Sanctimonia: Excavation Implemented!
Kevin Fishburne has reached another milestone in the development of Sanctimonia, his Ultima-inspired PvE MMORPG:
Single transaction variable radius landscape excavation implemented: eightvirtues.com/sanctimonia/im… No bobcat required, though shovels coming soon.
— Eight Virtues (@eightvirtues) May 24, 2013
He even put up a screenshot to demonstrate the excavation system in action:
Things are looking pretty good in Sanctimonia’s harsh, harsh world!
Well to be more accurate it’s been greatly improved. From the in-progress progress report:
“Previously excavating more than a single landscape tile required the server and client to process tiles individually, which was terribly inefficient. The Player.Action_Excavate procedure now includes a Radius parameter allowing radial excavations of various sizes to occur in a single operation. The actual depth of excavation is determined by the distance of the tile within the specified radius from the excavator. This also required that I modify the Server.Clients_Update_Tile procedure to allow updating clients with more than one tile.”
So it’s faster both client and server side, makes prettier holes of any size and depth and will allow players to more easily sculpt the landscape for example by leveling areas for construction or digging moats.
The next step, which is partly implemented, is to allow the depositing of excavated material elsewhere. Right now it just disappears, which is crazy. So basically you’ll dig, move, deposit, repeat.