The incorporation of food in games has a long history of varying success. Most commonly, games completely reject food, assuming that it's something your character does when you are not playing. A common complaint against the use of food in games, is that we don't want to make you go to the bathroom every 30 minutes, so why should you have to eat either? Of course there are games that model eating, and even games that model going to the bathroom. The Sims for instance, models going to the bathroom, even to the extent of wetting the floor if a toilet cannot be accessed, and no one can say that that game wasn't successful.

I think this much realism probably doesn't have a place in CDO, but there is a certain amount of realism that can make gameplay interesting. Realism is only a 4 letter word if it isn't any fun, and fun is certainly one of our priorities.
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This is the first "focus on a feature" I am writing. I chose this topic as the first one to cover, because it was also one of the first conceived systems, and when originally implemented was the only thing in CDO that was game-like in any definition of the term. To get it out of the way, CDO will be somewhat of a crafting game. This doesn't mean that crafting is the only thing to do; it doesn't even mean that all players will be builders. However, crafting is a primary action.

For these posts, I will describe both the feature as it currently exists (either in our minds/design documents) as well as try and give a clear picture of what we are hoping to eventually achieve. I will also look at other games as contrast, just as I look at other games for ideas of what works and what doesn't.

What is crafting and why should I care?

Crafting is a concept that has played a part in online games since the worlds were rendered in beautiful ASCII characters. For those who aren't aware, crafting is generally a side portion of gameplay, where resources can be collected through various means, and then put together into new and useful items. It's something to do in game besides fight, and it helps to make the world seem a little more realistic and alive.

Crafting and CDO today...

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Greetings, loyal fan(s). For today's update I am going to do somewhat of a new year retrospective of the past years development, along with some juicy info on what is in store for the future of the game. To get it out of the way, Alpha 4 in it's current incarnation has been canceled, and I don't know when people will be able to try CDO out again. Things are changing - but in the long run it is for the better.

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Delays...

Hello, world. December 12 was a really nice goal to have, and it's helped to inspire some efforts that might not have been expended without any sort of deadline. Deadlines however, are made to be broken. In my defense, I did say that date was tentative. It turns out, I have not been able to work on CDO for the last few weeks because of stress at the ending school year, not to mention the 12 of December is one of my finals. Preparing an alpha release the same day as a final is just not going to happen.

It's not all bad however. For starters, for how little work time available, doogs and I have surprisingly accomplished much. The first autonomous plant began to grow, and quickly covered the landscape with cpu-crushing numbers of cattails! Ok, so it needs some serious tweaking.

Other features include gui improvements, more special effects, more immersive environments, and a very limited combat system. We are getting to a good sized basic set of blocks to which a great game can be built from. For the alpha to be ready, these blocks need to be integrated in a single world with all corners of gameplay accessible without admin hacks. It's basically connect the dots at this point. We have the dots but not the connections.

In other news, python-ogre now works on my linux box, so I can reschedule a linux client for the alpha. That is one thing that I have been struggling with for a while, not wanting to be windows only when we used to support linux. Now we can continue to support both. OSX is another story - still no way to build a client for a system I don't have access to, and python-ogre still reportedly has issues on that system as well. It will all come together someday.

So alpha 4 is pushed back at least a week, maybe more, maybe less. It all depends on how the pieces come together.

Later all.

Looking at our schedules, we have concluded that there is no way we can finish alpha 4 before December, and any further than the 12 runs into vacation issues. So if it doesn't make the 12th, who knows what will happen. But I think I would prefer an unfinished test in December than an entire year without CDO! It is a test after all, it doesn't need to be perfect.

In the past few weeks, progress has been slow, yet numerous improvements still have managed to squeak by.

The world has become a bit more dynamic now that landscape pieces are able to be manipulated by world builders. While this is an administrator rather than a user upgrade, it means that things like stairs, platforms, or hills can be freely placed into the world, and results in a more interesting environment.

Some of the game logic has been improved, including fixing digging (which has been broken since the world was zoned), and working on the planting/harvesting infrastructure.

Finally a texture blending technique allows us more flexibility with terrain, including making paths and keeping polygons down.

I look forward to seeing you all visit the world again, a lot has changed in a year.

And I'll leave you with a shot that shows the beach using the new texturing style, contrasted with the landscape with the old textures, to show the improvement: