We are approaching to the most festive time of the year, and for finishing one more development cycle, i’ve decided to make a rewind about everything that we made on this wonderful (and challenging) year of 2023.
The 2023 year was in fact the most challenging to me, after so many personal, mental and job challenges.
Group picture! By Callista
Before starting, i’d like to thank to everyone who gave some support with ideas, suggestions, bug reports, analysis, constructive criticism, and mostly, those who contributed financially with the game. It’s all because of you that i get a lot more willing to develop Bricknix!And for those who had the guts for testing both my patience and moderation too, i’m also glad of it! Now i can simply ban anyone with no regret e.e
Challenges and more challenges
I can easily be considered as a fullstack programmer, in other words, a duck developer: he does everything, but is not even expert in anything of what he do. That’s really ideal for Bricknix, because it still have so much to work on into projects that use different programming languages and frameworks.Getting every necessary knowledge to create a game is such a difficult task, which requires constant studying, and that’s practically what i have been doing the whole year indeed. I learned about many networking, meshing and spatial mathematics concepts, also improving my skills on the engine, design abilities, planning and social skills. Therewith, the game development turned into something way more smooth so far.
The game and its possibilities
It was during this year that a begun to develop the multiplayer part of game, that in my conception is by far the hardest of all. Not only for being something really complicated and requires such a lot of engine understanding and networking too, but it is something really long which demands the fully completion both of website and backend for ensuring a dedicated server running, which also needs to be finished by the way. For sure the thing which has the bigger congestion into the development, that was also preventing me to release new experimental builds, because everything must be totally online now, just like that crochet made by your grandma for every single surface in your house.
It’s so beautiful, grandma!
What is really missing now for developing this new step to finally gift you one more experimental version is the Kubernetes, for containerization of dedicated servers and the exposure of IP ports for each one, and then integrate it within the Backend to guarantee that it is allowed to host a new server if needed. Of course, the CI/CD for launching, phew!And was also during this year that i finally stablished an architecture for modeling system, allowing to be possible a save system and then a modeling one (which is still under development). Practically everything about the building is almost done, but it still has a lack of time for giving me a boost into development and then finish everything left.
The block creation system is 100% finished and working! By the way, you can even save your own created blocks along the map. It still needs for me to plan how their containerization works, and also ensure that they will be limited by each model, since the owned models can also afford to have custom blocks, which probably is the case there.
Just to know, the character controller was removed from these most recent versions. I didn’t make it in such a good way, and it used to turn the development into an annoying thing. So i’ve decided to start implementing it only after models and Block Behaviors, this way allowing me to create the best version ever seen of it.
Its older version was really weak, and looked like that character templates that you were used to see in tutorials… simply a mere coincidence.
The doll/guy/little man/character/skin/avatar from the older versions
The site of Bricknix
There are some buddies who translates “site” for “sítio” in portuguese, but it’s not my case…Whoever had the attempt to develop an enormous website from scratch certainly knows that keep modifying its CSS without any disturb for the whole website is such a mess.
I decided to use the Tailwind. Yeah, there is many people that hates it with all their might, and even wants to kill it, but i’m pretty well as #TeamTailwind, and i don’t give up from this tool, which already saved me many hours of life that i would be probably spending them using Bootstrap (blergh) or even raw CSS. Our time is too short and Bricknix already spends a lot of this.And the choice for a web framework was SvelteKit. I didn’t even think twice.
And what do we have on the website so far?
Well, you’re actually in the website! But there is some stuff that is still out of your field of view.Up to now, what i have been implementing on the website, and for consequence into backend, was the authentication system (login, register), map creation, main page of games, game page and now i’m developing the page for buying NixCoins. Of course, the whole layout is already done.It still has a lack of many stuff, but many of them already works well in the backend, theoretically. It’s just a matter of feeding the pages with informations on the data base. That being said, it not takes a lot until i finally release the website for contributors start testing it.
Can we already play or what?
This year is not only made by devlogs! It was the first year that we got a playable build with experimental features, and the real proof that the game do exists and is working really nice. Also it was the first year when i suffered from the famous imposter syndrome, that is something really ordinary and frequent among the programmers at certain time. The build had a good reception, and many of the testers recorded videos showing how does it works, that is something i’ll cherish in my heart.
Zack Eight, Cupcake Shiny and TioNostal
Dedicated section to thank the staff
I’m really glad for your volunteer and for being part of the project, and as always giving aid with the server whenever is needed. Thanks to our team we have a great and healthy community nowadays!I would never carry on this community without you guys. Thanks to Nora, JooJ, MVDA, Speedy, HDB and Baronez! Each one of you also have my cherish.
Where did we reached and the future
Finally we are enclosing one more year of our lives, and even by the fact it may be the most challenger year for me, it was the better, because i got better as a person and professional in many ways, and also made friendships with many cool people. The year of 2024 will be probably full of surprises during this project, and probably that’s the year we could have our first closed alpha!Thank you very much for all folks! And let it come many more years!