New Vox update is out and available on Steam. Introducing the character two handed stance and also new idle animations for the player and NPCs.

Here is a devlog video showing the new idle animations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJW4SooS8AQ
Coming just around the corner is more content and the new biomes that our voxel artist Zach has been working on and teasing on Twitter for a long time. Lookg forward to these new biomes coming to Vox in the not too distant future.

Lots more included in this update so here are the full patch notes are as follows:

New Features:

• Change experience label text colour to match other HUD text.
  
• Diffrent crosshair types.
  
• Allow HUD Graphics and crosshair type options menu pulldowns.
  
• Make arrows explode on impact, no longer pass through targets.
  
• Make initial world loading happen from player origin.
  
• Improve the collision detection efficiency for NPCs, Player and enemies.
  
• Keep a cache of the grid chunk that we are currently in.
  
• Don't check for chunk block position if we are already in the cached grid chunk.
  
• Better item and block particle chunk collision checking - more efficient.
  
• Update chunk foundation checking to be less frequent.
  
• Reduce the render radius of scenery in the world.
  
• Stop players from getting stuck halfway up stepping up a world block.
  
• Reduce movement velocity when stepping up a block.
  
• New animations for duel wield swords.
  
• Better sword attack animations.
  
• Sword duel wield combo attack.
  
• Better idle states and animations for the player.
  
• Breathing and looking around animations.
  
• Set proper idle stance when entering or exiting first person mode.
  
• Make NPCs and Skeleton enemies use the new idle bindpose and animation.
  
• Don't render held weapons and items when in a minecart.
  
• Don't allow idle animations to interupt a crafting animation.
  
• Add proper two handed bind pose to inventory and weapon GUI.
  
• Add idle animation to inventory and weapon create GUI.
  
• NPC idle animations.
  
• Stop NPCs jumping to target when a new target is picked close by.
  
• Increase NPC idle timer on NPCs.
  
• New vanity items - pug hat, roman hat, beer hat, arrow hat, skiing items.
  
• Split up world import files, for different biomes.
  
• Remove frontend intro skipping - TEMP.
  
• Better NPC dual weapons for fighters.
  
• Make sure NPCs clear their target enemy when they die. They shouldn't have vendettas after death.
  
• Add an overhead marrker for enemies to signal target mode can be activated.
  
• Add target mode activation when in follow cam.
  
• Also allow enemy overhead marker to appear in non-follow cam mode. (but not first person mode)
  
• Don't allow mimics to be targetted unless they are aggro, harder to spot.
  
• Add arrow to crafting recipe for standard crafting from inventory.

Bugfixes:

• Make sure minetrack ramps can be crafted.
  
• Safety and sanity checking on block array access.
  
• Fix regrowth boots spawning grass and plants - uninitialized var.
  
• NULL check for player pointer in scenery manager.
  
• Fix fullscreen mode. Remove window borders and frame.
  
• Fix wand for new attack type code, not continuously called attack().
  
• Clear NPC companions when we quit or enter new game.
  
• Make sure we still render the background if the HUD components havent been removed yet for enemy health.
  
• Fix for world chunk and items loading from file.

Cheers.
AlwaysGeeky

Hey there,

A couple of bugs were found in yesterdays v0.51 build, mostly concerning the 'create custom character' functionality. Since this is a major feature for Vox and something that should be working 100% of the time, these issues have been hotfixed for v0.52.

Enjoy.

Full patch notes below:

• Fireballs and wand shots now set enemies on fire.
  
• ncrease fire and poison damage on monsters.
  
• Alchemy table is now created via the crafting bench.
  
• Add health and mana potion crafting to alchemy table.
  
• Stoneskin potion effect makes you temporarily immune to attacks.
  
• Add crafting animation for the player.

• Fix for chest interactions with proximity to player
  
• Modify and fix the stoneskin potion animation.
  
• Fix for bat sonar shots that were not exploding or being erased properly.
  
• Fix for custom character creation saving, when editing multiple body parts in one go.
  
• Create quests for NPS in all world indexes.

Time for another Vox update!

Version v0.51 is now live on Steam, grab the latest update and give it a try yourself.

Just to give you a sneak peak of a couple of new cool changes that are introduced in this update, here are a few of the new armor tiers that can be crafted now.

Dont want to spend too much time detailing each and every new feature and added content for Vox, since this patch should be fun to explore and find it out for yourself!

Full patch notes are published below.

• Ladder item - Can be placed on walls or blocks to climb upwards.
  
• Allow ladders to be destroyed with the hammer.
  
• Export gravity direction for items into store save files.
  
• Better character loading when no saved character files are present.
  
• Make sure when we format the world data we also format the character save files also.
  
• Add default character creation and loading when in DEBUG and TEST mode.
  
• Faster quest and HUD text fades.
  
• Make foundations lists have multiple dimensions.
  
• Each vox world object can have multiple layers of foundations.
  
• Save out foundation system to file.
  
• Import and export foundation checkers when loading/saving world.
  
• Delete foundation files when deleting worlds.
  
• Some default stats for newly created characters.
  
• Better doppleganger ghost scaling.
  
• Add new armor set for ice armor.
  
• Add rare item drop for snow golems used for crafting.
  
• Don't render NPC nameplates unless we have grounded on the floor first.
  
• Render buffs and debuffs into the HUD.
  
• Render buff timers.
  
• Remove the minus character for damage text, it is not needed, looks better without.
  
• Add update texture button to creation GUI.
  
• Fix for updating textures on the create character screen.
  
• Add foundation block checking to large trees
  
• Better default and starting character models.
  
• Allow infinite buffs and debuffs.
  
• Potion fatigue debuff - you can't drink potions too quickly.
  
• Better frozen sprite management.
  
• Can't get knocked back by frozen enemies.
  
• Allow the player to get poisoned and set on fire.
  
• Poison and fire particle effects for player.
  
• New death types for poison and fire.
  
• Reset buffs and debuffs on player death.
  
• Don't render buffs and debuffs if GUI rendering is switched off.
  
• Improve placement rendering.
  
• Don't allow ladder placements inside blocks.
  Allow item placement rendering when placing items, not just scenery.
  
• Sort out rendering ordering for placement objects - fix transparency.
  
• Use proper global scales list for items holding, placing and dropping in the world.
  
• Cache pressed positions and values so that moving after pressing doesnt affect interactions.
  
• Redo the player's helmet offset and params
  
• Tidy up all head and helmet items.
  
• New vanity items - glasses, sunglasses, witch hat.
  
• Add wood crafting armor tier.
  
• Add iron crafting armor tier.
  
• Add steel crafting armor tier.
  
• Add bone and ice crafting armor tier.
  
• Add crafting bench to starting area.
  
• Reduce the number of random chests lying around in the overworld by a factor of 2.

• Don't allow ore depositis to be repositioned with the hammer.
  
• Make it so that we export/import stats on weapons to inventory file.
  
• Fix for creating custom body parts in the create character Screen.
  
• File util functionality for checking directory existance.
  
• Faster item placement delay.
  
• Fix for stoneskin potion not properly allowing shadows to render.
  
• Fix for player transparency when blending is not set.
  
• Seperate flag for deleting character data on new patch.
  
• If we open another GUI window while dragging icons, reset the dragged icon.
  
• Fix for unloading hands and feet on the character paperdoll.
  
• Fix for ghost hands and feet appearing.
  
• Fix for rocket jumping items - Broken by ladder logic.
  
• Fix for unloading hands and feet on the character paperdoll.
  
• Fix bug of randomly opening creation window after we have saved a voxel object.
  
• Fix undo on voxel editor.
  
• Fix transparency potion.
  
• Make sure snow golems dont update animations when frozen.
  
• Fix for snow golems being frozen and attacking with abilities.
  
• Fix for items falling through world.
  
• Get Euler angles from matrix class.
  
• Scrollbar position on crafting GUI.
  
• Fix for ghosts erasing and not dying.
  
• Fix for getting interaction item.
  
• Allow for a GUI componenent to take rendering priority, due to transparency ordering rendering required.
  
• Fix the actionbar dragging bug where some icons would get stuck on the HUD
  
• Fix for non-interactable items returning from interaction check.
  
• Fix selection render - proper wireframe and also seen through player.
  
• Fix crash when actionbar when pressed for duplicate items in the inventory.
  
• Fix for creation chunk initialize, chunkmanager can be null.
  
• Initialize cache variables in player class for storing placement positions,scales,rotations
  
• Fix for reading in vox files that sometimes dont contain any additional data (initialize before reading in numValues)

Finally the long wait is over and Vox v0.50 is available for everyone to play and not a moment too soon, for the 2 year anniversary since development on Vox first started is just around the corner!

This is a huge patch and so much has been added and improved and in many ways the game feels like a completely new game... so I'm just gonna dive straight in and give you a quick rundown of all the major stuff that has changed and the new stuff that has been added.

The BIGGEST and most noticeable improvement of this update, over all previous updates, is how stable the game now is. We spent a long time ironing out all the small bugs and crashes that you players reported to us and we spent a number of long days and nights over the past month to really make sure that v0.50 is the most stable it has ever been. You should now be able to play Vox uninterrupted and without crashing for as long as you desire! This is a huge milestone for Vox and the advanced gameplay and awesome new features can now start to fully developed alongside a solid foundation and great core experience.

Vox is now fully compatible with gamepads and you can do everything in the game without once needing to touch your keyboard or mouse, try the game in Steam's Big Picture mode and really enjoy the game played best with a gamepad.

You can also rebind your keyboard controls if you want using the options menu, this should really please the AZERTY users.

Vox worlds now contain shops and market places, you can use these to buy yourself some new items or weapons from all the coins you have collected from the world.

A brand new fearsome monster has entered the Tundra and Snow biome and will stop at nothing to try and kill you adventuring types and heroes of Vox. Watch out for their icy breath and ground stomp attacks... they are deadly.

A number of different potions are available now and these will have differing effects on your character when you drink them. Some of them might even be a hindrance to your character, but you won't know until you drink them and find out!

You can now find shields in Vox and they give you a % chance to block incoming attacks and negate damage from enemies. Shields are especially useful if you like the melee combat in Vox and really like to go toe-to-toe with the monsters and try to defeat them for their shiny loot. Equip a shield and you can stay in combat longer.

Item stats now properly affect your characters stats page and equipping items that have stat bonuses will further improve your character. This is a great new addition to Vox and marks the start of the game's development into a proper RPG game.

Stay tuned for more fun RPG elements coming in future updates, such as different player classes, skill trees, jobs and advanced character progression.

The rendering and shaders have been drastically improved to give the world a much nicer look now and you should notice that Vox is more vibrant and colourful in this new update. Also colour variation has been re-added to the terrain and world rendering to give the game an even shinier aesthetic. We hope you enjoy these graphical improvements.

As you can see this patch was no small feat and it has taken us a long time to get to this stage, but I know you have all been very patient and hopefully now Vox can start to be the game that it really deserves to be and it can start to realize some of the amazing potential that this game truly has!

Once again I thank each and every Vox player and I hope you continue to enjoy the game as much as I enjoy creating it for you!

Cheers.
AlwaysGeeky

To see the full patch notes please visit the follow discussion page:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/252770/discussions/1/540740500341643292/

New update for Vox v0.47 is available on Steam now!

PLEASE NOTE : You need to do a full re-install for this version, that includes manually deleting your existing Vox folder from your Steam directory (i.e. \Steam\steamapps\common\Vox) before you install this new version. Really sorry about this inconvenience, but this is still alpha... ^_^

Patch notes:

New Features:

• Add 1600x900 (16:9) screen resoltuion.
  
• Better head scaling for the HUD portraits.
  
• Use proper filenames for NPC character parts loading.
  
• New models for Toby and Dave NPC characters.
  
• New blacksmith NPC.
  
• Add blackmsith quest.
  
• Add speaking to other NPCs quest.
  
• Allow talking target NPCs to have specific dialog text during a talk quest.
  
• Support textbox scissoring for textbox width region.
  
• Better highlighting and text movement on textbox overflow.
  
• Improved arrow controls for textboxes.
  
• Add scrollbars to multi-line textboxes.
  
• Lamp post item added.
  
• Market stalls added for buying items.
  
• Creation of both weapon AND item stalls.
  
• More lampposts.
  
• Better town generation.
  
• ncrease creation chunk dimensions.
  
• Allow some items to be non-interactable (lamppost, well).
  
• Don't outline highlight non-interactbale items.
  
• Better house generation - More door framing, roof colours and striping.
  
• Better house doors and windows.
  
• Remove anvil and furnace from house and replace with table and chairs + bookshelf.
  
• Saved flag for items that get output to file.

Bugfixes:

• Fix for creating custom body parts - always using the same custom .vox file for all parts.
  
• Fix miscellaneous textbox and multi-line textbox bugs.
  
• Fix textbox and multi-line textbox alignment issues.
  
• Fix for X360 gamepad start and back buttons not flickering on pressed.
  
• Make sure proper damage coloured text is applied to casting and archer skeletons.
  
• Fix for crash during quit.
  
• Prevent item saving from crashing during chunk unload.

Hi again,

Updates coming thick and fast now! Another update that contains more stability fixes, crash resolutions and general bug fixes.


New Features:

• Faster particle rendering.
  
• More threads destroyed wait flags in Chunk manager.

Bugfixes:

• Fix occasional crash on loading into world
  
• Fix for custom characters setting the wrong tutorial flag.
  
• Fix some mutex locks causing deadlock.

Now that the major refactor has finished you will see updates and patches coming very regularly, sometimes every 1 or 2 days, so be sure to report your bugs over in the discussion forums so they can get fixed super quick!

Cherrs.
AlwaysGeeky

The latest version of Vox has just been deployed to Steam and brings the version up to v0.45.

This version is a massive update to the way that voxels and chunks are loaded, saved and managed and the whole terrain and world generation has been re-written from scratch to be more scalable and provide better world and biome generation.

This means that stability and performance are now vastly improved from previous versions and the game now should be (mostly) free of crashes. I encourage you all to try the latest version and see how much of an improvement to performance and stability this version brings for you.

It has taken a while to get to this stage and for the delays over the past 1-2 months, I apologize. But now that the game is stable again and people are able to enjoy the game and play for extended periods of time, we will be focusing on adding many new features and exciting new content. A lot of features were put on the back burner for the past couple of months and now that we don't have to concentrate on fixing stuff so much, we plan to drive full force ahead with the exciting and fun new game mechanics that we have wanted to implement for a while.

Let's see if we can get some nice positive reviews going now and turn this ship around. It has really bothered me recently that the Steam reviews section for Vox is full of players rightfully complaining and giving feedback on the crashes and performance, that is why we decided to take a step back and really fix the root causes of these problems. Now I would love to start reading some nice positive reviews for Vox, so if you have a spare minute, please don't be shy about sharing anything positive you have to say in the review section. :)

Thanks for your support and stay tuned for more exciting Vox updates coming soon!

AlwaysGeeky

Another update already?!

Well I know a lot of people were mentioning that they were having FPS and performance issues, so I spent some time optimizing the chunk loading and setup.

Now the game makes much better use of multi-threading and the performance of loading new chunks as you move around the world (in-game) is drastically improved.

Hopefully this should make the game more functional and stable for people, as always if you have any further issues, bugs or crashes, be sure to report them over in the discussion forums.

Full patch notes as follows:

New Features:

• Performance improvements
  
• 60% faster and more optimized chunk loading and unloading in-game
  
• Better use of threads.
  
• Make chunk setup routine on a separate thread than loading.
  
• Mutex locking protection around rendering and updating.
  
• Improve chunk setup.
  
• Improved animation times on select character screen.
  
• Add camera transition when selecting world.

Bugfixes:

• Fix world loading crash.
  
• Fix crash sometimes when trying to access a chunk that just recently was unloaded.

Hi,

Just released an update to Vox to fix the white screen crash and world loading issues that a few people were experiencing. This isn't a major update or doesnt contain a massive amount of new stuff, just a couple of fixes that the early players have already found.

Full changelist follows:

New Features:

• Better executable icon - Include 32x32 version.
  
• Add option toggle for tuning on/off scenery for better performance.
  
• Enable ghost spawning when player dies - NOT in multiplayer.
  
• Only allow block pickup sound to happen after certain time delay, to prevent sound spam.

Bugfixes:

• If shadows are not supported then dont try to use the shadow shader. - FIX WHITE SCREEN CRASH.
  
• Fix the crash for when Actionbar save file becomes corrupted. Dont crash world loading.
  
• Only set the overhead marker animation once an NPC has respawned.
  
• Don't do scenery animations when we load in scenery objects from chunk data.
  
• Remove animation from scenery creation during chunk load.
  
• Make sure when we craft a crafting bench it has a quantity of 1.
  
• Make sure to include 32x32 bit icon for sound controls and other windows functionality.
  
• Make sure to reset the player back to normal when we restart the game mode.
  
• Flower quest now only gives 3 flowers to place, correctly

Thanks for your help and support suring this first week of the Vox release on Steam and I apologize that a few people were having trouble. Please be sure to inform me of any other issues you see and I will do my best to address them.

Thanks.
AlwaysGeeky