2024 was a pretty crazy year for Blokoto. But how much crazy? Welcome to the official 2024 rewind of Blokoto! Me, INKnight, will tell about everything that happened this year, so come with us into this development journey that almost made me really crazy!
Right in the beginning of the year
In the beginning of this year i rewrote the whole game system. Yes, it was almost everything. The Argila (modeling system) was remade to be something much more quickier and easier to keep. We were also prototyping a possible escape to be out of the browsers to go straight into a launcher/native hub of Blokoto, but it doesn’t went so far because it’s way more complicated to hold something like this unlike doing it right on the browser, but that’s not a discarded idea.
Save system
This year was notable for being the first year that already had the game with a save system, which was being developed since january. A system like this was always such a complicated thing, also passing by many changes until its release the way it is nowadays, being still very unstable and subject to pass by some migrations or data loss, but it’s working \o/
Public builds
In the building area, we had the first public builds where, unfortunately, many features went cut out to be implemented soon in the future (the filling tool), as well as many of them came to stay, like the layers system into the models. We implemented countless gizmos for moving and rotating models until we reached to what is currently there. Anyway, there were many and many code lines for being able to do something which was really pleasant for the players.
Design and appearance
It was a year marked by a lot of tests, many prototypes and concepts, mostly on the interface and graphic design area. There were many iterations until we got this current design, inspired by blueprints seen on architecture. I think this style composed by a background grid and way more vibrant colors is really a lot more interesting than the minimalist fashion, because despite it is less stylish and look like less “professional”, that’s a unique aesthetic that makes Blokoto both a fashion and different game.
Textures creator
Also during this year was projected and implemented the advanced textures creator, which allows to create beautiful textures inside the game in an easy way. It is possible to create many layers using textures that repeat and then join a lot of combinations for creating unique blocks. It was the result of months of protoype and learning.
Launcher and installer
We also created, and recreated, and then once more recreated the new game launcher, that now works very well and it’s way more stable than its beginning. It was one of the hardest things to implement this year because of its susceptibility for issues. Fortunately it works very nice, and we also have an installer in case of bugs in the future.
Name change
We’ve changed the name of Bricknix to Blokoto, but it was already detailed at out post Goodbye Bricknix, hello… Blokoto! After a while when looking at the name, i’m pretty sure that we made the correct decision when renaming the game.
Pre-alpha
After all of this, and many years of development, we launched our first pre-alpha on this website that you are viewing now. It allows to create and build maps, within the integration between the website and matchmaking server. From the first version until the current one, many features of prototyping were implemented (play mode in edit mode), save maps, models to your inventory and also put it for sale at the workshop.
Mechanix and course completion of INKnight
The Mechanix were prototyped for a while because i wanted to use them for my course completion final paper from university, but i gived up on this because it is actually really more complicated to create than it looks. At the end, i’ll present the Blokoto’s matchmaking system instead of Mechanix.And so, we are already at the end of year, where we already have the game running on this website. I want to thank to everyone who supported the game during this year, also to the staff members JooJ and MVDA, and mostly for you that is certainly wishful to play the final version. If it is God’s will, this year of 2025 will be the last year of pre-alpha to actually get into something like an alpha/beta.