New blocks: Market and Research Center

In the past several weeks, I've been working on implementing two new blocks which I think are important for the multiplayer- and singleplayer-gameplay.

Like shown in the video, the market is used to trade resources. I planned to implement it for quite some time now but I really felt that it was missing when I tested the multiplayer about a month ago. It was annoying if you had for example much wood but no stone and you had to wait until more stone was produced. At the market, each material can be traded in for the one above and below (always at a ratio of 2:1).

The research center is used for two things: to unlock special blocks like the accelerator or the trigger and to unlock various upgrades. The research center currently offers three upgrades:

• Increase the speed of production (+10%-40%)
• Increase force and range of explosions (+10%-40% range, +20%-60% force)
• Increase block robustness (+10%-40%)

Each upgrade requires a specific level of the research center so you have to upgrade it too.

I think there isn't much more to say about the blocks. They are actually quite simple, nevertheless the research center was hard to implement since I didn't plan that the production speed and other values could be changed for each player. Therefore, I had to change some of the core systems of the game, which took some time.

The market and the research center are also the last two blocks I have planned to implement before I release the game. I will implement other blocks after the game is released.

With all blocks in the game, another huge milestone is reached. There are some more things to do like more game-modes, maps and singleplayer levels. Now that the core system of the game is finished, it should be rather easy to implement them so I hope it won't be that long until it is done. Besides changes to the game I will create more videos in the following weeks which will showcase the game better than the usual update videos I've done for almost a year now. For those who are wondering about the "behind the scenes" videos I made a survey about on this blog some time ago - I haven't forgotten them and they are comming.

However, that's not all - there will also be a playable demo of the game soon.