Development Update 2

notenotenote: all of these are my words but I asked AI to markdown it for headers and such so there's a chance theree are changes to grammar or stuff, but a HUMAN wrote this.

It's been almost two months—my bad. The scope of 0.10 has expanded significantly and has turned into a full overhaul of the game, which is still ongoing. Because of that, there won't be many screenshots or anything in this post, because the game doesn't exactly look very good right now.

But before I get into that, let me provide a little update on ModernBox development.

Two days ago, I handed ModernBox over (sorta) to Myoppie (also known as Ahoyos) for development. I still own ModernBox, but he has complete freedom over the mod, minus being able to merge it with other mods or do anything along those lines.

However, for all intents and purposes, InfiniteBox is supposed to replace ModernBox. InfiniteBox is designed for WorldBox players who want modern/sci-fi stuff. So the plan is still to eventually phase out ModernBox, but that is a long way away, as InfiniteBox isn't going to fulfill that role for a while.

Iterative Design

The design philosophy for InfiniteBox is gameplay first, art later.

Of course you still need art, but the priority is making a GAME instead of a good-looking barebones skeleton.

Iterative design means getting something out, taking feedback, upgrading it, and getting it out again. This is what I successfully(?) did with versions 0.01 through 0.07.

An example of this design approach is InfiniteBox 0.02. Whenever I played WorldBox, I would use WASD movement to move around instead of the much superior mouse dragging—which I later learned to love. InfiniteBox 0.01 released without mouse dragging, but immediately people started asking why it wasn't a thing.

So literally 2 hours later, 0.02 came out with mouse dragging.

InfiniteBox does not have a following of people who care about it enough for me to hype things up and take a long time to release updates.

Despite me doing exactly that with 0.10. 😭

Obviously, this way of releasing updates and working on the game has its own problems too. The biggest one is the quality of updates. But anyone who knows me knows that I struggle with very big updates or projects that never see the light of day, so it's important that I constantly release things.

With that being said, 0.10 has suffered extreme scope creep and has been in development since May—five months ago.

It has taken so long that, out of embarrassment over the old InfiniteBox builds, they are now no longer available to download from my site.

There are a LOT of changes to go over with 0.10, though.

Goodbye, Verse

The Verse system has been completely removed.

While it was a cool idea on paper, it made things a lot more complicated for players, especially since it was the save system. It has now been replaced with a save slot system.

Space is still very much a thing, though—but now it's realtime.

The new System mode is barebones visually (for now), but all planets are active and have their own biomes, mobs, nations, and weather.

And the very cool part:

You can place planets, modify orbits, and blow them up!

Moving a planet farther from its star will make it colder, making life either adapt or die off. And of course, moving it closer will make it hotter.

None of this is being shown because it's still being worked on, but the next dev post will show this off.

TETM — Tuxxego's Enhanced Tilemap

InfiniteBox 0.01 through 0.07 used Unity's default tilemap system to render and handle tiles. When you zoomed out, it would convert to a picture of the planet because that many tiles couldn't be rendered at once.

That system worked for those initial versions, but the tilemap system simply wouldn't do for what I had in mind.

So I developed TETM (Tuxxego's Enhanced Tilemap).

TETM allows for over 10 planets running at the same time and isn't a global system like Unity's is, so planets are completely independent from each other.

Mobs can still cross between them too—well, they have no active way of doing that yet, but in future updates they will.

Implementing TETM and removing Verses required rewriting a significant portion of the game. Until yesterday, the game was literally unplayable because of TETM flickering.

It required rewriting my already "new" pathfinding system for Agents (mobs), nation province claiming, trees, city planning, and god powers.

So basically, I accidentally rebuilt half the game.

Nation Changes

I'm saving this for the next blog post because not a lot of work has been done on this in the past month and a half due to the issues mentioned above.

There are many new things like:

• Alliances
• Walls
• Governments
• Ideologies
• And more

More on all of that in the next post.

Other Stuff

A major part of InfiniteBox planned from the start is Evolution Mode.

The original idea was for it to be a grindy and "Spore-like" mode where you would use a skill tree to unlock new stuff, colonize solar systems, find new lifeforms, add them to a large and diverse army, and fight other gods—basically AI players.

There's also a full-blown story planned, with lore, characters, and everything else you'd expect from that.

A large part of the mode relied on the now-defunct Verse system, so it is still going to be a thing, but it will be different.

I'm HOPING to get Evolution Mode out for 0.10, but it might be delayed to a later update.

Something I removed that I showcased in the Discord a few months back was 3D.

There was a mode toggle that would switch the game to a 3D mode similar to Melvin's WorldSphereMod for WorldBox.

By the way, Melvin is helping out with some backend stuff for future mobile modding!

The 3D system was removed during the switch to TETM.

Future Timeline

I'm delaying the modern and subsequent eras until the game is in a much more "complete" state.

So, for right now, InfiniteBox is fully fantasy-focused: magic, medieval stuff, and so on.

I hope to get 0.10 out either at the end of this month or in November, with the updates after that being much faster to develop and a return to iterative development.

0.10 will be the first version of InfiniteBox to release on itch.io, which is a HUGE milestone for me. Before that, all builds were just on this website.

A Steam release is planned for early 2027. It will be free for a while until the game gets its modern update.

And don't worry—people who had the game before it costs money will keep it for free.

ModernBox will be kept alive by Myoppie/Ahoyos, as I am fully no longer involved in development. However, I expect ModernBox to be fully phased out by 2028 as it will have nothing left to offer.

Already, it fits out of place with WorldBox. People who want a cool fantasy-only game will play WorldBox, while those people who REALLY want a modern era will hopefully try InfiniteBox out and maybe stay.

Useful Links

Trello — what I'm working on and ideas

InfiniteBox Twitter

InfiniteBox Website

Until next time, your mom is a dude!

— tux

Hello again, no InfiniteBox is not dead (yet), it is very much alive and well, let me skip right to the big question:

Where the heck is 0.08?!?!?!

Well, it's gone, abandoned, never to see the light of day, because instead InfiniteBox 0.10 will happen (i commited sin and did the thing I said I wouldn't do).

Cool new graphics!!!

The lighting system has been completely redone, it's still a work on progress, before in 0.07 light was a harsh solid color from the systems star, it's toned down significantly and shadows are now much more, shall i say...connected?

And of course as you can see, clouds have been added, a lot of people don't like their current design and it will probably change to a more pixelated look shortly.

I went to hell!

0.10 will introduce the long planned Afterlife system to the game, how does that work you might ask?

REALMS!!!!!!!

The afterlife is not a singular place, it consists of multiple (or one!) different realms, which units that have passed on live in.

Your eyes do not decieve you, you are probably thinking two things right now:

1. Wow this UI sucks so bad you should kill yourself
2. Add? Delete? Open?

By default, the two realms are Heaven and Hell, but they can be replaced with new realms, or modified to be the opposites of each other.

Each realm has its own set of rules, split into two categories:

The first category is entry rules which define the requirements for a unit to enter this realm, this can be how many kills they have, if they died as a child, if they were famous (not yet added).

The second category is related to what happens to units in it, how long they stay, or if they can haunt the living!

That's the other major part of this system, hauntings.

Hauntings are completely optional and can be disabled for a realm, but there are 3 ghost types:

• Sky ghosts: Completely harmless, they live up in the clouds and occasionally materialize to check in on their species.
• Haints: Haints like to materialize near their deathplace and can pick trees up, scare units and ruin their mood, and generally just be a prick.
• Demons: These guys aren't very nice, hence the name. They will sometimes materialize at their place of death and harm any unit that crosses by, they will violently shake and turn very red.

All of these types can be enabled/disabled with traits!

There's even more to show, but I have a movie to watch so I'm keeping this short.

THE RIJIIN

The Rijiin are a new species that will debut in 0.10, they are a gross disgusting mini-hivemind, they create war creatures called abominations through flesh factories, and operate a parasitic bioweapon that takes control of other species and turns them into soldiers.

More on them soon.

WHERE ARE WALLS?

You're in the discord you've already seen them, shut up.