Big Block Engine

Devlog

• Sandboxing Java Code, a Modern Approach
  February 22, 2023 by simulatoralive

  When I started work on this game engine, back in 2016, I'd been planning to eventually use a Java SecurityManager to allow code from mods to run in a reasonably safe manner, but Oracle has chosen to n... Continue reading
• Logic Components (0.27.0 Alpha)
  February 10, 2023 by simulatoralive

  This update brings a whole slew of both simple and advanced wired components for you to play with, allowing building complicated digital logic circuits. However, this update brings a few other, unrela... Continue reading

  
• Parallel Block-Based Physics
  October 19, 2020 by simulatoralive

  For the four years I've been working on this game engine, I've been slamming my head against a brick wall: concurrency. The question of how to process the block-based physics in parallel has been a v... Continue reading
• GUI Overhaul (0.26.1-3 Alpha)
  October 11, 2020 by simulatoralive

  The first of these three updates (0.26.1) brings a number of changes to the GUI. The first change you'll notice is the Java Look and Feel for the game has been changed to the Metal look and feel, but... Continue reading
• Placing Painted Blocks (0.26.0 Alpha)
  September 26, 2020 by simulatoralive

  Aside from a number of small bug fixes, this release includes one new feature: you can now place blocks, masks and furniture in a painted state. To that end, the tool chooser dialog box has been modi... Continue reading

  
• General UI Improvements (0.25.1 Alpha)
  September 19, 2020 by simulatoralive

  This update brings a number of small usability and aesthetic improvements to the GUI. Most prominent is the tool chooser dialog, large portions of which were re-written. It's more consistent in appe... Continue reading
• Better Error Reporting (0.25.0 Alpha)
  September 11, 2020 by simulatoralive

  This update includes a number of small, but very significant improvements to error handling, especially when loading data from mods. I finally dug down deep and made sure that 99% of what can be done... Continue reading
• Better Exit Cleanup (0.24.0 Alpha)
  September 01, 2020 by simulatoralive

  For user facing features, this update brings better clean-up on exit and should finally fix the hang and crash on exit bugs under Linux. It also modified the full screen mode testing GUI to better ha... Continue reading
• Fix for Floating Actors (0.23.2 Alpha)
  June 28, 2020 by simulatoralive

  I discovered some odd circumstances where Actors would simply float in the air, unaffected by physics. As it turns out, I left out a check for a flag I was setting to stop the code from continuing to... Continue reading
• Actor Physics Fixes (0.23.1 Alpha)
  June 27, 2020 by simulatoralive

  I found and fixed more bugs in the code responsible for Actor-terrain interactions. The first of these was causing terrain to remain after it's block or fluid was removed. The second was a tiny bug w... Continue reading
• Crash Testing (0.23.0 Alpha)
  June 26, 2020 by simulatoralive

  I made some improvements to the error reporting and crash handling system of the game. First of all, if you hit Shift+Ctrl+Alt+Pause, the game will simulate a crash for testing purposes. I've been us... Continue reading
• Windows Exit Freeze Fixed (0.22.3 Alpha)
  June 25, 2020 by simulatoralive

  I discovered this evening that version 0.22.0 Alpha introduced a bug that was causing a hard freeze/lock-up at exit under Windows. This bug is now fixed... Continue reading
• Multiple Bugfixes (0.22.2 Alpha)
  June 25, 2020 by simulatoralive

  This update brings a number of bug fixes related to how window settings are stored from one run of the game to the next. It should take care of that pesky bug I've seen where the window kept appearin... Continue reading
• More Performance Tuning (0.22.1 Alpha)
  June 24, 2020 by simulatoralive

  This update brings a nearly complete re-write of the code responsible for interactions between Actors and blocks or fluids. This should have much better performance. Fluids, in particular, should flo... Continue reading
• Memory, Performance and Stability Improvements (0.22.0 Alpha)
  June 22, 2020 by simulatoralive

  This update brings improvements, both big and small, but likely not noticeable to the average user. First of all, I altered the in-memory representation of worlds to use 49% less RAM, while still doin... Continue reading
• The Shell Script Launcher, In Detail
  June 19, 2020 by simulatoralive

  I recently re-worked the shell script launcher for Big Block Engine, so I wanted to share it and explain what it does in general. You'll find the complete file at the end of this post, in a code bloc... Continue reading
• Better Launchers (0.21.8 Alpha)
  June 19, 2020 by simulatoralive

  This update brings changes to the launcher shell script and the windows EXEs that start the game. Each of these now searches for a directory named 'jvm' in the game's directory for a Java Virtual Mach... Continue reading
• 0.21.6 Alpha and 0.21.7 Alpha
  June 17, 2020 by simulatoralive

  I'm struggling a bit with a bug in butler, which is used to publish this project. I tried a change in my build process to adjust to it, but it just caused more trouble. 21.6 was supposed to fix this... Continue reading
• I'm Back + Bug Fixes (0.21.5 Alpha)
  June 17, 2020 by simulatoralive

  This release includes some bug fixes and a small adjustment to fix a bug that produced a blank, empty main window on Linux. After spending some time yesterday reading my old developer log entries, I g... Continue reading
• Narrative Logic and Data Structures
  February 03, 2020 by simulatoralive

  For the past few weeks I've been considering Conversation Trees and game logic control. I think I've had an interesting epiphany. For those not in the know, a Conversation Tree (also known as a Dialo... Continue reading
• Taking a Break
  September 19, 2019 by simulatoralive

  As you may have noticed, I've not been updating this project for the past several months. I just wanted to let you know that it's not abandoned. I will work on it again in the future, but for the ti... Continue reading
• Slime Time! (0.21.4 Alpha)
  May 24, 2019 by simulatoralive

  This update adds two new actors. The first is a complete Slime monster NPC, including some crude AI behavior to jump at enemies when it senses them. It also stares at it's enemies in a slightly cree... Continue reading

  
• NPC Art
  May 18, 2019 by simulatoralive

  Last night I decided it's time to work on adding some self-moving NPCs (Non-Player Characters) that are more than just a tech demo. To that end, the first I'm working on is the ever-popular slime mons... Continue reading

  
• Block Chooser Redesign (0.21.3 Alpha)
  May 17, 2019 by simulatoralive

  The block choose dialog box got a big face-lift for this update. It should be easier to find things now, especially in those long lists, such as blocks and furniture. Instead of horizontally scrolli... Continue reading

  
• Configurable Keys (0.21.2 Alpha)
  May 16, 2019 by simulatoralive

  The big change for this release is that you can now set the keys used by the game, from within the game itself. Here's a screenshot of the key chooser dialog box. It's a big dialog box, but it kind o... Continue reading

  
• Fullscreen Mode Selection (0.21.1 Alpha)
  May 12, 2019 by simulatoralive

  This update brings one new big feature: there's a new settings menu with one new item. This allows you to select the video resolution to use when the game switches to full-screen mode. First, it show... Continue reading

  
• Big GUI Update (0.21.0 Alpha)
  May 10, 2019 by simulatoralive

  This update brings some big new features to the GUI: Map Window Allows viewing a map of the whole world It's also clickable for fast navigation Mini-Map Allows viewing a map of the immediate area arou... Continue reading

  
• More UI Improvements (0.20.0 Alpha)
  May 04, 2019 by simulatoralive

  This update brings more UI changes and improvements. Most of this won't be visible to an end-user, but the notable changes are as follows: There's a new menu item in the Block World menu to export a... Continue reading
• Small UI Improvements (0.19.0 Alpha)
  March 28, 2019 by simulatoralive

  Most of this release was about changes to make it easier for me to build user interface code in the future. I also fixed an irritating bug in the user interface (keys causing beeps while typing in a... Continue reading

  
• Teleporters and Sensors (0.18.1 Alpha)
  March 19, 2019 by simulatoralive

  This update adds teleporters and wired sensors that detect the presence of Actors. Wiring a teleporter is very similar to the pump, but transports Actors instead of fluid. It has one input and one... Continue reading

  
• Fluid Pump (0.18.0 Alpha)
  March 05, 2019 by simulatoralive

  This update adds two new features: simplistic fluid pressure simulation (it's quirky, but amusing to watch) and wired fluid pumps. The pumps required adding to the wiring system to allow wired Furnitu... Continue reading

  
• Spaghetti Edition Has Arrived! (0.17.0 Alpha)
  March 02, 2019 by simulatoralive

  For the past month I've been working on an in-game wiring system. This is now functional, including switches, simplistic diodes, logic gates (AND, OR and NOT), indicator lights and timers. For the ne... Continue reading

  
• Wiring is Coming!
  February 26, 2019 by simulatoralive

  I just wanted to announce that Spaghetti Edition is coming soon. This will include a wiring system, with furniture items for at least timers, logic gates and a simple, paintable light that can be tu... Continue reading
• Fluid Settling (0.16.0 Alpha)
  January 28, 2019 by simulatoralive

  The big new feature of this release is fluid settling. It used to be that whenever you had large amounts of fluid on screen, even if it wasn't moving, it consumed processor time. Now, fluids only co... Continue reading
• Self-Moving Actor Demo (0.15.1 Alpha)
  January 23, 2019 by simulatoralive

  This update adds a demonstration of a self-moving Actor: the Attraction Ball. It's attracted to ferrous materials, like iron and steel blocks. It's also attracted to other Attraction Balls and ferro... Continue reading

  
• Actor Messages (0.15.0 Alpha)
  January 14, 2019 by simulatoralive

  This update includes no new end user-visible features. It's entirely about internal changes. Actors now receive messages, allowing them to be notified of collisions, world start and stop and their r... Continue reading
• Fluid-Actor Interactions (0.14.1 Alpha)
  December 25, 2018 by simulatoralive

  With this release, when Actors fall into a fluid, they'll now slow down to a maximum velocity based on the density of the fluid involved, but it doesn't happen all at once. High velocity Actors will... Continue reading

  
• Platform Physics (0.14.0 Alpha)
  December 24, 2018 by simulatoralive

  The major addition for this release is physics support for platforms. Now the various ball Actors will bounce and roll off of platforms, as well as blocks. Actors flying upward, for whatever reason,... Continue reading
• Another Actor Bugfix (0.13.1 Alpha)
  December 19, 2018 by simulatoralive

  This update brings one small change: Actors that are placed at or moved to invalid coordinates will be forced close enough to the edge of the world that physics will push them into the world. The main... Continue reading
• Actor Bugfix (0.13.0 Alpha)
  December 17, 2018 by simulatoralive

  This update adds a new BlockRenderer for rendering hexagons or other things that should be rendered in a staggered fashion. With the introduction of some art and adjustments to remove physics-related... Continue reading
• Soda Edition Has Arrived! (0.12.0 Alpha)
  December 13, 2018 by simulatoralive

  I am incredibly pleased to announce that Soda Edition has been released. This update adds physics to Actors (AKA sprites) and fixes a few old bugs. So, we can now place blocks, then place some balls... Continue reading

  
• Nearly There
  December 11, 2018 by simulatoralive

  I just wanted to let everyone waiting on a release know that it's coming in the next few days. The last month or so has been pretty infuriating (physics code usually is, at least for me). I've been s... Continue reading
• Not Going to Use JBox2D
  November 15, 2018 by simulatoralive

  Well, I spent the last couple of days fiddling with API documentation and reading tutorials and to be honest, JBox2D is an absolute mess. It's API is absolutely terrible compared to most Java API doc... Continue reading
• Actor Save and Load (0.11.0 Alpha)
  November 12, 2018 by simulatoralive

  This small update fixes a few small visual bugs in the block chooser dialog and adds one new feature: actors are now saved and loaded when worlds are saved and loaded... Continue reading
• Minimal Sprite Support (0.10.7 Alpha)
  November 10, 2018 by simulatoralive

  This update brings minimal support for sprites (which I shall here-after refer to as actors, because the plan is for actors to be more than a visual thing). Now, I feel I should qualify the word "min... Continue reading

  
• Sprites Are Coming
  October 31, 2018 by simulatoralive

  I began working on sprites last week. Sadly, I'm finding the work slow-going, because I've never done anything like it. I've mentally worked though several potential approaches to this, but parts of... Continue reading
• Small Bug Fix (0.10.6 Alpha)
  October 23, 2018 by simulatoralive

  Another small bug fix for something small that I missed. The binary release was including a jar file that was only needed in the source release archive. This is now fixed and the binary release is t... Continue reading
• Big Internal Changes (0.10.4 Alpha and 0.10.5 Alpha)
  October 23, 2018 by simulatoralive

  This release brings a great many internal changes to how art is handled in this project. The end user will likely not notice a thing, except for some very, very small cosmetic changes to art. Most n... Continue reading
• Fire and Water Fixed (0.10.3 Alpha)
  September 14, 2018 by simulatoralive

  This releases adds a long-standing missing feature and incidentally fixed the fire-water interactions. Contact conditions can now occur from fluids to fluids, fluids to blocks, blocks to fluids (new),... Continue reading

  
• Fluid Expulsion Bugfix (0.10.2 Alpha)
  September 14, 2018 by simulatoralive

  I discovered and fixed a very small bug related to a fluid-filled cell expelling fluid when a block is placed into it. It was targeting the wrong cell to determine if expulsion was possible... Continue reading
• Fast Sideways Fluid (0.10.1 Alpha)
  September 11, 2018 by simulatoralive

  This release alters the way fluids flow, making sideways motion much faster, fixing that long-standing bug. Here's an example of how fast water moves now: This release also fixes a deadlock issue that... Continue reading

  
• Massive Small Changes (0.10.0 Alpha)
  September 10, 2018 by simulatoralive

  This release is largely about things that make my life as a developer easier and includes a lot of prep work that I needed done for working on sprites. Yes, you read that right. Sprites are my next... Continue reading
• Interactive Furniture (0.9.0 Alpha)
  August 28, 2018 by simulatoralive

  This update adds interactive furniture capability and completes the fireplace furniture item. Furniture can be activated using a new GUI tool found in the misc. tab of the block chooser dialog box. A... Continue reading

  
• Painted Furniture (0.8.0 Alpha)
  August 27, 2018 by simulatoralive

  This update adds the ability to paint furniture. Currently, only the fireplace supports this, but I will work on adding paint support for other furniture items, for the next release. You can do this... Continue reading

  
• Animated Furniture (0.7.0 Alpha)
  August 21, 2018 by simulatoralive

  Furniture can now be animated, among a number of other smaller changes. This release also laid some of the ground-work for sprites (they will use the same animation mechanism). Here's an animated fir... Continue reading

  
• Starfield Bugfix (0.6.4 Alpha)
  August 04, 2018 by simulatoralive

  This release is a small bugfix to make the starfield wallpaper look a bit more natural. There was a slight, visible bias in the pseudo random number generator I was using to produce the data for the... Continue reading
• Starfield Wallpaper (0.6.3 Alpha)
  July 30, 2018 by simulatoralive

  This update adds a new block: Stars Wallpaper. This is a dark-background block with a random assortment of pixel-art stars, colored to match the various stellar classes for real-world stars, as seen... Continue reading

  
• Large Titanium Hex Plating (0.6.2 Alpha)
  June 24, 2018 by simulatoralive

  This very tiny update adds a single new block: Large Titanium Hex Plating. This is similar to the previous titanium plating, but the hexes are the size of a single block. Mostly I just wanted to get... Continue reading

  
• Better Fire (0.6.1 Alpha)
  May 29, 2018 by simulatoralive

  I updated the fire artwork to tile vertically and made fire-water interactions destroy water, as well. I also added a pair of blocks for concrete and chainlink fence... Continue reading

  
• Animated Blocks (0.6.0 Alpha)
  May 26, 2018 by simulatoralive

  This update is really exciting! It's something I've wanted for a long time and it's finally happening: animated blocks! Squee! For a basic example, I added a fire block that tumbles like sand and ge... Continue reading

  
• New Furniture (0.5.15 Alpha)
  May 23, 2018 by simulatoralive

  This is a small art update to include some artwork I've been staring at on opengameart.org. I really wanted that LPC-styled palm tree, because the existing palm trees just don't match quite as well a... Continue reading

  
• Supported Furniture and More (0.5.14 Alpha)
  May 16, 2018 by simulatoralive

  This update brings a number of improvements for furniture in general, the biggest being that one can now make furniture require a supporting surface. The next big thing is that you can now make furni... Continue reading
• Zoom Fixes (0.5.13 Alpha)
  December 07, 2017 by simulatoralive

  This small update adds the scroll wheel zoom functionality I forgot to add in the previous release and alters the default keybindings for zoom in/zoom out. Lastly, the in-game help file has been upda... Continue reading
• World Edge Highlighting and Zoom Levels (0.5.12 Alpha)
  December 05, 2017 by simulatoralive

  This release brings two new features. The first is that the edges of the currently open world are now highlighted with a red checkerboard tile. The second is that you can now zoom in and out using the... Continue reading
• Copy and Paste (0.5.11 Alpha)
  December 02, 2017 by simulatoralive

  This release adds the ability to copy blocks from one BlockWorld, BlockPlane or BlockCell to another. This allowed me to give the editor a clipboard for copy and paste operations. One can also selec... Continue reading
• More Bug Fixes (0.5.10 Alpha)
  November 27, 2017 by simulatoralive

  This fixes a bug in the GUI that was allowing the wrong file to be overwritten on save with relative ease. This also fixes the fact that the Flag Variables added in a the recent version were not bein... Continue reading
• Paint Bug Fix (0.5.9 Alpha)
  November 27, 2017 by simulatoralive

  I just noticed this morning while working on something else that block transfers (through tumbling) and block replacements (through contact conditions) were not working correctly with unpainted bockks... Continue reading
• With an Ocean View? (0.5.8 Alpha)
  November 25, 2017 by simulatoralive

  This release adds one new feature: fluids placed in the background are now treated as fluid sources. So, for example, if you place some water in the background on a cell with nothing in the foregroun... Continue reading
• Paint the House Black! (0.5.7 Alpha)
  November 25, 2017 by simulatoralive

  The most visible changes are that pure black is now an allowed paint color and the paint scraper now removes Alpha paint. This release also fixes a number of bugs and includes some internal engine imp... Continue reading
• Large Art Update (0.5.6 Alpha)
  November 21, 2017 by simulatoralive

  This update brings a few new features, including two new BlockRenderer implementations, some small rendering bug fixes and a large amount of new art. The fancy new feature I wish to draw attention to... Continue reading

  
• 0.5.5 Alpha Released
  November 13, 2017 by simulatoralive

  I needed a less serious goal to work on for a bit, so I've been working on adding new art. To that end, I've been playing with this artwork: https://opengameart.org/content/plastic-shamtastic , whic... Continue reading

  
• 0.5.4 Alpha Released
  November 08, 2017 by simulatoralive

  This version fixes one tiny bug: the DeluxeBlockRenderer now carefully queries specific neighboring blocks for shape and variant to render edge pieces. Block edges now use the shape and variant of th... Continue reading
• 0.5.3 Alpha Released
  November 07, 2017 by simulatoralive

  This release brings a number of small bug fixes, one library update (Substance released a new version) and a few new features. First is block replacement: when a contact condition occurs and a block i... Continue reading
• 0.5.2 Alpha Released
  November 03, 2017 by simulatoralive

  This update brings a new paint mode for blocks: replace mode. This works by using two texture variant lines, similar to overlay mode. The lower line is used for unpainted blocks and the upper line i... Continue reading
• 0.5.1 Alpha Released
  November 02, 2017 by simulatoralive

  This release is largely an art update. I've finally managed to get the plating blocks to work to my satisfaction, including slopes. This update eliminates the sloped versions of the blocks and adds t... Continue reading
• 0.5.0 Alpha Released
  November 01, 2017 by simulatoralive

  This release brings with it a new rendering mechanic for blocks with shaped edges, and a new BlockRenderer implementation. Most of the work I did on this one was due to my desire to get metal blocks... Continue reading

  
• 0.4.0 Alpha Released
  October 28, 2017 by simulatoralive

  This release was mostly about making some internal changes to the rendering system to make more interesting and complex rendering possible in the future. There's also a few classes/interfaces that we... Continue reading

  
• 0.3.1 Alpha Released
  October 24, 2017 by simulatoralive

  This update adds a new BlockRenderer specifically for platforms. There are four new template blocks that use it in various ways. The old replacement platform block is now also using it, giving it a... Continue reading
• 0.3.0 Alpha Released
  October 23, 2017 by simulatoralive

  This fixes a bug involving the rendering of the grass mask, such that it no longer overlaps blocks that it shouldn't. This also brings a new feature: Tilesets. Tilesets are a grouping of similar bloc... Continue reading

  
• 0.2.2 Alpha Released
  October 16, 2017 by simulatoralive

  This release includes GUI tools to allow placement of full RGBA colors on blocks. Additionally, when blocks tumble (like unsupported sand), they will now take their hit points, seed value, mask and pa... Continue reading
• 0.2.1 Alpha Released
  October 12, 2017 by simulatoralive

  This is a very tiny bug fix for some (infrequently) malfunctioning menus. I've seen the menu fail to work just after entering fullscreen mode and yesterday I got a bug report that the menus do not wo... Continue reading
• 0.2.0 Alpha Released
  October 10, 2017 by simulatoralive

  This is the initial release of " Buttered Biscuit Edition " of the Big Block Engine. This now supports full RGBA coloration of blocks. There are a great many changes to the rendering system to suppor... Continue reading
• 0.1.4 Alpha Released
  October 02, 2017 by simulatoralive

  While I was testing 0.1.3 for a proper installation via the Itch client, I found a bug affecting furniture removal that was causing blocks near the furniture to be removed. This is now fixed... Continue reading
• 0.1.3 Alpha Released
  October 02, 2017 by simulatoralive

  This has some internal changes to how the game utilizes synchronization in preparation for some upcoming performance enhancements and a fluid motion bug fix... Continue reading
• 0.1.2 Alpha Released
  September 26, 2017 by simulatoralive

  More minor bug fixes and changes, mostly related to logging, but there's also a small rendering glitch fix, as well... Continue reading
• 0.1.1 Alpha Released
  September 26, 2017 by simulatoralive

  This release brings some bug fixes for the game window, allowing it to be resized and fixing a bug that was cutting the bottom of the rendering area off in full-screen mode... Continue reading