Mashpoe

Play the Patreon-Exclusive 4D Miner Builds!

4D Miner Devlog #4 and Vertical Slabs Poll

Hey everyone,

It's been a while, but the fourth 4D Miner devlog, which covers the biggest changes to 4D Miner since the previous devlog, has finally been released! You can watch it on YouTube right now: https://youtu.be/f4CMKoVgqOM

While I encourage all patrons to visit the official 4D Miner Discord server to see most of the Patreon-exclusive content, Patreon is still a great place for patrons to provide feedback. You can always feel free to message me directly on this platform if you have any questions for feedback.

As most of you probably know, in the previous poll, which was released alongside the third 4D Miner devlog, you chose to add water to the game. I hope I did not disappoint with the result. I am personally very proud of how it turned out. I ended up adding both flowing water AND flowing lava. The way the liquids are implemented is pretty complicated, but I felt that it was necessary in order to fit in with the way the rest of the game looks. As a result, there are still some issues with the liquids, but I will continue fixing them over time. It is now obvious to me why other games don't implement liquids this way, ignoring the extra difficulty of making them 4D, which did actually make it considerably harder to do.

4D Miner's development has primarily been focused on major changes for the past two years, which has understandably made things feel a lot slower. I don't think most of you want another major update right now, so I will be focusing on many smaller features instead of a few big ones.

This poll is obviously about vertical slabs. These would be much easier to implement than water, but they would still have a profound impact on the game, and implementing vertical slabs in a game like 4D Miner is not without its challenges. A lot of the collision and camera-adjusting code would have to be rewritten, but that shouldn't be too difficult, since I recently rewrote all of that code after I rewrote entity coordinates and added regular slabs.

Another important concern with vertical slabs is the amount of block ID's they would require. Every block in 4D Miner currently takes up one byte of memory when in a loaded chunk (ignoring mesh data). Top and bottom slabs each have their own unique block ID's, but two block ID's per slab type isn't too big of a deal. Using only one byte to store each block means that the amount of memory each chunk requires is relatively low, but it also means that there are only 256 possible block ID's, including air and some other special block types that are only used internally.

There are currently exactly 100 block ID's in use, which is less than half of the total possible number of block ID's the game can currently handle. The reason vertical slabs are an issue here is that there are 6 possible orientations for a vertical slab in 4D, which would bring the total number of block ID's per slab type from 2 to 8.

With 13 different slab varieties currently in the game, adding vertical slabs would mean using up 78 of our 156 remaining block ID's, which is exactly half of them. Every additional slab type added to the game in the future would add 8 more block ID's, which means we would run out pretty quick.

Once we run out of ID's, the size of each block in memory would likely have to be doubled to two bytes. This would result in 65,536 possible block ID's, but the block data for each chunk would take up twice as much memory, which would most certainly decrease performance.

You could argue that we are going to reach the limit of 256 possible block ID's anyway, so we might as well deal with the problem now, but some people might not want to risk making the game slower right now.

The decision is up to you. If you choose not to allow for vertical slabs, that doesn't mean they will never be added, but it will probably mean that I won't consider it again until we reach the limit of 256 possible block ID's.

Thanks again for all of your continued support and patience. I will be focused on adding a lot more tangible features for a while, so feel free to voice your opinions about small-ish features here or on the Discord server.

Seasons or Water?

Hey everyone!

My third devlog on YouTube is out right now, and it covers all of the multiplayer features that were released a while ago, as well as some additional features planned for the future. I was planning on making the video much sooner, but I have been facing some serious delays. Fortunately, I am now able to give 4D Miner my full attention.

Here is a link to the current Patreon-exclusive build of the game: https://mashpoe.itch.io/4d-miner-demo/patreon-access

Now that the devlog is out, I want to implement some major changes to the game. Since multiplayer is working, I believe the most difficult days of 4D Miner's development are behind us, and I feel like I am ready to tackle some other big features.

Two of the biggest features that I want to add are Seasons and Water.

As usual with indie development, I have no idea how long it will take to implement these features, but I want to put both of them in the game eventually. This poll will decide which of these two features will be added to 4D Miner first!

Seasons

Seasons are something that I think will set 4D Miner apart from many other sandbox games such as Minecraft. Seasons would work differently depending on the biome, and some biomes will barely change at all, such as the desert biome, and tropical biomes if they are added.

I don't know how seasons would work in the midnight biome, but one idea I had was to invert them, so you can travel to a different biome if you don't want to wait an entire in-game year for certain seasonal benefits.

Seasons would allow for plants to grow, and would make farming possible. In the summer, trees will all be full of leaves. In the fall, you will be able to harvest seeds from plants, including trees. In the winter, there won't be any leaves on most trees, and snow will cover the ground in many biomes. In the spring, trees will grow leaves again, and some of them may even have flowers.

Farming would be 100% season based, but with my idea for the midnight biome, you would still be able to harvest crops twice in an in-game year. The in-game year would obviously be much shorter than a year in real life.

Water

Water probably wouldn't initially be as feature-rich as seasons, but it would still add a lot to the game. Water mechanics like Terraria's probably wouldn't be feasible, since 4D fluid mechanics would likely bring even the best gaming PC to its knees.

Something more akin to Minecraft's water mechanics could be possible, but it might be necessary to add a limit to how much water can flow from a single source. Initially, water would probably behave in a very simple manner, but over time it could become more complex as I figure out more optimizations.

Not only would water make your 4D worlds look much more interesting, it would also add a bit more difficulty to the game, since it would introduce a new way to die (drowning).

Water could also introduce the possibility for new creatures, such as jellyfish, sharks, and crabs.

I can't know all of the technical issues I will run into while I'm working on these features, so it's impossible for me to know how long it will take to add them to the game. Whatever is decided by this poll might not immediately have all of the features that I mentioned, or be ready in time for the next devlog, but over time more and more content will be added.

Both of these features will take time to implement, which is why I can't do them both at the same time. Whatever you decide for me to add first, I will do my best to make sure it works with the game as well as possible, and remember, if your choice doesn't win the poll, I will still add it eventually, since I really want to put both of these features into 4D Miner!

Thank you so much for your patience and support. None of this would be possible without you, and I really hope I can deliver on your expectations as much as possible!

PS - I have attached a 4k version of the thumbnail as a Patreon-exclusive background.

4D Miner Server Hosting Is Now Available to All 4D HyperSupporters

Hello everyone,

After careful consideration, I have decided not to place 4D Miner server builds in a separate Patreon tier. This means that all 4D HyperSupporters now have the ability to host their own 4D Miner Multiplayer Servers!

Here's the link where you can download the latest version of 4D Miner and the 4D Miner server: https://mashpoe.itch.io/4d-miner-demo/patreon-access

Here is a guide written by Redjard in the 4D Miner Discord server for hosting your own 4D Miner Multiplayer Server: https://discord.com/channels/954156776671043625/1116442140373962934 

There is also a new build of 4D Miner on itch.io, with several bug fixes, and an updated Patron list in the credits! It looks like I finally have a solution to the credits bug, mostly thanks to Tr1Ngle (the person behind most of the 4D Miner modding utilities). The credits bug should be finally patched in the next build, and I will update the patron list once again before releasing it.

Thank you all so much for your support. Multiplayer is here and quickly receiving updates thanks to you! Be on the lookout for a video on my YouTube channel later this month/early next month, where all of your names will be featured!

4D Miner Multiplayer Is Finally Here!

Hello everyone,

Multiplayer has finally been released to all 4D HyperSupporters!

If you're a HyperSupporter, you can click the link below to play online with your fellow patrons at 4d4t.org, the oldest anarchy server in 4D Miner!

https://mashpoe.itch.io/4d-miner-demo/patreon-access

Currently, if you're a Patron, you can only join multiplayer servers, but I plan on adding a new Patreon tier in a few days that will provide access to all of the latest server builds. I will make another post here as soon as the server builds are available!

Alongside multiplayer, there are a few cool new features. One of the most notable additions is a new item called the Alidade, which allows you to save a specific world slice and return to it later. You can also use the alidade to let other players join your 3D world slice!

I plan on uploading a video to my YouTube channel later this month to showcase multiplayer and all of the other new features. Afterwards, you can all expect to see regular updates to the game with plenty of new features!

I will also probably be posting on this site more frequently now that I have most of the difficult stuff out of the way.

If you haven't already, I highly recommend joining the official 4D Miner Discord server, where patrons get exclusive access to certain channels, and announcements are posted much more regularly!

Multiplayer has taken way longer than expected, but I have been working hard at it, and I am honestly very happy with the result.

Thank you all so much for your patience and support. None of this would be possible without you!

Compass Design Poll

Hello HyperSupporters!

4D Miner devlogs haven't been coming as quickly lately because I'm currently implementing multiplayer, which requires a massive overhaul.

As I was fixing some bugs, I accidentally messed up some of the compass code and changed the way it looked. I thought the messed up compass actually looked cooler than the original design, so I decided now would be a good time do do a poll since I don't really have anything tangible to show off right now.

Here are the choices:

1. Light compass hyperplane, which is the original design.

2. Dark compass hyperplane, which is an updated design based on a programming error, which I did end up fixing.

There isn't a way for me to include images directly in the poll description, but I have attached two files showing both of the compass designs.


I hope you all enjoy participating in this poll. I know this poll isn't about a major feature, but I this is about all I can do until I have finished implementing basic multiplayer.

If you have any ideas for future polls, or want to make suggestions and discuss them with other patrons, I highly recommend joining the Discord server if you haven't already. If you connect your Discord account to your Patreon account, you will have access to the patron-exclusive channels!

As always, I really appreciate all of your support. 4D Miner would be dead in the water without you, so thank you all so much for sticking around and keeping it going!

4D Miner 0.1.4.0 Update + Important Reminders

Hello 4D HyperSupporters!

This post will be a lot shorter than usual because I've already finished making the devlog for this update, which covers almost everything.

You can watch the new devlog here: https://youtu.be/vUg6qzU-h88

Here is the link to Patreon-exclusive itch.io downloads, where you can access all of the new content from this update: https://mashpoe.itch.io/4d-miner-demo/patreon-access

All of the content for this update has already been released in the Patreon-exclusive snapshots over the course of the last couple of months.

One of the reasons I wanted to make this post is because lately, I've mainly been interacting with Patrons via the Patreon-exclusive channels in the 4D Miner Discord server, and I wanted to remind everyone how to access them.

I've been announcing all of the snapshots through Discord, and I also regularly share progress videos and screenshots in the #4d-hypersupporters channel.

Here is the link to the 4D Miner Discord: https://discord.gg/pMtZa6AVy2

The Patreon-exclusive channels in the 4D Miner Discord are #4d-supporters and #4d-hypersupporters.

Make sure your Patreon account is connected to your Discord account. Here is a guide that explains how: https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/212052266-How-do-I-connect-Discord-to-Patreon-Patron-

Thank you all so much!

Mashpoe

Play All of the Latest Features in the New 4D Miner Snapshot Build!

Hello HyperSupporters!

In my previous post, I mentioned how I sometimes feel bummed out when I don't have enough "flashy content" to show off to all of you.

I recently realized a lot of that is my fault.

On one hand, I do have to spend a lot of time working on technical stuff (and a lot of that has really payed off), but on the other hand, I am also frequently adding cool stuff to the game as I go, but I don't make it accessible as early as I probably should.

I seem to have it in my head that I can't release any new updates to the game unless there's enough new content, and "enough" seems to be very arbitrary and inconsistent for me.

I've recently had a lot more fun working on 4D Miner after I started frequently posting screenshots and videos of new features I'm working on in the #4d-hypersupporters channel on the 4D Miner Discord server.

I seem to get a lot more encouraging feedback when I show off more stuff as I'm working on the game, even when it's just little things.

4D Miner Snapshots

Not only have I gotten tons of helpful and encouraging feedback from sharing more clips and screenshots to my patrons, but I also feel like there is more excitement around all of these new features as a result.

In fact, when I started sharing videos and screenshots of these new features, some of you asked if I could make them available in some kind of "snapshot" release, kind of like what Mojang does before they release a new update to Minecraft.

"Snapshots" are basically mini updates that allow players to have access to newer features before the next full update is released.

You can play all of the latest features in 4D Miner right now on itch.io:

https://mashpoe.itch.io/4d-miner-demo/patreon-access

There are now two separate downloads: one for the latest "larger" update, and one for the latest snapshot. The snapshot build will have all of the most-recent features.

Snapshots are typically less stable than the larger updates, which means they are generally going to be much more buggy. Snapshots are much less polished than regular updates, and any feature that's included in a snapshot build is not guaranteed to be a part of the final update.

That being said, it's a lot easier to fix an issue with the game while it is still being worked on. When a new feature is included in a snapshot build, it will get a lot more attention than if it were only released in a larger update with a ton of other new features. Snapshots basically allow changes to the game to get the attention they need, which will allow you to give useful feedback more quickly.

I don't know how this idea never crossed my mind. I feel like the overwhelming majority of you will agree that more frequent snapshot releases are better than exclusively posting larger updates less frequently.

Making snapshot releases is better for everyone in my opinion. Before I released the previous update, it became a chore to remember all of the random improvements that I added. If I can't even remember all of the major changes in each update, how can I make sure that all of these features get the attention they need?

I've made a few incremental progress posts here, but I feel like your feedback would be a lot more helpful if you actually had the ability to experience all of the progress first-hand.

What's New

The majority of the new features I brought up in my previous post are in the latest snapshot build. This includes butterflies, colored lenses, and the new crafting recipe for the 4D glasses.

There are also a ton of new features in the snapshot that haven't even been mentioned until now!

I'll briefly go over the butterflies here, but you can find more info about them in my previous post.

Butterflies

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!

Plants

Plants have been requested several times, and I think they are necessary to make the 4D terrain look more alive.

The new plants are a lot like dead bushes or tall grass in Minecraft.

They are actually the first transparent blocks to be added to 4D Miner. You can walk through them, and you can destroy them without any tools.

Bushes and Midnight Bushes drop sticks when destroyed without a tool, just like tree leaves.

There are currently seven types of plants (besides the trees that have always been in the game), and three of them (cactus, snowy bush, and midnight bush) are biome-specific.

Because the new plants are transparent blocks, I had to make some modifications to the game's lighting system, but I went a little overboard and ended up with another massive lighting overhaul, which I will explain more about in this post.

New Biomes

Two new biomes are now available in the most-recent snapshot!

These new biomes have their own unique blocks, and one of them introduces a highly sought-after crafting recipe to the game!

Not all biomes will generate next to each other. For example, a cold biome will never generate right next to a desert.

Desert Biome

The desert is the most flat out of all of the game's biomes.

There are no trees, but there are cacti.

You can also find bushes and flowers in the desert, but they are less common.

The new desert biome introduces sand, sandstone, and cactus blocks to 4D Miner!

Sand can be crafted into a very useful block, which I will get to after I go over the next biome.

Snow Biome

The snow biome is similar to the desert biome, ignoring the climate difference. It's a snowy tundra, also without trees. I will definitely add a snow biome with trees soon though!

The new snow biome introduces snow (unsurprisingly), ice, and snowy bush blocks to the game!

Glass

Glass is a must-have for these types of sandbox games.

You can craft it with one block of sand and one block of wood, because wood can be used to cook things I guess, and there's no cooking mechanic in the game yet, so it's the best I can do for now.

Equipable Items

This might be the most requested feature, and I've finally added it. You can now have two items equipped at a time!

Currently, this slot is only really useful for 4D Glasses and the Compass.

Colored Lights and Shadows

The lighting has been improved so much further in this update. A lot of the changes were built on top of the lighting features from the previous update, however.

4D Miner already kind of had shadows when I introduced ambient occlusion, but now all non-transparent blocks can cast vertical shadows.

The new shadows make the world a lot more immersive. Caves are now darker, and trees actually give shade. The new shadows, combined with the smooth lighting from the previous update, make the game look SO much better.

Since I added shadows, I thought I might as well add colored lights as well. Certain blocks now glow different colors.

Flowers and midnight bushes, for example, now each glow their own color, which can look really neat when you see them in the shadow of a tree.

Deadly ore and lava also glow when colored lights are enabled. This makes it much easier to locate deadly ore, because even if the ore itself isn't in your 3D slice of the world, you might still be able to see its glow effect.

The smooth lighting from the previous update made the game slower, so I made it optional. I also made the new shadows and colored lights optional, but I am working on some optimizations to make this less of an issue.

Optimizations

Optimizing a game like 4D Miner is no simple task. Most of the lag comes from generating chunk meshes. 3D games like Minecraft only have to process a fraction of the data that 4D Miner needs to generate a 4D mesh.

The game is already heavily optimized for what it is, but I was still able to make a few huge improvements.

The main performance improvement is with 4D Miner's multithreading performance. Now chunks and their meshes are less likely to overload the CPU and cause the game to lag, but this does come at a cost.

Chunks and their meshes now generate much more slowly, which means you will probably be able to play at higher render distances with max graphical settings without your framerate dropping nearly as much, but game will take longer to update the world as you scroll, so you will likely encounter many visual artifacts while chunks are still regenerating their meshes.

Overall, I still think this is a massive improvement, since it significantly reduces the lag. I have a pretty good PC, and I can now play at max render distance with all of the lighting features enabled, and the framerate will still be reasonable. This was not possible up until very recently.

Please give the latest snapshot a try and see if it runs any better than previous versions of the game!

Feel free to leave constructive feedback on the latest snapshot, but keep in mind that shapshot builds are not meant to be as polished or as stable as normal releases, so you can expect a multitude of bugs.

Thank you all so much for continuing to believe in and support this project! Your humbling support is what makes all of this possible!

Mashpoe

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

The First 4D Miner Early Access Update Is Now Available!

Hello 4D HyperSupporters!

You all now have exclusive access to a newly-updated version of 4D Miner through itch.io!

Here is the link to the official download: https://mashpoe.itch.io/4d-miner-demo/patreon-access

Itch.io allows content to be made available exclusively to Patreon supporters. If you don't already have your Patreon account connected to an account on itch.io, the link above should walk you through the setup process.

In an earlier post, I asked all of you what I should add to the game next, and you chose improved lighting.

One of the major downsides of 4D game development is that certain things are much more computationally expensive, and lighting is a very unfortunate example of this. Lighting calculations are already expensive enough in 3D, and adding an additional dimension introduces a whole new order of complexity.

This meant that I needed to implement a bunch of optimizations in order to make the game playable after introducing ambient occlusion, which is the technique I used to improve the game's lighting.

If you haven't already seen my Patreon post about 4D Miner's new lighting system, I highly recommend you check that out. It has a link to a cool video showing off how "4D shadows" work with the new lighting!

Even with the optimizations, the game runs slower when "smooth lighting" is enabled, so I added an option in the settings menu to turn it off. Since the optimizations took longer to implement than I expected, I decided to add some other features to make this into a better update. This is good news to players with slower computers, who might not otherwise be able to enjoy this update!

I was able to add two highly requested features: world seeds, and flat worlds!

Each time you create a new world, a random seed will be generated, which means the world you create will be completely unique! You can also manually enter your own seeds, and you will always get the same world if you enter the same exact seed in the world creation menu.

Flat worlds are just like superflat worlds in Minecraft. Sadly, there is no "creative mode" in the game yet, and you spawn in without any items, so there isn't really a way to build anything in a flat world without editing your save file.

There are two easy ways to do this. You can manually edit the players.json file in the folder for your flat world, or you can replace the players.json file with a copy of one from another world.

In the future, before a "creative mode" is added to the game, I will probably either make the player spawn with a bunch of items in flat worlds, or make a "bonus chest" generate near the player's spawn point in flat worlds.

The final feature included in this update pertains to the game's credits. Now, all of the 4D HyperSupporters and 4D Supporters are listed in the credits of the game, and the HyperSupporters' names are displayed with some fancy colors!

In addition to all of the features I mentioned, this update also includes various bug fixes. The game will no longer crash if you spam the "T" key, various instances of the game crashing when minimized are now fixed, and I was able to make the view bobbing less jittery.

I also added new bugs to the game! The biggest one I currently know about is that clouds are no longer visible. I haven't been able to identify the cause yet, but I decided not to let it delay the release of this update.

I plan on releasing a new Patreon-exclusive update at least once a month. When new updates are released to patrons, previous updates will become available in the demo on Steam.

Since a lot of you wanted me to add a passive mob to the game, that's what I'll work on next. I already have a great idea for a new mob that I think will integrate nicely with the rest of the game!

Remember to check out the event planned on the 4D Miner Discord server for a live Q&A session! More info can be found in the #announcements channel.

For the next several days, I will be working on a devlog video, along with another video that features a bunch of content from the Discord server, so now is your last chance to submit content to the #4d-creation-compilation channel!

I hope you will all enjoy this new update along with some of the other content that I have posted on Patreon!

Thank you all so much for your support!

Mashpoe

4D Miner Progress Update + New Concept Art

Hello everyone!

The next update to 4D Miner, which will be released on itch.io, is coming along a bit more slowly than I was expecting. Don't be worried though, it's still coming along nicely!

In my previous post, I showed off 4D Miner's new lighting system, but unfortunately, it made the game run much slower. The problem with making a 4D game is that there is so much more data to process, which means introducing new features like 4D lighting can make everything much slower.

In order to fix this, I needed to make some optimizations, which required me to tear apart a large amount of the game's code.

I still need to do some polishing, and there are a few features/fixes that I want to work on before I publish the first Patreon-exclusive early release.

As I have stated before, my primary long-term focus for 4D Miner leading up to its full release is multiplayer.

I have been thinking a lot about how player models will appear in multiplayer, and I decided to take a short break from programming to sketch out some concept art.

As you can see in the attached images, this 4D Miner player model concept has a lot more detail than its Minecraft counterpart. Since 4D Miner features other shapes besides squares and rectangles, I wanted to incorporate more unique shapes into the player models as well.

One thing you might notice about the 3D shapes used in these player models is that they all have six faces. This is because of the way I want player skins to work.

In one of the attached images, you can see an image of two 2D beings that exist in different 2D planes. Since the planes are perpendicular to each other, one of the 2D beings can see inside of the other 2D being.

A 4D equivalent to this phenomenon will also occur in 4D Miner, so I wanted players to have a relatively easy way to texture the inside of their player skins. I decided to make the player model entirely out of cuboids, which allows them to be textured in the exact same way as the 3D cube faces of the game's 4D blocks.

Each cuboid can be broken up into slices that correspond to 2D textures. You can see an example of this in one of the attached images, where a player head is made up of smaller cubes, which are colored to show both the inside and outside parts of the head.

I tried to make the most of each cuboid when working on this design, and I didn't want to use too many of them. The design is still in its early stages, so feel free to provide feedback!

It will be quite some time before I am actually able to incorporate these designs into the game. This is going to be a ton of work, and I want it to look good if I'm going to be spending this much time on it.

New Lighting Preview and Early Access Updates

Hello 4D Supporters and 4D HyperSupporters!

A few days ago, I created a poll for the HyperSupporters to decide on what I would add to 4D Miner next. They had three options to choose from: a new passive creature, improved lighting, and controller support.

After about three days, the HyperSupporters ended up choosing improved lighting with 96 votes. The passive creature option received a total of 66 votes, while controller support only got 7 votes.

If you were among the few who voted for controller support, don't worry, it will get added eventually. The creature option was very popular, but I think it's a good thing that I'm working on the lighting first, since it will create a better environment for new creatures to inhabit in the future!

After the poll ended, I started working on a lighting technique called ambient occlusion (AO). Based on the pictures I have included in this post, I think you will all agree that the in-game world appears to have a lot more depth now, and looks a lot nicer overall.

AO is based on the surroundings of different points in a scene. Basically, the more "stuff" there is near a point, the less that point will be exposed to ambient lighting, and the darker that point will appear as a result.

My implementation of AO in 4D Miner causes blocks to cast a "shadow" of sorts. Possibly the coolest thing about this is that you can see the shadows of blocks that exist outside of your current 3D slice of the world.

I made a short video to demonstrate this. In the video, there is a darker spot in on the ground in front of the player, and after scrolling to rotate in 4D, the nearby tree trunk that is causing the shadow becomes visible: https://youtu.be/L3_vsKwXHVg.

The image with the red arrow shows what I originally thought was some kind of lighting artifact, but after some experimenting, I now believe it's a similar effect to what is shown in the linked video, and blocks that aren't currently visible are causing what looks like an impossible shadow.

The weird thing about viewing a 3D slice of a world with 4D lighting effects is that some things won't look right, since you can't see the whole picture. This makes the game more intriguing in my opinion, since unusual-looking shadows can give you clues about what lies outside of your limited 3D view.

I still have work to do before I can release an early build to the HyperSupporters. The lighting improvements have broken some other parts of the game, and I have to fix them before I can release anything.

On a different note, I now have more info on how newer builds of 4D Miner will be distributed to 4D HyperSupporters! I had planned on distributing newer builds through Steam by giving each HyperSupporter a special key that would grant them access, but it turns out I'm not allowed to do that without also making the same builds accessible directly through Steam somehow. That would completely undermine the exclusivity that all of the HyperSupporters are paying for, and I couldn't do that without feeling like was ripping you all off.

Fortunately, I have found a much better alternative that not only allows me to distribute newer builds exclusively to 4D HyperSupporters, but it's also much more convenient.

I have created an account on itch.io, where I can release early content that isn't yet available through Steam. Itch.io supports Patreon integration, which means I can restrict content such that only 4D HyperSupporters will be able to access it.

All I have to do is start releasing updates, and any one of the 4D HyperSupporters will be able to download the newest update after logging into itch.io and connecting their Patreon account.

I will post another update as soon as I release a new build, and in the meantime, I wish the best for all of you!

4D Miner Development Poll

Hello HyperSupporters!

I am currently in the process of setting up an Early Access version of 4D Miner on Steam, which I will distribute to each of you as soon as I can. It will take several days for everything to be approved by Valve, but if all goes well, I will be able to provide you all with early updates to 4D Miner, allowing you to be the first to give feedback on any changes to the game!

In the meantime, I have decided to make a poll for HyperSupporters to decide what I will add to the game next!

An Update for 4D Hypersupporters

Hello HyperSupporters!

Thank you all so much for your support! I'm sorry I haven't posted anything or provided any updates until now, but rest assured that you are all my top priority!

Several people have asked if there will still be a way to get the 4D Glasses and enamel pins. I am looking into the possibility of finding a way to distribute the pins and/or glasses to my Patreon supporters in some capacity. I will let you all know when I have updates on that.

I am working on getting a bunch of Steam keys that I can distribute to all of you. If it all works out, these keys will give you access to the newest updates to 4D Miner before they get added to the main demo version, which means you will get to be the first to provide feedback!

If the Steam Keys don't work out, I will find another way to distribute updated versions of 4D Miner to all of you.

Feel free to voice any questions or concerns you may have, and thanks again for all of your support! I wouldn't be able to keep doing this without you!

- Mashpoe