Status Update: Terrain shaders

Hey folks! We want to give you a small status update of our recent progress.

The last weeks we've been mainly working on textures and proper terrain shaders. Unlike the Java version of the game, we're using physically-based rendering, which is basically a more realistic approach to render materials.
Materials no longer consist of a single texture, instead there are various maps which allow the game to render the material accurately (including surface structure, glossiness etc).





When it comes to the terrain shaders, or more specifically, to the transition between multiple materials (e.g. sand, dirt, gravel etc), we're now taking the "height" of the particular material into account instead of just blending the materials. As a result, transitions between materials are more realistic now (compared to basic blending)



We've also been tweaking the terrain generation and started working on new vegetation. This is something we want to get ready before we can release a first playable demo of the new version. We know things take quite long, but we're sure you'll like it once it's ready :) Anyway, we are very grateful for your patience!

Last but not least we want to share a screenshot of a fairly high mountain. Even if it doesn't look that tall, but this mountain has a total height of more than 800 blocks! Just as a reference, the highest mountain in the old version had a max height of ~230 blocks. So yes, you can build much higher in the new version ;)



Stay tuned for the next status update! To get more information about what's happening in the meantime, please check out our Trello Roadmap