decorations being way more important
Overall, it seems like it's too early to think about visual identity too seriously
There likely will be a need for it to be reimagined and reworked down the line (maybe even multiple times)
I like how you’re taking such a technical approach to everything- even the art
Separating the game from Minecraft and making it stand out should be done early so developing on the initial systems put in place won't have to be artificially tweaked in order to make them "less Minecrafty", since good and unique systems should improve naturally and give the game it's own identity. This may need questions like "Does tile crafting fit this game?", "Should trees look like that and should logs become separate pieces of wood?" or "should the game even have a hunger bar/offhand/tiled inventory/dimensions?". I'm guessing this is already evident, and maybe the plan is to make this game as similar to Minecraft as possible, but comparing the game to only Minecraft for too long will definitely lead to large chunks of it being scrapped in order to redistribute it as its own thing
I’m so incredibly excited for this project, every video, every update. I love it!
If you need any textures or anything I’d be happy to without credit, if not no worries still love seeing this project
Grass and dirt look so good!!!! I was actually really scared you were going to go for a super grim medieval and stereotypical look. Thank you.
As a person who has done some pixel art work for a minecraft mod and personal projects I think yours looks quite good especially coming from a beginner, keep up the good work!
in terms of recipes, you could go with something like how Factorio does it - an organized list of all possible recipes you can make, but with multiple tabs and a search function so you can find what you're looking for more easily. (Or just have a crafting system that works like the recipe book in minecraft, but you can only use that for crafting and there's no grid).
One tab needs to be a _Favorites_ so we don’t have to keep using the bloody search. (Alt click in the crafting recipes to toggle them as a favorite recipe.)
Your dirt texture looks great it's really nice looking
Great vid! Your textures actually look professional
I've been following this series from the start and I always get excited whenever a new episode is out, you're doing amazing progress and I hope you don't burn out or abandon this project because it's looking really promising.
Also you could use Minecraft textures as a base and edit them from there, so you have a reference on how the pixel artists painted the textures and apply it to your own
I am very invested to see how far you are going to take this, I love it. From the ground up already surpassed minecraft in its early development. However I don’t want you to feel pressured into making this game for us, it should be done on your terms alone. It’s a beautiful project you’ve started and I hate to see you get burnt out because of it.
2:28 RE:Pixel Art
As someone who's made a fair bit of pixel art for his own minecraft mods, mainly fumbling through and finding his way with no real guidance, and uses GiMP just like you, here's my advices:
1. The Dodge/Burn tool is your friend. Works for shadows, highlights, and those tricky sub-pixelling.
1.5. Once you have your base colour in, you can add other details with the pencil tool like normal, but set it to a 50% or below opacity, and tweak as needed then paint over to incrementally adjust pixelling.
2. After you got your contrast/form, try using Hue-Chroma, Hue-Saturation, and Brightness-Contrast (they all do the same thing, but in slightly different way) to fine-tune the colour to your liking. Generally it will look different in the game than in the editor due to lighting and such, so these tools are pretty essential in keying in the final look.
3. Filter > Noise > HSV-Noise is great for adding that extra crunchyness. You can tweak the parameters to meet your needs exactly.
4. Filter > Render > Pattern > Checkerboard is also a fun tool to play with for adding texture
I just love the basic approach you use for this project
I was worried at first looking at the dirt as you were doing it, but it actually turned out really good, I think it's going to look great once its all done
I cannot wait to see what is done with this. This seems like such an incredible project with so much passion behind it, and I am honored to have found this channel in its early state. Best of luck to you!
very minor bug I noticed: trees are placed on top of grass, which looks kind of strange from the side
(this could be a good opportunity to consider a detail such as roots, I think it could end up being an interesting challenge to farm trees if trees created roots, or roots could have crafting uses. could also make forests more interesting if roots could sometimes end up on the surface)
Maybe make dirt have gravity, but rooted dirt and grass not have gravity. So if you want to dig under a bunch of dirt, planting a couple trees on top holds it all together. Just a thought for making roots useful and making the game different from minecraft.
On that note, maybe gravity works like in the mod TerraFirmaCraft where most natural blocks like dirt and stone not only have gravity, but also fall to the side if there's a neighboring block that's lower. It's fun needing support beams in your mines :)
@@thearizonaranger7376
I also like TerraFirmaCraft, but I had to resort to reading about it really often. It didn't really bother me, but I don't think everyone would want to be forced to read a whole page of information just to know how one aspect of one mechanic works.
That being said, I do think dirt being affected by gravity could be interesting and not too hard to learn about without reading, unlike cave-ins.
idea: when you will eventually start to generate forests it would be cool to see more plump trees from time to time.
What makes Minecraft's system good to me is how intuitive it is in how so many object recipes are shaped like the thing you want to make. Very imaginative to set it up like that compared to a lot of crafting just being "here's these items you need"
I really liked your idea for making the textures more saturated to set them apart from minecraft. I think that a more cartoony/bright style for your game would really set it aside from others like vintage story, the new grass block you made at the end is good but I genuinely think you were on to something with the LOSPEC palette. You're doing great work and I can't wait to see more.
Very excited to see what's added next
i wont lie, i was dreading this episode. I love minecrafts textures and didnt want you to change them, knowing you had too. But I really love the textures, they are really nice and look great. Thank you!
Wow, amazing grass and dirt texture :D. Btw maybe in the near future if you gonna start making a mobs, try to experiment with procedurally generated mob/monsters species :) that would be extra interesting to explore and that would make your game unique, because Minecraft, and Vintage Story doesn't have any procedural content except terrain and eventually noise... imagine now you starting a new game world and the game generates for example 300 unique animal/monster species, 50 unique tree species, 100 unique plant species, 200 unique ores and the game doesn't even need a mod support hah, because it's soooo exciting to discover. But of course mod support is always great. Think about that please :). Even if some randomely generated mobs will be strange, that's fine, everyonen will understand it, that it's' just a game... well really original one :D and always you can make a backup if the results are too strange
i think that the block size itself is something that makes it look like just a retextured minecraft. it would be possible to divide the block size by 2. i know that it would slow the program down so maybe you could treat it more like a mc block with block state(similar to mc stairs and slabs but with all 2^8 options) and you could use 8 bytes of the block data to store it. love the series btw❤
Some feedback while it's still early enough to make a difference: something that will help distinguish from minecraft would be incorporating connected textures from the beginning. Specifically I've always found the grass overhang and heavy aliasing that comes with dirt blocks to be a strong negative in the art style. Accounting for connected/contextual textures while it's still easier to to implement may be worth considering.
I watched all the devlogs that are out right now, I'm really excited to see where this goes! Good luck!
the blocks under a tree are grass, it should be dirt, or a log to represent a tree root, also check out the better than wolves mod to see how early game content can be expanded (although to a much less difficult degree than the original mod)
I love getting to see such an in depth look into the process of texture making,
End result is really pretty and original!
owo
I'd recommend making the texture 32x. Not only does it help differentiate the game from Minecraft, it also provides more detail while still being "retro". Something to think about.
the textures really made your game a lot better, and don't worry about some upload schedule, take as much time as you want!don't overwork yourself 👍
To drive home a theme for your textures, youll need a defined palette and a maximum number of colors per texture. I recommend using a pallet called ressurect 64 from lospec, its vary vibrant
I have a thought for the side blocks.
If you have dirt covering 3/4th of the sides on a grass block, you'll only see dirt when you look up at a tall mountain. You will see more dirt on blocks closer to the horizon because they're level with the player, but you'll see it most of the way up. That effectively makes the mountains solid brown, with slices of green running through them.
For minecraft, that's acceptable for a few reasons. 1; the hills are relatively shorter, and 2; the hills do have plenty of blocks that have a single solid color on the sides like stone or snow, snow, or ice. For a game where the hills have smoother slopes with more grass, it might be better to have the grass cover more of the side. That way players will see more grass and less dirt when they look at the large gently curving hills.
I love that your focusing so much on optimisation. I played a game recently which seemed really simple but it ate away at my computer resources. It is always nice when I don't need to close my other tabs to play something.
it's looking really good! as for not wanting to use noise, i don't think it's fully avoidable exacly because of these grainy materials like dirt, but otherwise, it shouldn't be hard to bring in those more defined shapes in blocks that are supposed to look solid. i'd recommend using highlights and shadows in the texture for that, like the polished stone type blocks in minecraft do.
but anyways, was thinking about providing ideas for this, since i got lots of them. it's maybe a little early, but looking at what you made so far, the big grassy hills with the tiny trees, the colored lights, the massive caves, vast oceans, and the bridge, or wall or.. whatever it is, all has a distinct, inspiring vibe already. and gives me an idea for a kind of.. more defined theme? for the game.
im thinking of... the scale of things. and impressive landscapes.
small player, looking up from the bushes, small trees and grasses, and, like a little mouse, seeing a dauntingly massive world above the shrubbery. where every other hill is like a mountain, and the large roots of some biomes join into large tree trunks bearing even larger crowns, filled with vines, moss, and strange, colorful wildlife.
stone ruins stand forgotten, hiding odd machinery and chambers full of monstes in the caves below.
the peaks of the actual, huge mountains may grow glaciers, and forests of more ice than plants, their biggest caverns home to odd beasts, like bugs of sizes to rival a dog, or even horse. seas, water or lava, groves of mushrooms, and tunnels covered in crystals or lichen may be found here too.
the oceans would be best described as strange, their depths particularly desolate and dangerous, and even on the shores there may be beings such as man-eating crabs, in sprawling landscapes of dunes, or cliffs, or of shallow rock pools like small, complex lakes, filled with life much like a normal little tide pool would be.
and you, as the player, are tasked with navigating this immense world, gathering it's resources, exploring and building all you want. initially armed with nothing but your hands and their ability to create, you make your home here, eventually flying from tree to tree and cliff to cliff with the hookshot or glider you almost forget you didn't always have, clad in armor you wear like a second skin, looking for some moster to slay for meat, bones, and hide, or a new place to mine. maybe both.
that's quite a long explanation i have here, but it makes for good writing practice, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .
having a unique theming would help a lot to set your game apart from minecraft, and this is what little worldbuilding loving me came up with.
what do you think?
So glad you're seeing this project through!
This is a fascinating devlog series for sure. I really hope more people join in this community
i love the style of those textures! with enough attempts you got to something really great, nice job!
Working through the thought process applied when deciding on block textures made my brain tingle. I loved it! X
Thing that would look good, making the water have a color palette linked to the sky, so that it changes color depending of the time of day or the light around it.
My first impressions on the grass are it looks really nice, it stands out, it's unique and it has it's own character to it.
However at the same time, it feels very depressing for a lack of better words, I'm not sure what exact idea you have in mind for the end result of the game but with the grass block respecting such subtle things as the grass giving the grains of dirt below it shadows; I get a realism vibe or light-medieval fantasy from it rather than a full fantasy or dreamlike feel.
That said It's genuinely impressive how much you've done and the scope of the project as a whole, I really hope you can see this through to completion!
I never thought about how to craft items in minecraft's 3x3 grid, I suppose I looked up most of the recipes as a kid and felt a sense of wonder when I found something new to craft, but in my recent years have turned to the JEI mod to help me with recipes.
For the topic of movement, something I've realised lately is, why does Minecraft have a sprint button?
What gameplay purpose does it serve?
There's no punishment for sprinting outside of increased hunger consumption which is a non-issue very early into the game.
If sprinting purely lets you move faster with no decision required from the player, it would make more sense design-wise to just increase the player's base movement speed.
Hey dude i'm loving your videos, they are really interesting, and kinda helps eliminate the thougth that many people have that programing is something that is too complex and out of their scope(myself included), i will try to follow it closely as some day i would like to play your game, and considering the amount of optimization you are doing it migth even be able to be played in cellphones.
I will try to coment on every one of your videos, so that the algorithm will try and recomend your videos to more people, because you seriously deserve all the atention.
now I'm hungry for beans 2:19
I really like how the grass is looking! I'm excited to see the rest of textures in the future ^^. Best wishes to you!! :)
Making the Grass sides lower could be a good idea, in my opinion it helps with the landscape look + It seems your game has bigger or larger terrain in general which could be improved in my opinion
I agree
Also it would help reduce the moire effect you get when looking at far away terrain
Seeing this project progress is always a delight. Please keep up the good work.
To avoid mountains looking like dirt piles, I think grass should take more like 3/4 of the side of grass blocks
I have to say, I have not commented on youtube, or anything really for maybe over a decade. But I really needed to say this. I am enjoying every single video you release about this project. So, keep up the amazing work, I will be here for every single video you post.
Oohhh I have been waiting for another one! Already can't wait for the next one. I love your videos and I'm really curious what this will eventually turn into!
I these are incredibly fun to watch. I love this project and I really hope it goes a long way. :)
I'm honestly really hyped for this journey you set yourself on, I'm glad to be with you while it's still ongoing!
Beautiful project. Hoping you're in good health and spirits. Subscribed and excited!
Your videos are always a treat! I don't mind getting a simpler video because the main project ran into some setbacks, this happens all the time while coding. keep up the amazing work!
i have to be honest, so far with the grass and dirt texture, it's been the first minecraft clone that replicates original feel while still being completely different, at least to me. i found other clones had too clumped up textures, extremely saturated colors or simply just noisy which really showed obvious patterns when looking at a flat landscape. the textures here are made just right so that it doesn't fall into any of these categories, and i'm excited to see the rest of this project come together!
Have you considered taking an approach similar to Optifine in regards to the textures being too repetitive, where one texture can have many random variations?
That is a vanilla feature for a long time by now.
@@pavuk357it is?
I think that could get annoying sometimes
There might be a good way to do that without additional vertex attributes, so I'll consider it in the future.
@@finalforeachYou cooould probably change up the orientation randomly too. You might be able to get away with slightly repettitive textures if you do that
I'm honestly surprised at how this is relatively unpopular, especially with how much effort you put into it, and the good quality.
I love your video so much ! you're an aspiration ! Both as a programmer and video editor. Keep up the amazing work dude ! I can't wait to see "I was there when he begun" to my friends
I always look foreword to these videos, and I love seeing how the game is coming along!
0:59 that sounds cool! i think i may enjoy this game
This honestly looks incredible - you've earned a sub
I really like this project, I hope it will be able to run natively on Linux, especially if you're considering a permissive license. Take care and stay safe!
That grass texture is *beautiful* so simple and clean!!
I used to be into making minecraft texture packs and I am a big fan of having the grass on the side of the grass block reach down almost or completely to the bottom, because that way grassy hills actually look like grassy hills instead of dirt mounds with green patches :D
And once there are two block tall inclines you can still have the terraced look with dirt showing on the side.
I believe this makes for much nicer landscapes because **most** one-block-inclines are essentially supposed to represent a smooth slope/curve with one continuous surface so the dirt should really only show once there's a two-block jump.
Also, since you said you wanna go for a more vibrant look this might help with that. Minecraft has a surprisingly different feel once it's surface is a little less brown
My offer still stands for game textures however even if you supported custom packs I'd be more than glad to port it over for your project as an optional download/mod, would love to see support for higher resolutions one day
I appreciate it!
you nailed those textures! i like how the identity of the game is comping along
I really hope this gets big in the future, you really deserve it!
Omg I've been using AI image generation to help as a baseline for some tileable textures I'm working on (for mc), then editing in GIMP.
I HAD NO IDEA A TILING FEATURE EXISTED! I have just been overwriting desired texture file, ALT+Tab to the game, then F3+T to reload textures. I could have just glanced at tileability within GIMP itself!!!
I love the deeper brown of your dirt block
Loving this series. Good job, and keep it up!
I really like the ambient shading, really immerses the player in the world!
I am so invested in this, keep it up mate!
Finally! I've waited for it ^^
I would love to see grass overhang implemented, like "Lambdabettergrass".
Always enjoy seeing an update from you :D
Love your background music! Love black and white
I'm really loving this journey of you creating this awesome game. +Awesome editing and a calm voice
Great video as always! I read the comments giving suggestions so I'll throw in my 2 cents as well: Have the blocks be on a smaller scale than minecraft, as the "scale" of the blocks is too similar imo
You should add connected textures just to flex even more on minecraft, especially with the sides of grass blocks.
I love these dev logs it’s such a fun journey to feel like a part of, even tho I don’t understand half of what you say lol
For the grass, leaves, logs and other repeated texture you could maybe look at using textures containing only its alpha channels to allow for texture repetition without using extra space (I dont know if this could cause any performance issues implementing it with your render code, though i have used this kind of idea before with great success).
Personally I really like your textures! Also it’s always a joy to see your videos. This is a really interesting project and you explain it super well.
that grass block while still looking pixel arty, looks really smooth. At the moment it looks out of place with minecrafts sharp textures, but if the rest have that sort of look, I thin it will be pretty cool
One thing that I noticed is that when you look into the distance, it just ends abruptly, it'd look more smooth if it faded out so it wouldn't just end. Kinda unrelated but is a good idea.
I think parts of vintage story's crafting combined with aspects of tinker's construct could be really really interesting
The question for a style and lore is what do you want to make a medieval sandbox or a futurisitc (satisfactory\factorio) sandbox. With some futuristic blocks it would be easy to get a own identity from minecraft. Maybe with blocks in different states of development like stone bricks, refined stone bricks to up scifi stone bricks with a clear epoch structure -> stone age, medival, current, future...
minecraft is so iconic i find it hard to even imagine textures very different from its! id probably just need to stare at the outside to get an idea of what i wanted to go for (for example in minecraft dirt is dark brown and in most minecraft like games dirt is dark brown but where i live at very least all the dirt is very light brown and full of clay with huge plains where no grass except tiny clumps grow)
very pretty :) excited to see how it goes!
Ayyy it’s great to see you back man! I love these videos. I don’t understand much of what you say but it makes me feel smart lol 😅
Every time this man uploads it feels like Christmas
This is so cool, I love following your work.
the very low contrast between the grass blades and youtube's video compression makes it look a lot like green mush in some parts of the video, same with the dirt itself. Other than that, it would be great to implement texture packs into the game and just see what the community does on their own over time.
Something that will help a lot with repeating textures would be to have a pseudo random texture selected for each block from a group. E.g. have 5 grass block textures and apply them to each block based on their position in a chunk.