Patch Notes: 7.15.2014

• New resources added: Raw Beef, Cooked Beef, Animal Hide, Animal Intestines
  
• The goat has been added as a prey Critter
  
• Leaf Sack added as a decor item
  
• Crude Bed added to the game
  
• Crude Workbench added to the game
  
• Growing trees and vines added to the game
  
• Updated Grass textures
  
• Added Tilled Dirt texture
  
• Added Chopped Wood object
  
• Added Stacked Wood & Wood Plank objects
  
• Added Cobblestone & Gravel objects
  
• Added Cobblestone, Carved Stone, Chopped Wood, Clay Blocks, Thatch & Wood Log textures
  
• Crude Shovel, Crude Hoe, Crude Knife objects added to the game
  
• Vine Fence added to game
  
• Texture adjustments made to Rocks, Crude Axe, Crude Hammer
  
• Texture adjustments made to Crude Shovel, Crude Hoe
  
• Reoriented and rendered several weapon and tool icons for better recognition
  
• Fixed alpha channel bleeding that caused some trees to render with large seams
  
• Added UI icon to distinguish game objects that can be placed as voxels
  
• Fixed misaligned alphas on bamboo trees
  

• Variations in recipes have been simplified to one type per recipe to fix some crafting issues
  
• Resource drops have also been adjusted to match the recipe variation change
  
• Farming added to the game. Certain fruit produce seeds when harvested that allow the growing of trees and vines
  
• Growable objects set to obey rules of distance to other objects and amount of sunlight in an area
  
• New tools added to the recipe list, Crude Knife, Crude Hoe, Crude Shovel
  
• Prey AI added to the game; the goat
  
• Hunting added to the game
  
• New tables & table specific recipes added to the game; Fire Pit & Crude Workbench
  
• Spears are now throwable in Survival Mode; T key toggles between melee and throwing modes
  
• Stacking added to object inventory amounts in the player’s backpack
  
• Cooking added to the game
  
• Recipes cleaned up after resource variation changes and new recipes added for all new items as well as resource conversion and item recovery recipes
  
• Vine Fence object placement refined so where the cursor is pointing, next object will be placed out from cursor and in the direction of the player
  
• Crude Bed mechanic added to game; using the bed (with a right click) saves the player’s spawn position and causes time to pass in the world
  
• Hunger levels adjusted to work with renewable food system
  

• In Survival Mode, the “Z” key enters placement mode which allows for full rotation of objects when placing them.
  
• Rudimentary pathing added for Critters
  
• Hunger system added for Critters; system used to control and adjust AI behavior
  
• Critter spawn system added to game
  
• Critter death and loot drop system added to game
  
• Critter alert/graze AI
  
• Controllable Growth system added to game; trees & plants can use the grower script to grow over script controlled times as well as produce fruit and decay
  
• Throwing system added for specific objects
  
• Some objects can now pierce other objects when thrown
  
• New animation pipeline in place to accommodate for looping animations
  
• Fixed alpha channel shadow bug causing some objects to not render proper shadows
  
• Model Viewer added(Currently 64-bit only)
  
• Fixed numerous stablility issues
  
• More functionality added to Modding API (See scripts in content folder for examples)
  
• Cleaner Main Menu UI/UX
  
• Numerous logic bugs fixed
  
• Fixed sound not playing on breaking objects
  
• Fixed sound not playing on breaking terrain
  
• Fixed sounds not playing correctly on foot steps
  
• Improved sound buffer logic
  
• Improvements to the save system to account for objects having child objects
  

• Current saves will no longer be valid
  
• Proving Grounds has been temporarily disabled
  
• Creative Mode server (and multiplayer) have known instabilities while we investigate improvements to networking
  
• Some objects when placed inside of (or clipping into) the terrain can cause them to fall through the ground
  
• Placing a torch pressed right up against a wall will an error pop up (which is recoverable), and the torch will be lost
  
• Tools do not take durability damage from terrain interaction
  
• Tool resource drops overlap
  
• Tools overlap in functionality
  
• Spears will stick if any portion of it hits
  
• Mouse button 3-4 can’t be bound to actions
  
• Fire Pit will light whenever a saved game is reloaded or if a player leaves a biome and returns
  
• Using stacked objects in recipes can sometimes not allow the recipe to be crafted
  
• Placing very large objects close to yourself can cause you to fall through the world
  
• If you die in Survival Mode, the item in your hand does not drop
  
• In Survival, Hunger, health, and stamina levels restore to full between game sessions
  
• The shovel can only be picked up at the stone tip/head portion
  
• Mushrooms and Crystals are displaying the wrong texture
  
• Sometimes changes to a world do not load properly. Reloading the map should load the changes.
  
• Stacked objects that are dropped using “Q” do not have a visual representation of the number of stacked items in the stack
  
• Placing the Vine Fence using the right mouse button can sometimes cause the object to get stuck inside the player
  
• Sprint cannot be currently remapped
  

• Farming! - Old McDonald had a farm...And so can you! Harvest some fruit, take the seeds, plant them, watch ‘em grow, and voila! You got yourself an orchard!
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDVeSI8mzMg
  
• Goats! - Of ALL the animals we could have chosen...We present you with…. Goats.
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-90EybFz0E
  
  
• Hunting! - Meat eaters rejoice! Go hunt some goats and fire up the barbeque! (Hint hint)
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv6w4K7ipjw
  
  

Imagine the world frozen in a great crystalline winter. Every animal stilled midmovement, every leaf perfectly preserved, even the wind has been captured by this eerie stillness.

This is the world presented to a visual effects (VFX or simply, FX) artist with the vague mandate “fix it”. But where do you start?

FX should usually be one of two things:

• obviously out of place
  
• subtly blended with the world

Obvious FX are things like fire, spells, scifi beams, explosions; effects that are big, flashy, and “cool”. They are extremely fun to make and very easy to get feedback on because they either work or they don’t. End of story.

Subtle FX are ones that fit within the environment around the player & are most noticeable by their absence. For me, environmental FX are the most satisfying- even if they usually go unremarked. There’s a moment when the scene clicks and suddenly you know it’s time to move on to the next biome.

Since TUG is procedurally generated, the FX I make have to work anywhere. In past games, I might be able to set up an FX for specific angles, or distances. A far off waterfall could be done cheaply PC performance-wise in a game that limits the player’s movable area. In TUG that same effect needs to look as good up close as it does from far away while, but also be able to allow for a randomly generated number of them to appear in the same scene. Usually this works. Sometimes you get synchronized leaf drifting.

For the most part, FX in TUG are tied to objects - they come from a fixed source. Glowing spore softly drift from little mushrooms, will’o’wisps dance around the the deadly trap lures, leaves drop from their respective trees. But what about the more extreme biomes that can’t support lush plantlife?

We rely upon the wind. By creating small dummy objects with a transparent texture to attach the FX to, we can populate a biome with a cohesive effect that appears to come from everywhere and nowhere as once - just like a gusting wind blowing sand across the desert, snow eddies striking up suddenly in the mountains, or hazy fog drifting in the swamplands.

Nerd Kingdom is building our own engine and this brings with it some unique challenges. Every effect made so far is temporary. As our tech improves or is changed then so are the FX. I’ve already lost count of the number of times I’ve redone the wisp or fires as updates have come down the pipeline. Our engine is still very young compared to other games out there, which means there’s a lot of room for us to grow- especially in the FX department.

It’s exciting to think about what we can add next to improve how our game looks and feels. As more content gets added and new player mechanics come online, the variety & need for more effects ramps up too- turning TUG into an increasingly vibrant and living world for you to explore.

Jessica Nida (aka geekthumb) is the Senior Artist & FX Lead for Nerd Kingdom. She likes art, games, and making things explode in a ridiculous manner. When she’s not practicing aeromancy in TUG, she’s designing boardgames in her spare time or cooking enough food to feed a small army. She’s recently started kayaking in the hope of spotting the Lake Dallas Leviathan, which she did not totally just make up.

• Red Root, Paddlesnip, Pakroot & Iceroot added to generation and set up with resources
  
• Resources set up for the small and large mushrooms
  
• Small sapling version of the fruit tree added to generation
  
• Small bud and shoot version of the gourd vine and the berry bushes added to generation
  
• New texture resources for building materials
  
• Ponsai tree added to generation
  
• Model representation for voxel blocks added for each terrain type
  
• Models for fruit seed resources added
  
• Crystal shard models added to represent each of the crystal resources

• New refined voxel blocks for cobblestone, thatch & leaf patches
  
• Survival Mode now active in the main menu; it is currently only a single player mode
  
• New biome generation added specifically for Survival Mode
  
• Jungle biome added
  
• Swamplands biome added
  
• Resource spawn rates and objects adjusted for the rock pebbles, the flint spear head and the knapped rock blade
  
• The amount of time for a seed to become hungry has been extended to 3 in-game days for Survival Mode
  
• The duration of stamina has been extended in Survival Mode
  
• Crafting stumps and boulders added back into generation

• Renewable fruit added to fruit producing trees, including the apple, orange, cherry, coconut & apple.
  
• [Physics] Fixed an issue that would prevent the physical world from following the player.
  
• [Physics] Fixed a stability issue with rapid terrain manipulation.
  
• Fixed shadow alpha-transparency.
  
• Fixed in-view culling issues.
  
• Fixed additive particle “black-hole” issue.
  
• Fixed bug where water existed.

• If you starve and die in Survival Mode, tools will no longer work. So go eat some food to not die, but reloading the save should also resolve the issue.
  
• Old save games will no longer function; the game will still attempt to load them but stall at 0 percent.
  
• In Proving Grounds, the hit animation is not playing correctly
  
• The default inventory button key will not close the inventory.
  
• When a resource/object first appears it takes a second or so to load in
  
• When your inventory slots are full, additional stackable items aren’t being added into any available stacks
  
• Proving Grounds games don’t end correctly if new players join an in-progress game and stay in the lobby or spectate. Game will end if these players disconnect (and reconnect after the game ends)
  
• Mouse button 3-4 can’t be bound to actions
  
• Game can crash if USB headphones are plugged in while TUG is running
  
• Saved World list doesn’t update properly after a world has been loaded/created
  
• 32 bit and 64 bit clients cannot play with each other
  
• Sprint cannot be currently remapped
  
• Certain world generations have terrifyingly high/deep columns of ground types which can also cause large performance hits
  
• Some special characters do not display properly when entered into chat
  
• 3rd Person camera not fully functional; interactions are not working correctly; use only for viewing the seed
  
• The staff cane attack animation isn’t synchronized to the actual hit and sound
  
• When starting a game as a spectator you will be stuck as a spectator for the next game unless you exit the client and restart
  
• When breaking down world resources spawned items can become stuck together and misbehave
  
• Physics GPS is based from the camera’s position in the world - not the character
  
• When cells are being generated there is a small chance that Physics will run out of triangles for that cell’s collision shape and cause a crash
  
• Double jumping to get into fly mode is too sensitive / misses input
  
• Player mass to world object masses has not been balanced. Many objects move like “styrofoam” giving the character an unhealthy amount of “Wrecking Ball” syndrome
  

My name is Paul aka ConceptGuy, I am the Art Director here at Nerd Kingdom. My job is to guide the look and feel of the project visually and make decisions that impact (hopefully for the better!) the quality of our projects.

Our team is a bit smaller than most established game studios, but we are constantly growing. Currently, I direct a team of 8 artists (including myself) consisting of 3D enviro/prop artists, animators, concept artists, character artists, a special FX artist, and a rigging artist. On an average day, I am usually sitting in on a multitude of meetings with various departments including art, design, code, and management. When not in meetings I’m typically at my desk doing production work or providing feedback to the team on work as it is being developed. I make it a point to sit with the coders and harass them at least once a day. This usually manifests into some form of random nerf gun attacks, asking inane questions and forcing them to explain complex algorithmic solutions as if I’m a 5 year old, or offering my supremely generic advice of “try harder do better,” which usually garners a chuckle. Aside from that, I can also be found working with the marketing department to provide art, screenshots, videos, renders or ideas as needed or requested.

My personal art disciplines range from concept art to environmental modelling with a heavy emphasis on character modelling and texturing in zbrush. That being said I typically jump in wherever I can and do what must be done. I also have extensive experience in UI/HUD design, so those tasks typically land on my plate as well. If I were ever forced to choose a pure discipline it would likely be concept art as I enjoy drawing, painting, creating characters and biome design. Throughout my entire career, I've always been something of an art generalists which has made me versatile to the studios I’ve worked for and has opened doors for me to pursue lead and directorial positions. I enjoy the ability to have a larger impact on the overall project and visual design of the game. It is very fulfilling for an artist who’s been working in the industry for many years.

I have been asked by several people over the years how I got into the industry and I always tell them that I drew every chance I could and still do. I fill my sketchbooks and find my influences in all sorts of media including movies, games, comics, animation, and games. Everything fills your mind with ideas to build from and expand upon and every artist has to create a mental bank to pull from. I attended advanced art programs in high school and pursued an art degree in college. Beyond that I worked on my portfolio and looked for opportunities, which meant doing things I didn’t always want to do to get by such as web development and design. I always have and to this day actively work on side projects to further my education and entertain myself. I know enough coding to get by in my personal projects which gives me valuable insight into how art assets need to be put together for a coder to utilize. I worked many years in the indie and mod communities which led directly to professional freelance work and eventually full time studio jobs. My first professional paid contract was as a character concept artist for Unreal 2K4. I later went on to work on Halo Wars, Star Wars, Ghostbusters, Brothers in Arms, Walking Dead, Age of Empires, along with a few other (some regrettable) projects. I have also worked on a multitude of mobile and handheld games for virtually every platform available. I enjoy what I do very much and am extremely grateful to be doing what I’m doing.

If you’ve stuck with the story this far then I thank you for lending me your time. I hope it was informative, inspirational, and maybe a little entertaining. Feel free to contact me if you want to drop a resume or have any questions, we are always looking for potential talent! :)

Email: Press@NerdKingdom.com Subject: Attn Paul, Art Director

• Fixed 32 bit executable
  
• Added some stability improvements
  
• Added some minor performance improvements
  
• Fixed UI scaling incorrectly at non-default resolution
  
• Objects not loading correctly when loading in Creative Mode should be fixed
  
• In Creative Mode, items getting stuck on the mouse cursor when panning the across the chatbox should be fixed
  

TUG Alpha 0.6.1

• Rock pebble color adjustments for resource and weapon textures to match variations
  
• New green thorny vine variation added
  
• Corpse pitcher resources added
  
• Lotus teeth resources added
  
• Reeds resource added
  
• Bark strips resource added
  
• Lilly pad and lilly nut resources added
  
• Double cap stem and cap resources added
  
• Daisy petals resource added
  
• Daisy clusters have more geometry
  
• Updated daisy flower texture maps
  
• Watouwr tree added to red cliffs biome
  
• Young trepod plant and resources added
  
• Mushroom hand added
  
• Updating wisps
  
• Fixes for mushroom FX - ambient and on hit
  
• New resource FX
  
• Cypress tree model and textures added
  
• Hostas: green, spotted, & edged; plants & resources
  
• Ferns: peacock & paisley; plants & resources
  
• Broadleaf plants: banana plants & elephant ear plants; plants & resources
  
• 2 handed weapon animations added to the cane staff
  
• Added damage states to the two-handed cane staff weapon
  
• Environmental ambient FX added across all biomes including drifting/gusting sand, snow, and fog
  
• Fly FX (The buzzing insect type)
  
• Unique destruction FX added to many items
  
• New large torch
  
• New small torch
  
• A banana!

• Added rock knapping to the crafting process; players must use the round stone to break off jagged stones from small rocks and then use the jagged stone to cut down plants and tree saplings for the next level of crafting resources
  
• Adjustments to player health and game balancing of weapons, tools & food
  
• Missing ambient sounds added to game objects
  
• Recipes added for weapon and tool variations based off new resources
  

• Converted all asset files to work with exposed LUA engine scripts
  
• Fixed ambient sound not looping correctly
  
• Overhauled the engine and transitioned to a component based architecture.
• Which provides our designers (and modders) a more data-driven way of creating GameObjects
  
• Fixed lighting, shading & bloom bugs for all FX
  
• Script- The Eternus Engine has been integrated with Lua support! LuaJit has been selected for maximum performance.
  
• Script - Added the first iteration of the Eternus Lua API. This api exposes numerous systems and classes for use in LUA gameplay code.
  
• Script - Added an OOP Lua framework (available to modders) that supports complex class hierarchies- including prototypical inheritance, class/member variables, and constructor/destructor hooks. RTTI and Mixin support will soon follow.
  
• Script - Added Lua scriptable GameObjects and GameStates that provide standard gameplay hooks into the game.
  
• Script - Began porting existing gameplay code to lua.
  
• Physics - Replaced Bullet physics with Havok
  
• Physics - Added mesh decomposition. Allows for higher accuracy collisions without a massive hit in performance. Auto generated from Static meshes being used with GameObjects and a Rigidbody Component
  
• Physics - Added “Level of Detail” collision shapes. Shapes at further distances will collide with less precision whereas shapes closer to the player will prefer to use a decomposed shape
  
• Physics - Added collision shape caching that allows for much faster load times of physical bodies. A cache is represented by the extension “.hkt”
  
• Physics - Added the “Gamer Position Supervisor” to provide specific details about the player’s position in the world. Saves players who fall through the terrain and also detects when a player might be stuck in terrain. lots of other functionality coming to lua
  
• Physics - Added a world wide physics rule: The backface of a collision shape does not produce collisions. This means if you spawn in a tree, end up flying under terrain or somehow end up “inside” of any object, that you will be able to walk out
  
• Physics - No longer using a discrete kinematic controller. The new Character Controller is a much more sophisticated implementation that allows for finer tweaking. No more running up hills spamming jump or any other weird behaviors
  
• Updated compiler from vc++ 2010 to vc++ 2012. May require reinstall
  
• Re-enabled Third Person DEBUG camera. Press X to enable
  

Hello all, Skittles (Kevin) here and today we are going to talk a little about the illusion of life in TUG. When I first joined Nerd Kingdom in early 2013, animation was but a dream that they wished to implement in the future. It was thus my first task upon arrival to catch up on all the lore and design documents available at the time so that I could get a better feel for what sort of animations we’d need.

My approach to animation does not seem that complex to me, but putting all this down on paper revealed just how much more extensive it really is. So, first things first, I started with a flowchart, mapping out animations to figure out which ones were transitions and which ones were a hub for many other animations. The animations listed on the flowchart are mainly a wish list for what I’d want my character to be able to do in the future, so none of them are definite. Many of the animations on the flowchart will require various systems we had not yet implemented at the time, and some systems we may not even get to until sometime in the distant future. After creating the flowchart, I also created an elaborate spreadsheet with formulas linked to other formulas to help me keep track of how fast characters move in relation to the world. Working with design, we set the seedling’s walk speed as 1 with his run as 2. It was a constant back and forth between 3D software and engine, all the time watching how the feet planted on the ground. Once I had them staying in place (not sliding/slipping), I then had my “x” to determine what the distance was for all other movement speeds (formula: 1*x=Walk, 2*x=Run).

After checking with design on the proper movement speed, I checked in with sound to make sure the noise my animations would logically generate would work within the confines of the sound system being developed. I was given a list of bps (beats per second) , ranging from 1bps to 32bps. This range gave me several formulas to work with, for example, the walk cycle uses a 8bps tempo, while the run goes for a 4bps. The walk and run use an even split system, so that when one step hits the ground it will be an equal amount of beats spaced between each foot plant. The fast sneak also shares the 8bps, but with 4 limbs planting to consider, I went with a more asymmetrical pattern. I set it up so it would go at 6 beats a cycle, 4 beats would be feet and hand plants, while two beats would just be in-betweens.

And that is all we have time for this week y’all, part two of my animation ramblings will make its appearance sometime in the future!

Follow Skittles on Twitter @NK_Skittles