Cube World Dev Tracker

Dear Cube World Community,

I think this is the right place for this. This is where it all started, where my little passion project came to life and became something much bigger.

Here is my explanation why everything took me so long, why there were no updates and so on...

When I released Cube World back in 2013 on our homepage, I was enthusiastic to finally share my game with you. It was a dream come true for me, I wanted to be a game developer since I was a kid.

As some of you might remember, we got DDoS'ed as soon as we opened the shop. It might sound silly, but this event traumatized me and kind of broke something inside me. I never told anyone about it, and I don't want to go into the details, but I'm dealing with anxiety and depression ever since. Social media didn't improve it, as you might imagine. I'm still not sure if it's a good idea to tell the world about it, but I wanted to give the fans an explanation.

There were several points ... Read more

We have finally created a new homepage with plenty of info about Cube World. Check it out on

picroma.com

I hope everything goes well, but in case the site goes down I'll post updates here and on Twitter. :)

It's about time for a new gameplay video, so here we go! :)

Over the last weeks I've experimented a lot with quests: completely random quests, semi-random quests, pre-written class quests. But I somehow had the feeling that the addition of quests could remove a lot of the freedom and restrict the player too much. I'm also afraid that they could become too repetitive and generic over time. So I decided to leave them out for now and put the game focus on exploration, fighting and character progress, which are in my opinion the most fun aspects of Cube World. Here is an overview of the new features:

- There is now a clearly arranged overview map showing lands and levels. The player can switch between the voxel map and the overview map.

- I've added screens for character selection, world selection, character creation and world generation

- Each class has access to three different types of weapons
* Warrior: Great weapons, dual-wielded one-handed weapons, shield + one-handed weapons
* Rogue: Daggers, fist weapons,... Read more

I've been working on the artificial intelligence of Cube World's NPCs and monsters. I've added pathfinding and some behavior features to the AI. The pathfinding is based on the A* algorithm, with some additional features like climbing and arbititrarily sized bounding boxes for creatures and obstacles. NPCs like villagers use it to find their way to various places in the city. Enemies use it to follow the player even to the most unreachable locations.

Below are a few screenshots to demonstrate the AI. The small red and yellow cubes are just for visualization purposes and won't be visible in the final game.
Let's spend the day with Alerick, a nice NPC living in this house in Tririon City.

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Over the last few days I've been improving the landscape generator and rendering engine and I made a few screenshots. There are also some screenshots of the 3D world map, which is automatically recorded while you explore the world. It's basically a big version of the minimap.

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Just a short status update about the new name: I already have a new favorite but I'd like to wait a little, maybe there's a better one.
Currently I'm working on the following things:
The Cube World is divided into different lands (of course randomly generated ones). Each land has a level and all creatures living in that land have the same level. The land level increases with distance from the starting position.

Each land has a capital city and is inhabited by NPCs. They have quests, sell items or just talk about random stuff. :) Each city has a center place where all shops and other useful buildings are located.
In contrast to before, buildings are now randomly generated: they now have varying rooms, sizes, walls, roofs etc. Furthermore, I'm working on multiple themes. Here are the ones that I have finished so far:
European style framework houses:
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Thanks for the comments! For those who don't know why I don't keep the name "Cube World": To avoid trademark issues and associations with Minecraft clones.

Here are a few things I've learned:

- Japanese sounding names aren't well accepted everywhere (I have no idea why), so "Kyubu" and "Kami Heroes" are out.
- Some people don't like names which are too childish or too cute. So "Little Cube Adventure" (my personal favorite), "Cube Boy" and "Lost in Monsterland" are out. I like this kind of names because they remind me of good old SNES/Sega Genesis times. :)
- "Spirit Hunter" sounds generic but I think most modern titles do. On the other hand I agree that it doesn't capture the true essence of my game. Gathering spirit cubes isn't so much of a focus in the game. So "Spirit Hunter" is also out.

The focus of the game is exploring a strange, huge world which is made up of cubes. Maybe someone finds a catchy name for this. :) I hope I can come up with ... Read more

Here's a first selection of possible names that I liked. It's not the final list, and I'll probably post another one soon. I'd just like to know what kind of names are well received and which ones are not.

Please tell me your opinion about each name and what you like and what you dislike. Thanks!

- Spirit Hunter
- Kyubu
- Little Cube Adventure
- Lost in Monsterland
- Cube Boy
- Kami Heroes

I think it's time to choose a new name for Cube World.

I'm not a native English speaker so it's hard for me to judge if a name sounds good in English or not. So I would appreciate any name suggestions. Please try to consider the following things:

- The name must not be copyrighted or trademarked.
- It should not contain the word 'Voxel', 'Cube', or 'Craft' ;) EDIT: Also no 'Block' or ^3 please. :)
- I think it's good to have a combination of English words without fantasy words.
- It should sound like an epic action RPG from the 16-bit era. :)

Feel free to post any suggestions here or send me an email. Thanks for your help!

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I just wanted to share a few small features that I haven't shown yet. For example, boss monsters (also trolls, cyclopses etc.) are smaller and weaker with level 1, so newbies also have a chance against them. :) With each level, they become bigger and stronger and gain their full strength and size with level 10.

When you get stunned, you see small stars above you. As long as they are visible, you can't be stunned again. It's the same for enemies!
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There are now four classes in Cube World: Warrior, Ranger, Spirit Mage and Rogue.

Each class can choose between two specializations. Each specialization adds additional passive and active abilities to your class. You can swap your specialization in villages any time.

Warrior

Warriors are masters of close-range combat. They wear heavy armor and can wield swords, axes, maces, greatswords, greataxes, greatmaces and shields.

Warriors can be Guardian or Berserker.
- Guardians have increased health and defensive abilities.
- Berserkers profit from war frenzy, which ... Read more

I actually wanted to wait with new videos until the new homepage is out but there are so many new things to show, so here we go:


New features:

- Hang gliders: You will probably get these with level 10 or higher. They're quite fun to use, especially when you fall down. :) You get stunned and fall down when you fly against a wall.
- Sprinting (consumes stamina)
- Some attacks can stun enemies.
- New monsters and items
- Dungeons
- Rare zones: Just like items, zones can have different rarities. Monsters are stronger here and drop better loot.
- Dungeons: In the video you see a castle dungeon, featuring female Orcs! :P
- We're also adding new zones like lava lands

Homepage

I'm currently very busy with the offical game homepage. I'm programming it with C++. How cool is that? :D It will contain a forum, a blog, and probably an item and monster database. The homepage isn't done yet, but I'll keep you up-to date in this blog.

Multiplayer

There's a separate server application and everyone will be able to host his own server. It's currently Windows-only but a Linux port should be no problem because it has basically no dependencies except Winsock. I'm also planning to include an in-game server browser which allows you to easily connect to different servers from the client. Of course, you can also play completely offline.

Release?

I know many of you want me to release the game in its current state. This might work for a sandbox game but it doesn't work well for an action RPG like Cube World. We still need to add things like a start screen, menues, save slots and character c... Read more

Here's a bunch of new screenshots that Pixxie and I made during a long multiplayer test. Pixxie played a warrior and I a played a ranger. We explored jungles, snowlands, caves, we crafted potions and armor and fought nasty monsters.

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I finally got some time to post updates again, so let's start with some screenshots of newly designed villages including fields and inns!

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Hey, I recently added mountains and clouds. Here are some screenshots:

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Here is a new video with some new features:

Monsters:
- Huge boss mobs with random body parts
- Different body parts give them different abilities

Combo system:
- Subsequent attacks do more damage and can be performed faster
- Different weapon types have different combo attacks
- If an attack misses, the combo chain is ended

Other features:
- Removed auto-targeting; you have to fight freely
- Redesigned combat: normal attacks do more damage and can be dodged more easily
- Additional attacks, animations, special moves
- Ability bar
- Stamina: Needed for dodging and some abilities

I'm currently adding various dungeon themes like mines, crypts and tombs. In the screenshots you can see some dungeon entrances with different themes.

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Hey, I'm currently very busy with the dungeon system. It's really tricky and I hope to be able to show you some upates about it soon. In the meantime, here are some new screenshots in which you can see a few new features, like:

- Two-handed weapons: Greatswords and greatmaces
- Combo-system is back: subsequent hits increase damage and have different animations
- Improved camera and targeting
- Kingdoms: There are now kingdoms with frontier walls and guards
- Dungeon entrance with runestone: you can port back to the runestone when you've completed a dungeon
- Ring item menu for quick access of consumable items
- Coins: enemies now drop copper, silver and gold coins

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