OpenClonk 8 released
It took us more than two years, but waiting is over! OpenClonk 8.0 has arrived and we are of course intending to put out new releases much sooner from now on. Promised!
Unfortunately, we have been told that the macOS build does not work. However, we have no developers with a Mac who could fix the issue. If you’re a player on macOS, you can get the previous release from here. If you’re a developer on macOS, we’d be happy to receive a fix via the forums or as a pull request on GitHub.
There have been over 2’500 commits (changes) since the last release! Apart from many small improvements and lots of bug fixes, this release includes many major new features.
New Editor
New editor main interface
Clonk has always strived from its community-driven content, and we just made scenario creation a lot easier! Sven2 rewrote the scenario editor mode from scratch to allow easier scenario creation. Now in addition to drawing maps, you can also place switches and doors, dialogs and triggers, set starting options, and much more. You can create melees, parkours and even small adventures using a simple point-and-click-interface.
You can also access the editor directly from the main menu, so give it a try! For more information, see the previous blog post: The New Editor and Twitch Stream editor demo.
Improved Networking
OpenClonk 8 should allow hosting internet games with zero router- or firewall configuration. We achieved this by adding support for IPv6 and implementing UDP hole punching. In a future blog post, we will describe the networking changes in more detail.
If you had difficulties playing OpenClonk over the internet before, be sure to try again with OpenClonk 8!
New Scenarios
I am rich!: A competetive gold mine round, where the richest player after a certain playing time wins.
Aerobatics: A rather chaotic parkour, where you sky island hopping skills are put to the test.
Melting Castle: A team melee where you have to defend an ice castle, but beware: it melts!
King of the Hill: Defend the ruby mine hidden inside the hill from enemy AI waves.
Horrid Highway: A settlement world in which the players need to create a rail road in the skies, while protecting against heavy meteor rain. This screenshot also shows some work in progress which will be in the 9.0 release, namely cable cars.
Rapid Refining: A laid-back settlement round where you need to set up a large oil-pumping operation.
Hot Ice: While not entirely new, Hot Ice now features games with multiple rounds as well as two additional visual themes. The top screenshot shows the “Eci Toh” underground theme. On the bottom, there is “Miami Ice” which also features special music by K-Pone.
Script Improvements
- New proplist prototype and effect syntax. Effects are “dynamic timers with properties that can be attached to objects”. The new syntax makes working with them easier.
- Script-defined dynamic fragment shaders allow special effects in scenarios.
- Regular expression-based functions for matching, splitting, and replacing strings allow advanced text processing from scripts.
- Additional warnings that can be disabled with a directive.
Future Work
Not everything we’ve worked on in the two years since OpenClonk 7 made it into this release. Here’s a preview of stuff we hope to finish for OpenClonk 9:
- Larry is a platform for sharing player-made mods like scenarios and objects. In contrast to previous such websites for Clonk, like CCAN, Larry will be fully integrated into OpenClonk. Finding new scenarios will be possible from within the game.
- OpenClonk can currently only be played with mouse and keyboard. While this decision simplified controls compared to previous Clonk titles, we lost split-screen play in the process. OpenClonk 8 already re-introduces experimental gamepad support, which however is still too limited for most scenarios. We hope to fix this and support proper split-screen play again in the future.
- Cable cars will be added soon to the main content of OpenClonk and will mainly serve as an automated transportation system for resources between producers, mines and other structures. Our hope is that this will make settling more interesting and setting up automated production lines more fun!
Yay!
Finally! Awesome work everybody!
Congratulations on 8.0! I’m excited to port and play!
This editor update is on the same lvl as the high-res and FoW-update.
Pls focus on splitscreen and gamepad – couch co-op 4tw
you rocks, guys!
This is one of my favorite video games. Thank you all so much for making it! Looking forward to more OpenClonk in the future.
Hey nice job on 8.0. It was so much fun playing the added content. I have been a huge fan of the whole clonk series. I felt it doesn’t get the recognition it deserves. On the web you can hardly find much information or topics on the game. If you want to add a bigger fan base put the game on steam so many people can experience the clonk series.
As someone silently watching this project for years: Keep up the good work. You’re awesome!