Fractal Block World cover
Fractal Block World screenshot
PC Steam
Genre: Adventure, Indie

Fractal Block World

1.01.10: Rebalanced hard areas
We are continuing to rebalance hard areas of the game for the new "curved" difficulty mode.

1.01.10: Difficulty curving and new modding API
We updated the Creation Manual and the API between Lua game scripts and the C++ game engine. This improves the ability to mod the game.

We changed the default game difficulty so that now everything is "curved". The player no longer gets more powerful at an exponential rate. We curve the strength of both the player and monsters. This increases the size of the "Goldilocks Zone" (the part of the world that is not too easy and not too hard).

The engine now supports the ability to create and destroy blocks. When a block is created or destroyed, this is saved in a chunk file.

Emeralds are now finished (these are inside Mylantis layer 8). Inside of them are Emerald Cities.

A new area of I3 has been added: The River. This area has many Yellow Mushrooms and many places to get EMP max ammo upgrades and also minigun fire rate upgrades.

1.01.09: Topaz and Iolite Gem Areas
Added both Topaz and Iolite Gem Areas into the layers of the Mylantis Caves. You are shrunk
deep into these sponges and must enlarge out of them to get treasure.

To increase performance, we changed the algorithm to load chunks. Previously, only procedural world generation was done by separate threads. Now, both that and the process of reading a chunk file (a file that stores chunk changes) is done in a separate thread.

Added trophies for several areas including Denver, which is an area where there is a forest next to a desert.

1.01.08: Menger sponges and caves
We added a new large area: the Mylantis Caves. This consists of The Crust, followed by 11 Layers, followed by the Great Mylantis cavern, followed by the Mylantis Red Caves. Each layer has 5 different "patches" of monsters. There are 15 patch types total. In Layer 4 there are Topaz Gems, in Layer 6 there are Iolite Gems, in Layer 8 there are Emerald Gems, and in Layer 10 there are the cities of Denver. There are also Nuclear Silos in these layers which hold many nukes for the player to teleport to later.

We also expanded the Beta Sponge area by making the monsters more difficult as you go deeper. If you go 100 levels deep you can find Beta Sponge Towns. Shrinking past these towns there are levels of the sponge that should prevent you from going deeper. Is there any way to go deeper?

Also, when the player shrinks deep into a Ying Forest, the monsters get more difficult and the player will find interesting areas (for example, the Unremembered Tower).

We added two new monster classes: rats and slivers. Rats give lots of experience points, and slivers are meant to be frozen with your laser so you can run past them.

We significantly improved the performance of the algorithm to compute the blocks that need to be expanded into chunks and the chunks which need to be collapsed into blocks. Before, we recomputed these things for each level when the player's chunk changed. Now, we recompute these things much less often.

There is a new algorithm for teleporting the player from one chunk to another. Now, we do not destroy the entire chunk tree: instead we keep (at least) the largest common initial segment of the source chunk path and the target chunk path.

Now when users create their own worlds, they can choose which chunk width to use (any integer between 2 and 16 inclusive). The Xar package (the standard game) uses 16 (so each chunk is 16x16x16).

1.01.07: New game difficulties
Changed the difficulties easier than normal mode. Now there is relaxing mode (200% damage to enemies and 50% damage from enemies) and tranquility mode (400% damage to enemies, 25% damage from enemies, every upgrades counts as 2 upgrades, and the player gets twice as much experience).

To make the game easier, the player now starts the game in relaxing mode.

The player can change game difficulty at any time by going to MAIN MENU -> OPTIONS -> PACKAGE TOP MENU -> DIFFICULTY.

Changed the in game menu slightly so now the package top menu can be opened by pressing F1.

1.01.07: Switching C++ compiler from MSVC to MinGW
This game will now be compiled using the MinGW compiler instead of MSVC. This should increase performance.

1.01.06: improved memory usage for blocks
The game now uses memory for blocks more efficiently. This allows the player to go deeper into the world. With this new update, we have been able to shrink past level 3 thousand!

1.01.06 modified emergency waypoint
Updated the position of the "emergency waypoint" when a new game is created.

1.01.06
Simplified the key binding system. In the old system, you might bind W.down to MOVE_FORWARD_START and bind W.up to MOVE_FORWARD_END. Now, you simply bind W to MOVE_FORWARD. That is, the MOVE_FORWARD action has both a primary and a secondary command: the primary command is executed during the corresponding key down event, and the secondary command is executed during the corresponding key up event. Also, the user can easily bind a key to an action by going to OPTIONS -> CONTROLS -> INPUT BINDINGS -> CONTROLS. If you already had custom keybindings, you will need to reset them in the new system.

Updated the very beginning of the tutorial. Now, when the player uses blue rings to get out of Happy Land, they will be brought right to the entrance of Happy Land. If you have a game where you never left the tutorial you will need to start a new game.

Added map rooms to the main forest of I3. These rooms show surrounding areas of interest to the player. These rooms will improve speed runs of the game at the stage where the player needs to find the entrance to Hell.

Added a new area: the Beta Menger Sponge. This is a good place to get Nuke and Minigun Projectile Speed upgrades. It is challenging and the combat is intense. It can be found in the Mylantis Top City.

Modified the saving and loading of multi-level entities. Now, the offset of a moving entity is always relative to the "base chunk" of the moving entity. The base chunk of a moving entity is the unique chunk which contains the entity whose level is the min level of the entity.

Added more trophies.

1.01.05
The primary fire of the laser now freezes enemies for a certain amount of time. The exact amount of time depends on the number of "Freeze Time" upgrades for the laser weapon. We removed laser fire rate upgrades from the game and now the laser has a fixed fire rate.

The secondary fire of the minigun now has a poison effect that does damage worth 20 primary shots. The poison effect lasts for 10 seconds. If a monster is hit with two such primary shots, then the poison will last 20 seconds, etc. This way the secondary fire has a very low damage per second but a very high damage per ammo.

For each weapon, there is now a room describing where to find upgrades for that weapon. The location of these rooms is described in the I1 Library.

Now certain particle effects do not spawn any particles that are too close to the player. This makes the homing rocket, railgun, and nuke block the player's vision less.

The player now telefrags any moving entity that the player teleports into (even if the entity is much larger than the player).

The user can now choose whether requesting a screenshot in the game will use the game's own screenshot function or whether the game will trigger Steam to take a screenshot.

There is now a cave system at the center of each Mahogany tree in I3.

The gold the player gets for selling health at a sell station is now based on the percentage of the player's max health. The max gold a player can get for selling health is 150.

There are new prices for upgrades at upgrade stations.

There are now more trophies.
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