Atlas Devlogs 2021

[Iyoforeayo]

Atlas Devlogs

Happy new year, everyone!

Now that we’ve hit the ground running again, we’ll be starting to post updates on our development process monthly, until we relaunch. The first Saturday of every month, we’ll be posting a handful of devlogs in this thread (as well as linking all the new logs in an announcement on the discord, so you don’t miss them.)

(And don’t worry - while we did miss the first Saturday this month, we’ll be posting the January devlogs later today!)

[Iyoforeayo]

Dungeon Devlog #1

Written by Iyoforeayo

Of all the new changes being worked on during the dev period, one of the ones I’m most excited about is the Dungeon Update! Prior to the dev period, we had a few annoying bugs that I’m sure players remember (switches not working, boss triggers not firing, Devshire tripping out) that essentially weren’t fixable until we updated to 1.16. Now that we’ve got an extended period of development time on 1.16, I wanted to not only fix the random bugs that had crept up in the past, but also revisit Dungeons as a whole - from content, to encounters, to loot - in order to revamp and improve upon one of our more popular PVE features.

Moar Dungeons!
In the past, Atlas had 4 dungeons throughout the world. When we relaunch, we’ll have at least twice that number (not including The Trials!) Some of these new dungeons were in the works already, but a few other brand new ones have been added to the list. I won’t reveal too much about them here, since I’m planning to go more in depth about each one specifically in later dev logs. But all dungeons, new and old, will feel a little bit different in how they play...

Mob Changes & Boss Encounters
One of the issues with how dungeons worked in the past, is that once players had completed them a handful of times, they became rather iterative - find the switches, find the chests, and don’t spawn too many mobs at once. I wanted to move away from this approach a bit, and focus more on two major elements: randomness and a bigger focus on group communication and strategy. The randomness element will largely come into play in regards to loot (which I’ll get to in the next section) - but as far as adding more strategy and need for communication, there will be a number of changes with dungeon mobs and bosses:

Mobs will now work together more cohesively to kill you.
They will be much more likely to spawn in packs, and certain mobs may have abilities to heal or buff other mobs, or even protect their nearby allies from damage until they themselves are killed. They will also spawn much farther away (or come largely pre-spawned), so players can plan ahead on how best to pull groups, rather than stumbling upon a surprise mob that spawns right on top of you.

Dungeons will now have at least 3 Boss Encounters each.
Rather than having 1 or 2 “mini-bosses” and a single main boss at the end, dungeons will now have anywhere from 3-5 major Boss Encounters, all of generally equivalent difficulty.

Boss Encounters will require more strategy and cooperation.
I refer to them as Boss Encounters rather than just “boss fights,” because they may not necessarily be a single bad guy with a boss bar - it might be a group of powerful enemies, or even an event that the party needs to survive and overcome together. All of them will focus more on unique mechanics that will require the group to work together, strategize, and adapt - rather than simple “tank-’n-spank” boss fights. I’ll go more into some specific examples of these mechanics in future dev logs (maybe along with a few videos of the Elders attempting some of the new encounters and getting our asses handed to us, who knows?)

Loot Changes
Another element of our old dungeons I definitely wanted to move away from, was static loot in static chests. While the search for a dungeon’s chests might be interesting the first few runs, it no doubt becomes a bit of a mindless chore after awhile. Getting loot from a dungeon should be exciting! So to help, a few changes:

Dungeon loot will almost entirely be gained from mobs and bosses.
Chests will no longer be the main source of loot in dungeons. Mobs will have a chance to drop things like gems, experience, and basic items - while Boss Encounters will have a chance to yield rare gear, legendary items, and more! And speaking of chance...

Almost all dungeon loot will now be random.
Not entirely random, of course - each dungeon will have specific loot that only drops within it. But that loot will be pulled from random loot tables, meaning that players will never truly know what they’re going to get from each unique dungeon run!

The one thing that will likely remain static is the amount of Dungeon Currency gained from a run. Each dungeon will still have a unique armor set that can be purchased with it, but all other unique dungeon items will be gained from Boss Encounters.

More unique dungeon items.
We’ll be adding plenty more rare and unique dungeon loot to be gained. In addition to weapons and armor, players will have a chance to get things like unique building blocks, and new materials for high-level crafting recipes! (You can learn more about that last one in the Itemization Devlog.)

To sum up…
...lots of new Dungeon changes to look forward to! I’ve certainly been having a lot of fun designing new mobs and mechanics, and I’m excited for players to have access to a new, (hopefully) more interesting dungeon experience!

[Iyoforeayo]

Smeltery Devlog #1

Written by Ajaxan

The rework of Smeltery has been very long overdue and planned for quite some time. Ever since we declassified the Smeltery alloy recipes more than a year ago we had plans to revamp the plugin. And finally the time has come for those changes to actually happen. And so in this devlog we’ll dive into the changes coming with the Smeltery Revamp!

The New Forge


Hopefully someone is as excited about the new design as I am! I’ve always disliked two specific aspects of the smaller structures for smeltery and even the many other skill plugins.

1. They’re boring to look at. Smeltery is supposed to be this big impactful and interesting skill… but it’s just a furnace with a cobblestone fence on top? Seems kind of underwhelming.
   
2. Hot take, the way all you min-maxers tile these structures is ugly as hell and you should feel bad. But seriously, I never intended for the ability to tile these structures so closely. And it starts to stop looking like it’s original form when tiles those ways.
   

See what I mean?

Anyway, along with this increased size I know some players are thinking “building this will be a bitch and a half, thanks Ajax.” Well have no fear - like guard towers and war camps, forges (and all other skill structures) will build themselves from a single placed block. But even more, these auto built structures will come with some nice new features including:

1. Constant particle effects (like chimney smoke)
   
2. A preview placement mode with shift+right click
   
3. Multiple interactable points and blocks within the structure.
   

This is where I’d show you the system in action, but the system is still very much in creation and so instead here’s a picture of the new file extension to denote Constructs!



Forge Skill Testing
Anyway the forge is not just getting a cosmetic overhaul the forge is going to be fully interactable. In fact, you’ll need to interact with it and fix it to make sure it doesn’t explode in your face. You see, the real update to Smeltery is the re-integration of a type of skill testing. Before it was a knowledge based skill test, now we will be switching to more active skill testing. And so let’s talk about Smeltery skill testing!


Forge chimney clearing minigame (concept design)

Imagine if you will, a massive forge billowing smoke as it smelts down metals to form a new powerful alloy. You begin to notice less and less smoke… You see smoke leaking from small cracks that definitely weren’t there before. You realize the chimney is clogged and the gases inside are starting to build up! You rush to clean the chimney (and play a type match minigame to do it) just in time to stop the forge from actually exploding.

I won’t explain every minigame (plus I can’t give away all the secrets) but there will be multiple menu minigames and some level flipping and repairing all needing to be balanced to properly become a master smith. Hopefully the idea of not playing “standing around watching metal melt” simulator appeals to y’all as much as it does me

Oh I almost forgot! GUI


You’ll have a real GUI to choose your forge recipe from now. No need to memorize them or use an entirely separate command just to look them up.

Now why would you put yourself through all this? Because Smeltery now has the ability to produce different quality items. You will be able to achieve more powerful smeltery items than ever seen before… or way worse items if you suck.

Players can begin their quest to become master smiths and produced the coveted Masterwork Ingots out of their smeltery alloys. Masterwork Ingots will provide extra randomized effects on top of their base alloys powers alloying players to produce, through high amounts of effort and dedication sets of armor that will be a new level of power over old armors.

Want a better idea of how difficult they will be to produce or other items being introduced to Atlas? Check out the Itemization Devlog!

[Iyoforeayo]

Resource Pack Devlog #1

Written by Tyrriel

In Minecraft 1.14.4 Mojang (finally) fixed the client hang that used to occur when a resource pack was applied. This opened up a whole new world of possibility when introducing new assets to the game. In this devlog we’re going to be focusing on two, albeit small, but immediately noticeable systems that utilize the resource pack; the HUD (Heads Up Display) and the Player Inventory.

The HUD


Introducing Cartography 2.0
Cartography was probably one of the best additions for the questers / explorers of Atlas. It allowed you to far more easily track where you wanted to go. With this next iteration of Cartography we wanted to give players two pieces of information; where you currently are and where you want to be. At the top, we are placing the current location information that previously was located in the tablist. And directly underneath it is the compass which has the capability to point you in the correct direction of the set waypoint (think Skyrim or any of the Battle Royale games currently out there). On the topic of waypoints, we are expanding the system to allow waypoints to be more easily shared between players.

The Player Inventory


As can be seen in the image above, we are introducing 5 new buttons to the player’s inventory. We’ve always had the goal of reducing the commands that players need to memorize / learn / use and now we can finally realize it. 

The Player Profile (Top Left)
Everything from personal timezone settings to your cosmetics and your coins. The player profile will be the one stop shop for everything that pertains to your individual player.

The Action Menu (Top Right)
The action menu will contain buttons for commonly used commands such as /clap or /nation. In other words, it’s the “everything else” menu.

The Cartography Menu (Bottom Left)
With the introduction of Cartography 2.0 we also have a new menu that allows you to add, track, or edit waypoints.

The Quest Journal (Bottom Right)
Currently still WIP, but we are completely revamping the clunky quest journal into something that is far easier to follow and understand (stay tuned for updates on this in the future)

And now because we are taking the four slots typically used for crafting your first crafting table we decided to just give everybody access to a 3x3 crafting grid anywhere! (Far right button)

Note: All textures shown are still WIP and are subject to change

[Iyoforeayo]

Itemization Devlog #1

Written by Ajaxan

I imagine most people expected the other devlogs in some shape or form, so this one will hopefully hit on a newer topic that will excite y’all as much as it’s excited us.

We realized that we wanted to standardize Atlas more. And a large part of that was items. Which started originally as a way to determine a power/rarity and apply the appropriate color name to it so that players could at a glance judge the approximate rarity and power level of an item. But we decided to roll with the idea and expand on it. Taking a lot of inspiration from our favorite dungeon crawlers and RPGS.

Common Items


Common items will be everything in minecraft we don’t add (with a few exceptions). So basically 95% of items will be common. And yeah that’s it, not much more to add here. It’s a common item, of course there will be lots of them. If you’re not sure if it’s common ask yourself “If Ajax stole this item from me would I care?” If no, then it’s probably common.

Uncommon Items


Uncommon items are going to be a majority of the items you gain from added Atlas mechanics. A smeltery ingot and subsequent armor and weapons will all be considered uncommon items. This will also include things like cooked foods. Basically skill items and a few other more specific things will be considered uncommon items. Oh and basic quest rewards will also likely be uncommon items. Like that Naurulian Tunic everyone has? Uncommon item.

Rare Items


Rare items are where it starts to get interesting. Rare items will be fairly difficult to get. These are items that require near perfection in specific skills to produce or rare (hence the name) drops in dungeons. You can also get these items from difficult quests and decently long quest chains. We aim to have rare items drop or be created at a rate of 1-2 per day for our industrious folks out there. The powerlevel of these items will be similar to the current top tier smeltery armors and best quest rewards.

Legendary Items


Legendary items are going to be a mix and mash of old and new ideas. How many of you are old enough to remember Artifacts? Well (for now) this is the closest we will get to having them back. The items will be a higher power level than all current items on Atlas. However not as powerful as artifacts were. They’ll come with limits. As these items are so powerful no player can handle equipping more than 2 legendary items without suffering ill effects on their character. In this way we can make them more powerful and interesting without needing to worry as much about the power level. So how do you get legendary items? Only as the rarest drops from high level dungeons (like the trials) and from the longest most difficult quest lines. We expect it to take weeks between drops for individual players.

To Sum it all up
I know, common, uncommon, rare, legendary. How original. But hey, everyone is used to this model and we already have so many new words and ideas on Atlas that some familiarity will hopefully be a welcome sight. Also, please don’t tell me how you plan to get every legendary item in a single week. We are (hopefully) a bit more accustomed to the length some of our players will go to be the most powerful and have actually got the numbers right for drop rates. But anyway, please let me know if this is something that y’all are excited about because I know we are!

[Iyoforeayo]

Nations Devlog #1

Written by Ajaxan

If you’re curious why devlogs were released so late today blame this one. The discussion and creation of the system you’ll read about in a moment has taken up quite a bit of meeting time. Anyway without further ado, the first nations devlog!

This devlog will cover some new mechanics around towns as well as an all new addition to nations that has been floating around for quite some time. The idea of territory. While the use of claiming territory on Atlas has a rather unhappy past through the term “Biome Claims” we’ve managed to salvage the good and remove the bad. Read on to learn how we did it!

Town Claiming and Placing
We have an assortment of changes coming to Towns in how/where they are claimed as well as changes to the cost of land.

Minimum Place Distance: 350 blocks or ~20 chunks
This is being done to simplify our system by removing prox tax entirely. Everyone hates prox tax, so let’s make the system a bunch simpler.

Cheaper Claims
All plots will be significantly cheaper. Likely somewhere between 5-10x cheaper.

Capital Proximity Bonus: < 1600 blocks or 100 chunks away
We are introducing an idea of a Capital city that players can specify for a specific town in their nation. All towns close to the capital will pay ¼ the tax for those towns. 

Minimum town size: 9x9 = 81 chunks
Town from the get go will be increased in size from a basic 3x3 to a 9x9 by default. This is the minimum size of all towns. Of course because land is cheaper though the math works out well. 9 plots at the old price is going to be similar to 81 plots at the new price.

Maximum towns: 5 towns
We want towns to be meaningful and not used as outposts to gather a specific resource. Also, this will help out with some changes to Relics and such (in Nation Devlog #2!)

Territory
The Atlas Territory system is, at its core, a way to bring back combat to Atlas. However, bringing it back in a way that doesn’t allow forcing non-combat players into constant combat. Also, the goal is to bring in a new level of combat that doesn’t feel as high stakes as sieges but has more weight than random kills during a war or on an event island.

Territory as a mechanic will introduce benefits for having and holding territory. Ways to see and brag about the size of your empire, and ways for players to fight and contest territory through wars.

What benefits do territory give you?

Benefits
Having territory will have the following benefits (however this list is subject to some change in the future)

Prevents others claiming Towns
The rule above about the minimum claim distance will apply to Outposts. This means you can force new towns to be claimed further away from your own. Because we all need some personal space.

Passive Resource Generation
Territory will passively generate resources for you town. I’d put more words here but hopefully this is pretty self explanatory.

Prevent Block Drops
Other nations you are at war with can’t get block drops from anything in your territory. This rule may be extended to all towns other than allies in the future, but for now we haven’t had quite enough discussion on it. 

Big Dick Energy
Because you all need to know my empire is bigger than yours. And now I can prove it.

Outposts
Now some of you may be asking yourself “How do I claim territory?” Good question astute Atlas player. Territory on Atlas will be obtained through the use of outposts!

Placing Outposts
Outposts will be placed just like guard towers outside your towns and they will grant you territory control in a 5x5 square centered on the chunk the guard tower is in. However you can’t just place them anywhere, all outposts must be directly adjacent to your town land or outpost territory you already own. This way all your territory is an extension of your towns land.

Fighting Outposts
A time will come when you will be walking through Athera, see an ugly outpost belonging to PoopGuzzler420’s nation, and you will think to yourself “That thing needs to go”. So how do you destroy it? By declaring War on PoopGuzzler420’s nation of feces enthusiasts of course! Once a war is started the nations at war can assault and destroy each other's territory claims at will.

(Some further rules allowing for defenders to be alerted to attacks may be implemented but unlike sieges it will still be short notice, no more than an hour)

NOTE: Yes, along with this War PVP will have its restrictions loosened. Killing players multiple times will again become allowed to encourage more action during wars.

Visualizing
Since territory is pointless if you can’t see it or show it off, we will be making territory visible in a few different ways.

Action Bar
Like with Towns and Biomes currently you will be alerted when you enter someone's territory in the action bar.

Entry message
We plan to add the ability to set an entry message so you can further encourage people to come check out your town or gtfo.

Dynmap
Here’s an idea of what this will look like. Yes, both towns and territory will be visible:


And that’s all there is to see! Feel free to ask me some questions in discord, I’ll answer them if I see them. Also feel free to use the forums. Hope you guys are as excited about this system as we are. See you next month for more updates!

[Iyoforeayo]

New Nauru Devlog #1

Written by Iyoforeayo

New Nauru is a project that’s actually been in the works since before we even decided to go into a dev period. Some players might remember this lore post from a while ago that teased the rebuilding of the spawn city. Well in the time since then, the New Nauru project has grown into our largest, most ambitious build project on Atlas to date.

Here, you can see my dinky little sketch that we started from on the left - to the current progress our incredible build team has made since then on the right:

I’ll go more in depth about the build itself in future devlogs (since it’s still a WIP) - but for today’s log, I wanted to focus on some of the new story elements being introduced with New Nauru. 

The Story So Far...
Anyone familiar with the most recent RP events on the server, knows that the Naurulian Empire was accused of being behind the Evermoon Bombing of Qi’Shen. And while most Naurulian citizens didn’t believe these accusations to be true, the sanctions imposed on Nauru as a result of the trial began to slowly erode the Elder’s approval rating among their constituents. Many citizens began to believe that the Elders could have avoided the accusations levied against Nauru if they had simply sent a representative to the Feast of Evermoon in the first place, but were too preoccupied with overseeing the construction of New Nauru to bother.

Now, a year later, the city of New Nauru has been completed. And while the new city is significantly larger, the Obelisk continues to bring new refugees to its shores every day, continually pushing the limits of New Nauru’s ability to house them all. With the Naurulians still reeling from the international sanctions, and now facing an impending refugee crisis, 3 new political factions have begun to arise within New Nauru to oppose the Elders on various issues:

The Sons of Drakmar
With a reputation as a violent group of mercenaries, the Sons of Drakmar believe New Nauru’s neutrality in the ongoing War of Athera to be the city’s ultimate weakness. They believe the only path forward is to side with the Vantian Empire (who they predict will come out on top of the war) to provide a wartime economic boom to the city, as well as share in the Vantians’ spoils of conquest once the war has ended. The group is led by Drakmar Gorrian, a renowned war hero in his old world prior to arriving on Atlas, whose charismatic vision of New Nauru as a future military power has attracted a fair amount of political extremists to his cause. The Sons of Drakmar also run an underground fighting ring beneath the city’s tavern.

The Argent Coalition
A faction of citizens that opposes the ways in which the government spends their tax dollars, especially after the massive costs of New Nauru’s construction. The coalition believes an unjust amount of funds were spent on upper class areas of the city, leaving crowded residential areas underfunded, and that an independent watchdog body must be installed to monitor and make transparent the government’s spending in the future. Perhaps the group’s most extreme belief is that the Obelisk should be destroyed in order to stop the flow of refugees into the city, as the refugee crisis has been a major factor in the city’s historically-high taxes. The Argent Coalition operates out of the home of its wealthy leader, Olivia Holt.

The Magisters
A faction of concerned citizens who believe that the War of Athera, along with all other earthly issues, are unimportant compared to the looming opening of the Void. The Magisters believe that Nauru should lead the charge in focusing all their time, money and efforts into aiding Void-affected places like Devshire and the Grey Isles. They also support destroying the Obelisk, as they believe it to be worsening the rift tears. Led by the elder magi Pallis Sarensten, the Magisters are largely distrustful of Shen magic, which they believe carelessly invokes the rift - and so the group studies and pursues alternative forms of magic within the halls of their private library near the Arcane Tower of New Nauru.

New Nauru, New Questlines
When players rejoin the world of Atlas, the Elders of Nauru will be dealing with the fallout of a recent crime in the city - the heinous burning of a Shen church in the Residential District, which took the life of Olivia Holt’s son. Desperate to find the party responsible before they strike again, the Elders call upon the players to investigate the crime and infiltrate the ranks of the city’s political factions to track down the culprits. But gaining the factions’ trust won’t be such a simple task…

Beyond that, players will find lots of new characters and quests throughout the city of New Nauru, with lots of rewards to be gained (from unique items, to unlocking daily quests, to titles!)

[Iyoforeayo]

Itemization Devlog #2

Written by Wizardteepot

I come with a heavy heart to announce the death and destruction of one of my oldest projects: UniqueQuestRewards. This plugin acted as my gateway into the world of coding, and taught me a lot, but it is time to see it go...that said, on to bigger and better things, like AtlasLegendaryItems!

AtlasLegendaryItems is basically like UniqueQuestRewards 2.0. It’ll handle a lot of the unique usable items that we have dotted around Atlas, either as quest rewards, dungeon drops, or various other methods that we decide to award such items. Like I said before, UniqueQuestRewards was my first plugin ever, and with that, had a lot of bugs and inefficiencies. From the backend, rewriting this plugin into something new will allow me to better structure the plugin as a whole so it’s more organized and efficient. From the front end, it means fewer bugs and a lot more and cleaner items.

Categories of Items
With the changes in the plugin, we wanted to standardize the types of items players could get, breaking them down into four main categories.

Active Items
These are your typical weapons and tools that have specific abilities tied to them, such as Karag Sabre or the Grappling Hook from Unique Quest Rewards. Each item in this category will take the shape of an already usable tool and add in some kind of extra punch, whether it be buffing and healing you, or debuffing your enemies that you’re attacking...or something in-between.

Passive Items
Alternatively, passive items will be items that you can just leave in your inventory, and mostly forget about the fact they’re there! These items can grant you passive bonuses, such as slightly extra health or some positive potion effect for combat, or even make a certain type of mob completely ignore you for PvE! In addition, some of these items could activate upon reaching certain conditions, much like the Totem of Undying, which activates upon you taking lethal damage. These items will be great if you want some kind of extra benefit, but don’t want to worry about having to use each item to its fullest potential, especially during a hectic combat encounter.

On-Use Items
Much like active items, these items will be able to give you some kind of buff or bonus upon you physically activating them. Unlike active items, however, they won’t be weapons or tools, but rather little trinkets you can keep in your inventory until you need to use them. These items could be anything from summoning a pet or various allies to help you in combat, to marking a location that you can “recall” to, or teleport back to, after a short period of time.

Set Items
Within UniqueQuestRewards, these items would have been the various Dungeon Armors that have unique bonuses and effects if you have the entire set of them. Dungeon Armors are making a comeback with this plugin, and each dungeon will have a related Dungeon Armor comes the relaunch of the server, with many more planned for future.

Attunement
As you might remember, Ajaxan had mentioned in our last Itemization Devlog that “[Legendary Items] are so powerful no player can handle equipping more than 2 legendary items without suffering ill effects on their character.” Well, we had discussed this idea back and forth for a while, and we realized a few things. While we wanted to set a limit on the amount of legendary items that a player could effectively use at any given time, we would have to introduce a system that would be a hard limit on the items you could actually use. While yes, we initially had proposed the idea that players could wield more than two legendary items, but at great costs to themselves, we also know that people would be crazy enough to wield like five legendary items at any given time, and offset the massive downsides we might implement with our other systems on Atlas like Tannery/Smeltery armors or even Magic. Furthermore, we are always considering the “runaway train” effect, which is the idea that as people play more and more on the server, they can heavily outclass someone who just joined the server. Granted, we want to reward players for their time they put in, but not to the detriment of someone who feels like they wouldn’t be able to compete at all if they just joined the server on any given day, because they feel like they can never truly “catch up”.

Now, with all that said, we are introducing the Attunement system. This will allow players, while outside of combat, to open up a GUI (which the design of is still work in progress, unfortunately) and attune to an item type. For example, if a player chooses to attune to a Karag Sabre, they’ll be able to use any Karag Sabre available to them (not just the item they originally had at the time of attunement). This will open up the door for players to carry around Legendary Items with them wherever they go, and change the attunement they have before a large battle or dungeon, essentially allowing players to make different Legendary Item kits for different circumstances. However, it should be noted that while unattuned to a Legendary Item, it’s true powers will remain dormant for you, and might even harm you if you try using it, so be careful!

That all being said, currently the limit is set to being two items which you can attune to. We felt that this would be enough for players to test out some unique combinations of items, while still also being balanced enough that no combination of items is super over-powered. Furthermore, some more utility items added by the plugin (such as the Groundshaker Axe that destroyed all leaves in the chunk which it was used) won’t be deemed as Legendary Items, so they won’t fall victim to this system. This plugin will hopefully cover all the rarity types, to some degree, that Ajax talked about in our first Itemization Devlog.

And so much more!
With the rewriting and organization of this system, I can also do some really fancy things that will integrate into other elements of our server. The biggest one that I’m looking forward to is utilizing the Attribute API that Ajax made, which helps provide additional stats to armors and weapons in smeltery and tannery, to Legendary Items! Imagine a Karag Sabre that now gives you extra health while held, or perhaps extra armor! Imagine the Kairos Dungeon Set providing more movement speed, or Drakonfell Dungeon Set providing knockback resistance!

This is just one of the many things I can do with this new plugin, and I can’t wait to make some  more awesome content!

[Iyoforeayo]

Resource Pack Devlog #2

Written by Tyrriel

Last time we talked about the Atlas resource pack we talked about the new inventory and the new HUD (still WIP of course). This time around we are going to be tackling… drumroll please… custom blocks! Wait what? How? I know, I know you guys probably have a lot of questions, but thanks to a little bit of code magic we have the ability to add fully custom blocks to the game.

And now for your viewing pleasure here a few examples of said custom blocks:


And an example from a build you all may be familiar with:


Currently we do not have too many blocks to show off, but we are in the process of adding hundreds more! What’s better? The fact that (almost) all of these new custom blocks will be available to you to use and build with! The power of a resource pack amirite?

[Iyoforeayo]

Enchanting Devlog #1

Written by Tyrriel

We’ve always felt that the Enchanting system in Minecraft didn’t allow for player creativity or choice. Essentially there are just the best enchantments and you always want to go for those enchantments. This, as most of you know, clashed heavily with our design philosophy in placing emphasis on player choice. So we started looking for inspiration on enchanting systems, luckily we didn’t need to look too far. Another game made by the creators of Minecraft perfectly captured the player choice aspect of enchanting; Minecraft Dungeons. For those of you that are unaware of how enchanting works in MC Dungeons, essentially every item has between 1 and 3 enchantment “slots”. Each slot has a predetermined choice of 3 enchantments that can go in any one slot.

Here is our take on the system:


As demonstrated in the picture, this Diamond Sword has 4 enchantment slots, two of which are filled with enchantments (one of which is a custom enchantment). This is where we are going to “borrow” a bit from MC Dungeons. While the number of enchantment slots is determined by a new stat, Enchantability, every slot has exactly 3 possible enchantments that can go in any given slot. The possible enchantments are predetermined and cannot be changed whatsoever.

Now I know you guys have some questions/concerns so I’m going to address a few here:

Wouldn’t this make getting the armor/tool that you want (the perfect armor/tool) much harder?

Yes, yes it does. And in this context that is a good thing. We want more diversity in the items that are used by players.

Man losing the item due to durability loss is going to suck!

No worries friends, I have you covered there. Along with this Enchanting 2.0 rework armors/tools will no longer shatter when the durability reaches 0. Instead, the armor/tool piece will go into an “unusable” and “broken” state. I.e The item sticks around in your inventory and can be repaired but it cannot be used. This will be a standard feature across the board in Atlas.