Author Archive

Krakatoa

Posted in Development on August 12th, 2012 by Maikel – 5 Comments

Recently some new structures were added to the settlement content of OpenClonk. Together with the fact that there are no challenging scenarios with dynamic landscapes yet and that a settlement design contest was organized, I decided to create a scenario for this void. Krakatoa is a large and active volcano on which players have to construct and expand their settlement, the goal is to expand the settlement across the whole volcano. Moreover the player has to drain the volcano or find another way to its core, where gold can be found and should be mined.

A typical settlement consists of the usual production buildings for producing the necessary tools and mining explosives. Pumps are needed to drain the ever rising lava inside the volcano. These need a large and continuous power supply, provided by numerous wind mills combined with a steam engine. Opposed to Clonk Rage where the combination of wind mills and the power plant only led to frustration and the loss of all you fuel, in OpenClonk both work very well together and will get you though the annoying calms.

The scenario has been reviewed by our friends from clonkspot in their Let’s Play series, for which many thanks. The scenario can be played after downloading a recent development snapshot.

Settlement Development

Posted in Development on January 1st, 2012 by Maikel – 8 Comments

After a relative silence since the 2.1 release, progress on developing settlement content has increased on the recent openclonk meeting. The first multiplayer settlement rounds have been played successfully. The landscape of Gold Rush, known in CR as the classical Gold Mine, looks like this after completing the goal:

A network round of Gold Rush

The gold, located at the bottom, has been mined with dynamite and transported with a lorry. It can be sold at the flag, or processed at the foundry into gold bars which are more valuable. The foundry can also produce metal, which is very useful in Iron Peak, a scenario with lots of iron ore. The foundry at work in Iron Peak:

The foundry at work in Iron Peak

On this screenshot we also see the tool workshop, where items can be produced, and the sawmill:

The biggest changes are however not content related, but on content and production menus. Although the recently implemented drag&drop menus are not finished and may not even be the final implementation, they are a big improvement over the old menus. They are the reason that settlement may go into the direction of fun rather than frustration. The content menu is shown in the next screenshot:

With the content menu (open with E) the player can exchange contents between all containers behind the clonk, either by clicking the item or by dragging the item. Since the development snapshots are currently broken, this can only be tested if one is able to use our repository. But do feel free to share your opinion here or in the forum and stay tuned for more!