New Cubied: Sparks of Creation

After a few delays the 1.1 update for New Cubied is finally here! With this substantial update comes several new features, mechanics, changes, bug fixes and a spiffy new logo. This update has been given the subtitle "Sparks of Creation" as it greatly opens up the game's creative potential and enables players to make much more dynamic and interactive worlds. I have been very excited to share all of this with you. In this post I will first give an overview of the most notable new features and changes. Afterwards I will share some cool examples that I have made to show off the capabilities this update brings. The post will then conclude with the entire changelog for this update. Now that the introduction is out of the way, let's get into it.

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New Features & Changes

Better Player Movement

The first thing I decided to tackle was the fairly common complaint that the player felt sluggish and boring. I addressed this in a few ways. First I made the player faster overall, especially its walking speed. Second I gave the player a variable jump height, where if the jump key is held it will jump higher. And last but not least I gave the player the ability to both wall slide and wall jump. I think all of these changes will make movement much more interesting and engaging for players.

Background Layer

Next up on the to-do list was to add a dedicated background layer, which has been asked for quite a bit. In prior versions there was a background tile that lacked collision and could be used as decoration but that was about it. One of the most notable features the 1.1 update adds is a new dedicated background layer that any type of tile can be placed on. It can be selected either through the build menu or by pressing the L hotkey. This layer will slightly darken any tiles placed on it and omits all collisions. Due to this change the background tile has been changed into the checkers tile and now has collisions. Don't worry though, when loading a world from a previous version all background tiles will automatically be converted and moved into the new dedicated background layer.

Rotatable Tiles & Entities

A feature that wasn't planned for this update but I knew had to be included after being suggested was the ability to rotate entities. And why stop there? Why not also make it where nearly every type of tile can be rotated too? Doing this however was slightly problematic. It broke several things, required many reworks, rewrites and the like. My favorite part is when I hacked in an entire system to generate rotated variants of the tileset data and textures since the engine didn't natively support rotating tiles, only for it be to announced a few days later that functionality would be included in the next update. Regardless, this has to be one of my favorite new features from the update. One thing to note is that the angled tile variants have been consolidated to a single wedge type and the vacuum type has been removed as a rotated elevator has identical behavior. Any worlds made in previous versions using these tile types will automatically convert and should look and act the same as before.

Several New Cheats & Conditional Chaining

This update introduces several new cheats to the game, twenty-seven to be exact. There's too many for me to individually describe each one here but the changelog lists them all. You can also go into the game and enter the help cheat which will open a menu containing categorized documentation of every cheat in the game along with each one's syntax and description. I would have to say that the most notable and powerful new cheats are the ones that manipulate the world. It is now possible through cheats to fill, move and clear entire areas all at once.

Another notable addition to cheats are output states and the new chaining syntax. Each cheat now outputs either a fail or success state and cheats can be conditionally chained together based on these outputs. Chains can consist of up to eight cheats, each one being separated with one of the following operators:

• ; continues the chain regardless of the prior cheat's output
• && only runs the next cheat if the prior cheat was successful
• || only runs the next cheat if the prior cheat failed

If a conditional check fails the next cheat will be skipped and output a failed state however the chain will continue. Chain execution can be forcibly ended with the break cheat. The conditional chaining is especially powerful with the new cheats that compare tiles and check their attributes.

New Tiles

This update introduces eight entirely new tile types to the game. Apart from one which is purely for decoration, each new tile provides new entity interaction functionality. Here's a quick overview of what's what:

• Bricks Doesn't do much, just looks nice
• Spring When an entity activates this tile it will be launched in the direction the tile is pointing in
• Spring (Compressed) Just like the regular spring but more powerful and resets entity rotation
• Cheat Interface Executes a cheat or a chain of cheats when activated
• Rotator When an entity activates this tile it will have its rotation updated to match the tile's
• Ruins Slowly crumbles away on any contact
• Cloud Dissipates on contact but reappears after a short amount of time
• Skull Destroys entities upon contact from any direction

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Example Creations

Flying Airship

This world is the most simple of the three, it uses a single cut.layer cheat to move the airship forward through the air and has some animated elements such as birds flapping their wings.

Text Printer

This world is the most complex of the three. Players can either select preset messages or write their own using a keyboard of sorts. It will then print the message to a large display made up of tiles. The display is 12x8, it has forty-eight different characters and it supports color. It works by encoding text into tiles that have specific types and rotations, and by using several copy/cut and query cheats.

Conway's Game of Life

While not as complex as the text printer, I think this world is the most impressive out of all my examples here. This world contains a fully functional Conway's Game of Life simulation. The logic is very compact and it only uses four cheat interface tiles.

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Thank You

I could keep going on and on about each addition and change I've made to the game but I think its about time that you try the update for yourself. You can find it here and if you have any thoughts or feedback on it you should consider leaving a comment on this post. This update offers plenty more than what I mentioned and if you're interested in learning more the full changelog is below. That's about it for this post, thanks for reading!

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Full Changelog

Tiles

• Separate background layer added
  • Has no collision
  • Can quickly be switched to with the L key
• Tiles can now be rotated
• Entire areas can now be filled/cleared by holding down the B key
• Implemented a metadata system
• Condensed the 4 variant Angled tile types into a single Wedge type.
  • When loading a world from a previous version all Angled tile variants will automatically convert to the Wedge type with proper rotation
• The Background tile type has been replaced with a Checkers tile type that has collision
  • When loading a world from a previous version all Background tiles will automatically convert to the Checkers type and moved to the background layer
• The Vacuum tile has been removed as a rotated elevator has identical behavior
  • When loading a world from a previous version all Vacuum tiles will automatically convert to the Elevator type with proper rotation
• Added 8 new tile types:
  • Bricks Doesn't do much, just looks nice
  • Spring When an entity activates this tile it will be launched in the direction the tile is pointing in
  • Spring (Compressed) Just like the regular spring but more powerful and resets entity rotation
  • Cheat Interface Runs up to 8 cheats when activated
  • Rotator When an entity activates this tile it will have its rotation updated to match the tile's
  • Ruins Slowly crumbles away on any contact
  • Cloud Dissipates on contact but reappears after a short amount of time
  • Skull Destroys entities upon contact from any direction
• Updated textures

Entities

• Added the Spark entity type
  • Moves very quickly
  • Has no gravity
  • Destroys all other entities on contact
  • Stops in place if its path is obstructed
• Entities can now be rotated
  • Physics logic such as gravity is made relative to rotation
• Major player movement improvements and additions
  • Walking is much quicker
  • Variable jump height
  • Higher and further jumps now possible
  • Wall sliding and wall jumping is now possible
  • There is now "coyote time" where the player has a very short time window to jump after leaving ground
• Improved the player's animations
• Completely revamped the player's box lifting behavior
  • Lifted boxes can now be thrown by clicking anywhere on the screen
  • A lifted box will no longer be dropped when it detects a collision
  • A lifted box can now activate tiles
  • When dropped on the player's head a light box will automatically be lifted
• Improved the player's box pushing behavior
• Improved the physics for boxes
  • While some clipping is unavoidable when the physics engine is under stress, it should be reduced
  • General behavior is much more stable and consistent
• Improved and optimized tile interaction logic
• Base gravity adjusted
• Updated textures

Cheats

• Up to 8 cheats can now be chained together and ran at once
  • When separated with && the following cheat will only execute if the prior one was successful
  • When separated with || the following cheat will only execute if the prior one failed
  • When separated with ; the following cheat will execute regardless of the prior result
  • Separators are ignored when prefixed with \
• Added 27 new cheats
  • print, print.color, place, fill.layer, fill.all, erase, clear.layer, clear.all, copy, clone.layer, clone.all, move, cut.layer, cut.all, color, recolor.layer, recolor.all, query, compare, camera.zoom, camera.pin, camera.unpin, jump, walk, count, break, from

World Browser

• Increased world upload limit for non-elite members from 5 to 10
• Added a featured section
• Added a liked worlds section that is accessible when logged in
• Improved UI
• User data is now cached, greatly reducing load times
• Increased maximum description length from 128 to 256
• Added trophy granting support

Social

• Added 4 trophies for placing tiles:
  • Getting started, It's a creative outlet, Almost an architect, Too many tiles
• Added 4 trophies for erasing tiles:
  • Oops, Mistakes were made, Demolition expert, The destroyer
• Added 3 trophies for various world browser achievements:
  • World debut, On the fridge, Out of magnets
• Added 4 trophies for receiving plays on your worlds:
  • Enjoyed by many, Making Waves, Rising star, Famous
• Added 4 trophies for earning likes on your worlds:
  • Liked by many, Crowd favorite, Trailblazer, World renowned
• Added the "I'm gonna be" trophy for walking 804,672 meters
• Added the "Gravity hater" trophy for jumping 10,000 times

UI

• New logo design
• Added a clickable button to the world UI to open/close the build menu
• Added an icon to the world UI to show which layer is selected
• Added an arrow to the world UI to indicated which way is downwards when the player is rotated
• The world UI can now be toggled on/off with the F1 key
• When the player exits a downloaded world the world browser will be reopened to where they left off
• Tiles and entities now show their names and a corresponding description in the build menu
• Tile coordinate display can now be toggled on and off with the backslash key
  • Can also be used to measure distances by holding down middle click and dragging
• Text input now keeps track of history, navigable with the up and down arrow keys
• Organized the cheat documentation menu into different categories (general, world, tiles, player)
• Build options can no longer be scrolled if both the world is locked and the build menu is closed
• A new message will replace the current one rather than not being displayed
• More detailed and organized general help menu within the title screen
• Improved input validation in some menus

Quality of Life Changes

• Tile coordinates can now be copied by holding alt and middle clicking a tile
• Area coordinates can now be copied by holding alt and drag left clicking an area
• Tile place/erase cheats can be copied by holding alt and then left or right clicking a tile
• Added basic statistic tracking used for granting trophies
  • Statistics are viewable in the title screen's help menu
• Pressing the F2 key will copy a screenshot of the game to your clipboard
• Updated to latest stable release of Godot
  • This release includes optimizations to the built-in tile system that New Cubied benefits greatly from
• Made several miscellaneous bug fixes