Next week: performance and stability
So there’s a bunch of new content now, most of which works surprisingly well. Unfortunately, it’s been at the cost of some performance and even stability on Linux and Mac.
Next week will be spent fixing this as much as I can, looking into exactly what is making the game run slow (I only get 60-100 fps at the highest setting now, and I’ve got a pretty good computer), and testing on Mac. I would test on Linux, too, but I don’t have a Linux box, and I’ve never been able to get OpenGL support in virtual Linux computers.
And;
Water is almost final now. I might do some minor tweaks, but in general, I’m very happy with how it works. I know it’s not realistic. ;)
Current water advantages:
+ Will not ever flood the world
+ If you do flood something by mistake, it’s usually
trivial to repair
+ Naturally occurring rivers and waterfalls
+ Stable, meaning it will stay the way you
designed it
+ Working currents
+ Purely local model, meaning it works fine in infinite worlds, and runs at a
constant, blazing fast speed
And disadvantages:
- Not very dynamic. You can’t drain or fill an entire lake with a single dig action
- One
bucket of water = huge waterfall kind of breaks the immersion sometimes
- Distinction between water source and
flowing water is unintuitive at first.
- Sometimes looks weird when it goes down instead of sideways, especially
near the ocean.
I actually consider the first disadvantage an advantage when it comes to preparing for multiplayer. Being able to easier fix water griefing is very important.
