As all longtime fans of the Clonk series know, our favorite character the clonk can be witty and nimble, though only if skillfully controlled. With the upcoming release we are aiming to make the clonk even more nimble. Moreover, the player can use various tools to construct different solutions to the same problem.

For example the rope bridge is now an object which can be used by the clonk. Before it was only available for scenario designers as a decorative object. The clonk can place both ends of the bridge at solid ground to form it. Then walk over it for as long as needed and then retract it again at either end of the bridge.

The temporary rope bridge is connected between an airship and solid ground.

Also the rope ladder has become more useful as you can now jump off the rope ladder with more strength, like the wall jump with solid materials. Using this the clonk can now jump from rope ladder to rope ladder, making it a fast way to traverse dangerous lakes for example. But also to perform mining activities as shown in the video.

Last but not least in this blog post there is a new feature for the lorry, which can now be tilted up to 55 degrees to dump its contents. While holding the lorry pressing the left mouse key tilts the lorry to the direction of the mouse cursor and if tilted more than 45 degrees its contents will start falling out. This feature can be useful for massive bombardments in combination with the airship. More situations will probably come to mind, for example setting up traps along a large cliff or just dumping the lorry’s contents into a mine.

The contents of the lorry can be dumped by tilting it.

Together with all the rope fine-tuning the scripts also have been partially optimized which has lead to a slight reduction of the lag of objects using the rope library. Please report any suggestions, bugs and excessive amounts of lag in the bugtracker while testing these new features using the snapshots.

Are you bored during the holiday season and need some fresh OpenClonk content? Just in time for Christmas, two player-made addon scenarios have been released.

Shîre

Warning: Both scenarios need the current preview version of OpenClonk 7.0, which you can get from the Nightly Build page.

The first scenario is a remake of Shîre, a classic adventure from the times of Clonk 4. Originally developed by Jan Gauczinski, a remake for OC has been built by Marky (Download Scenario + Download Adventure Library). The scenario includes all the dialogues and quests, converted music, individually painted skins for every character.

Save the XMas tree

The second is a much simpler, short defense scenario called Save the XMas Tree by Sven2. It’s roughly based on Fight for Gidl, but you defend a Christmas tree from several waves of attackers. Download here.

Happy holidays to all OpenClonk players and developers.

P.S.: If you’re an ancient Clonk Rage player, you may also want to look at the newly released Codename: Modern Combat R1.8.

Do you want to learn some German? Then, watch and listen to this let’s play video (embedded below) with some OC-developers commenting the alpha version of the upcoming 7.0 release, available as a development snapshot here. Feedback very appreciated!

If you do not understand German, you can instead marvel at the newly added textures and the new cotton plants. 🙂 Have fun!

Just recently the Open Clonk Milestone Project offered the opportunity to finally finish what has begun years ago.

We filled the gaps and finished the production chains that involve farming, harvesting plants and processing the crop. In this very modest approach we now have two plants that yield basic production materials. Other plants do offer material as well but the difference here is you can also use the seeds to plant new plants and enlarge your field.

Wheat

Wheat has been around for quite some time in the objects pack. Fully grown, it can be harvested using a sickle to get seeds. Those can either be sown or ground into flour in the windmill. The flour is then used to bake bread in the kitchen. Bread is the best option to regain life.

Cotton

We decided to not have ‘cotton’ look like what are you are used to from real life. Instead, we made something that hopefully looks interesting but behaves very different from other plants. The cotton plant will sprout its fruit that look like big balloons. If let undisturbed, the fruit will soon detach and fly off, drifting wherever the wind blows. At some point, the fruit pops open, spilling its contents. If you want to catch the price before that, you better get a sword or a bow and stop the fruit before it takes off. Cotton can also be sown or has to be processed using the loom to get cloth. Many objects formerly unbuildable are now available: the airship, the balloon, the windbag!

You got me excited, where can I see this?

Bugger! Scenario development has not caught up yet. All the objects will be included in the next release (hopefully early January 2016) but no scenarios really feature these. I will be working on this, I promise! But feel free to include these objects into any self-made scenarios. Use it either to aid the gameplay, adding a new variety of things to manage in a successful settlement or create scenario goals around it. Can you feed a starving city with your bread? Or help to bring forward the local cloth manufacturing?