New Passive Creature Sneak Peek + Other Announcements!

Hello 4D Supporters and 4D HyperSupporters!

In the poll I created a while back, the 4D HyperSupporters chose lighting improvements over the addition of a new passive creature and controller support.

After I created that poll, I made sure to let everyone know that the losing options would still eventually be added to the game, and since so many of you wanted me to add a passive creature, that's one of the many things that will be featured in the next update!

I don't have an exact release date for the next update to 4D Miner, but I can tell you that it will probably be very soon.

I usually prefer to work on the more technical aspects of the game before adding any major features, which makes development much easier in the long run. One of my patrons, Marco Brunacci, made the top comment on the development poll, and cited this same philosophy as a good reason to add lighting to the game before working on anything else.

Even so, I feel a little disappointed when I take this approach to development because it means I don't have anything tangible to show off to you until I'm almost ready to release the update.

The majority of the time that I've worked on this update so far has been spent dealing with nasty bugs and rewriting portions of the code in order to make future development easier and to improve the game's overall polish.

Bug Fixes & Polish

I was finally able to fix the issue with the missing clouds, which was caused by my rewrite of a large portion of the graphics code from the previous update. This made the model for the 4D glasses invisible as well.

I spent a good amount of time polishing the player's in-game movement. I fixed a major bug that caused the game to crash when the player moves too quickly. The player's horizontal acceleration is normalized now, which means you don't move faster when walking diagonally. Sprinting is no longer broken, and the walk cycle has a much nicer animation for equipped items.

I ended up rewriting a large portion of the game's physics code. The movement physics are much more realistic now, but you probably won't notice that much of a difference. Before the physics improvements, I had to write custom physics code for each new entity that I added to the game (e.g. hyperspiders). Now there's a generalized system for handling physics for entity hitboxes, which made the development of the new passive creature much simpler.

New Equipment Slot

Ok, now I'll stop beating around the bush and actually address some of the new features you're all probably waiting to hear about.

Firstly, I've finally added the most requested feature, which is an equipment slot for the 4D glasses! You can actually put other items in this equipment slot as well, but as of the writing of this post, you can't actually perform any actions with items while they are in this slot.

It's still a useful feature for the compass and 4D glasses because it allows you to use them while working with tools or placing blocks.

This update actually has a major overhaul for the 4D glasses. Many of the new features, including the new equipment slot, were designed around the 4D glasses in some capacity.

Special Colors for 4D Glasses

Another new feature pertaining to the 4D glasses allows you to tell which side of your 3D slice of the world (aka hyperplane) different objects are on. Objects on the positive side of your hyperplane will be colored more cyan the farther away they are from it, and objects on the negative side of your hyperplane will be colored magenta in the same way. You can see examples of this in some of the images attached to this post.

If you're looking at an object with a pair of 4D glasses and it appears magenta, you can rotate your hyperplane towards it by scrolling down, and if an object appears cyan, you can rotate towards it by scrolling up.

New Crafting Recipe for 4D Glasses

The crafting recipe for 4D glasses is completely different in this update. The old recipe didn't really make any sense because it used iron bars and deadly bars. The 4D glasses were designed to look like those popular paper/cardboard 3D glasses, so crafting them with metal didn't really make much sense.

Now you need to collect three different colored lenses, along with two blocks of midnight wood, in order to make the 4D glasses. The midnight wood was included in the recipe because wood is the only thing currently in the game that's somewhat related to paper. I chose midnight wood over regular wood because there's no other use for it right now.

I'll probably add paper to the game at some point, but I don't see any good reason to do so right now if it will only be used in one recipe. The recipe can always be changed later.

You're probably wondering about the lenses for the new crafting recipe. These different-colored lenses are dropped by the new creature that I've added to the game!

New Passive Mob

4D Miner now has its first passive mob - Butterflies!

I got the idea to add butterflies to 4D Miner when I was walking by myself outside - something I don't do nearly enough - and I saw a neat-looking butterfly fluttering around in a seemingly sporadic way.

Of course, butterflies usually know exactly where they're going, but something about the way they move seems completely random. I thought this would be a perfect fit for 4D Miner because they would create a bunch of colorful shapes as they randomly flutter across your 3D slice of the world.

There are currently four different butterfly types: red, green, blue, and a rare cyan/magenta variant.

The first three types of butterflies will drop the corresponding colored lenses when killed. You need to collect all three - red, green, and blue - in order to craft a pair of 4D glasses.

It's much more difficult to make a pair of 4D glasses now, which I think is an improvement. Chasing down three different butterfly types can be very challenging with their quick and random movements, especially since you can't use 4D glasses to find them until after you've already collected all three lens types.

You can significantly speed up the collection process if you're able to kill one of the special cyan and magenta butterflies, which are much less common than the other three variants. These special butterflies will drop one of each lens type, which means you can make your first pair of glasses without having to kill any more innocent butterflies!

here's a video showing these guys in action: https://youtu.be/_a0I5-lkQQw 

New Biome

This update will feature an entirely new biome!

I don't have anything you show off yet, but this biome will introduce new block types to the game, which are sorely needed.

I'm planning on adding plants to this new biome, such as flowers and bushes. You will be able to walk through these blocks, just like some of the plants in Minecraft. If flowers are added, I think they will go great alongside the butterflies.

Deadly Axe

If you've ever looked through the game files, you might have noticed that there are some tools that haven't been fully implemented.

I'm considering finally adding iron axes and deadly axes.

Gathering resources is a huge obstacle when it comes to building 4D structures because they require so many blocks. I think the iron and deadly axes might be the perfect solution to this problem.

The axes would be able to break multiple blocks at the same time, which would allow you to collect resources several times faster.

I might also have to introduce some kind of magnetic tool to help you collect all of these blocks after you break them. Maybe a "deadly magnet" or something?

Feel free to leave your own suggestions, since a lot of this stuff is still up in the air. I highly value all of your feedback and suggestions!

I wouldn't be able to do this without you, so thank you all so much for continuing to support this project!

Best wishes,

Mashpoe