Hall of Stars - Interactable NPC’s, Fun Facts and a Loading Screen

I’ve gone ahead and added NPC’s to the project rooms, to bring some more life to them. I had to rebuild/refactor some other things in order to implement this, for example the API (which handled requests single-threaded). I put some time into the pixel art for the NPC, which turned out pretty well (my expectations weren’t very high, art is not my strong suit , thanks @evmaagca for the advice ). The walking logic was pretty doable, but it kept walking into the walls, so I had to implement a way to keep it wandering around it’s spawn point. It now has to fetch alot more stuff from the API, that caused loading times to increase significantly. So I added threading and other small optimizations to the networking. Thanks to @mixidmb for fixing a bug with Stardance Stats where it would not fetch some projects that were created later on in Stardance. And ofcourse thanks to @torkel for supporting my Stardance Influencer journey

New Features:

• Interactable NPC’s: NPC’s with object- and playercollisions, who can show a dialogue upon the press of a configurable keybind. It wanders around a specific area around it’s spawn point, which can also be configured. It changes faces and shows a keybind hint when you enter the interaction range.
• Fun Facts: Each project room now contains a Starling NPC, who tells you three fun facts about your project. Such as project hours, leaderboard ranks, etc.
• Loading Screen: A nice-looking loading screen to keep the players attention when the start-up takes longer than 200ms!

Future Plans:

• Representative Rooms: I wanna add more objects to the project rooms that represent a specific stat on that project. For example spent hours, earned stardust, etc.

Hall of Stars - Interactables, UI manager and Project Info

This was by far the hardest part of the project for me. I had to start mixing the generation and objects of the game itself with the UI, to integrate properly working NPC’s and interactable projects. But this was really a necessary part of the process to make the rooms have immersive contents. I managed to survive it (thanks to @torkel ), so now comes the fun part of designing the rooms!

New Features:

• Interactables: Adds a way to select an object and have a specific range around them where the player is able to open an UI upon the press of the set keybind. It also shows a hint for the keybind and what it does when you enter the interaction range. It is also possible to change the texture of the target object when entering the interaction range.
• UI Manager: A global class that manages the active UI’s and overlays (such as hints for interactables). It makes sure everything is displayed correctly and keybinds and events are passed on to the right UI screen.
• Project Info: Every room now contains a altar with a book on it, this will contain all your project info (WIP).

Future Plans:

• Detailed Project Rooms: I wanna add more representing objects in the project rooms and possibly add some decoration later on.
• Better Character? I might add a better fitting character if I have the time for it.
• NPC’s: I might wanna add some NPC’s you can talk to.

Hall of Stars #4 - UI: Welcome Screen, Dialogues & Input Screens

Never thought UI would be this hard, but it looks decently polished after 10h (or 9h and 55m to be precise) of coding. I’ve added a beautiful welcoming screen that sets up the .env for you and explains some stuff (like controls, use case, etc.). I’ve used assets from the Stardance Github. I eventually also found a cartoon yapping mp3 in there, so I thought it’d be funny to use that. No idea what it’s originally used for, but it helps. Thanks to @torkel for supporting my work and helping me endure all this. Peace out!

New Features:

• Welcome Screen: An instructive conversation that consists out of 4 dialogues:
  • An instruction for the keybinds
  • Explaination of what the project is and what the use cases are
  • An input field where you enter your Stardance username to connect to the Stardance Stats API
  • A have fun page
• Dialogues: A class that draws a screen with text. It takes the text that is spoken and has optional arguments for a character png file and a character name to display.
• Input Screen: A screen that returns a value which the users enters. Takes a question and a placeholder.

Future Plans:

• Refactor some messy code
• Add project information to the rooms, like a museum for every project

Hall of Stars #4 - UI: Welcome Screen, Dialogues & Input Screens

Never thought UI would be this hard, but it looks decently polished after 10h (or 9h and 55m to be precise) of coding. I’ve added a beautiful welcoming screen that sets up the .env for you and explains some stuff (like controls, use case, etc.). I’ve used assets from the Stardance Github. I eventually also found a cartoon yapping mp3 in there, so I thought it’d be funny to use that. No idea what it’s originally used for, but it helps. Thanks to @torkel for supporting my work and helping me endure all this. Peace out!

New Features:

• Welcome Screen: An instructive conversation that consists out of 4 dialogues:
  • An instruction for the keybinds
  • Explaination of what the project is and what the use cases are
  • An input field where you enter your Stardance username to connect to the Stardance Stats API
  • A have fun page
• Dialogues: A class that draws a screen with text. It takes the text that is spoken and has optional arguments for a character png file and a character name to display.
• Input Screen: A screen that returns a value which the users enters. Takes a question and a placeholder.

Future Plans:

• Refactor some messy code
• Add project information to the rooms, like a museum for every project

Hall of Stars - Collision, Hitboxes, Room Loading/Unloading & Working Doors

I’ve been working hard on trying to get this game in a playable state as soon as possible, so I can then further expand the game but also make it ready for shipping whenever I need. That’s why I’m focussing on features like collisions and room navigation. I moved the main loop to level.py to let the world tick everything, and only the visual rendering is done in the main class. You can now walk through doors and easily move rooms and I even added a carpet! Shoutout to my number one fan @torkel for supporting all my great work

New Features:

• Collisions: All collidable are added to a sprite group, which is saved in the level class and passed on to the player class to check for collisions.
• Hitboxes: Added the option for tiles to have a hitbox smaller than it’s tile (16x16). The player also has a smaller hitbox to make it able to create depth.
• Room Loading/Unloading: Each room saves it’s own tiles and collidable objects. When a room is loaded, these are added into the global tiles and collidable objects groups. They are removed form the global groups upon unloading the room.
• Working Doors: The doors now work seamlessly and loads you into a specific room.

Future Plans:

• API class using Stardance Stats from @mixidmb , shoutout to him for creating that API.
• Generating rooms based on project information with the possibility to view project details.

Hall of Stars - Collision, Hitboxes, Room Loading/Unloading & Working Doors

I’ve been working hard on trying to get this game in a playable state as soon as possible, so I can then further expand the game but also make it ready for shipping whenever I need. That’s why I’m focussing on features like collisions and room navigation. I moved the main loop to level.py to let the world tick everything, and only the visual rendering is done in the main class. You can now walk through doors and easily move rooms and I even added a carpet! Shoutout to my number one fan @torkel for supporting all my great work

New Features:

• Collisions: All collidable are added to a sprite group, which is saved in the level class and passed on to the player class to check for collisions.
• Hitboxes: Added the option for tiles to have a hitbox smaller than it’s tile (16x16). The player also has a smaller hitbox to make it able to create depth.
• Room Loading/Unloading: Each room saves it’s own tiles and collidable objects. When a room is loaded, these are added into the global tiles and collidable objects groups. They are removed form the global groups upon unloading the room.
• Working Doors: The doors now work seamlessly and loads you into a specific room.

Future Plans:

• API class using Stardance Stats from @mixidmb , shoutout to him for creating that API.
• Generating rooms based on project information with the possibility to view project details.

Hall of Stars #2 - Camera, Rooms, Layers, Dynamic Hallway Generation & More

Long time no see! Finally came to a point where committing was valid and the code was not messed up. I was rewriting alot of code throughout the process of adding all these features, because every new feature I came up with needed a change in the previous feature’s code. Anyway shoutout to my number one fan @torkel and may the --force be with you!

New Features:

• Camera: A camera that follows the player around and renders all the visible objects.
• Rooms: Added the functionality to generate rooms with adjustable width, height and walls.
• Dynamic Hallway Generation: A subclass of the Rooms class that generates a hallway with a door for every project you have on stardance.
• Dummy API: Because the stardance API doesn’t have profile fetching yet.
• Layers: So everything renders correctly

Future Plans:

• Adding a way to see what door represents what project.
• Adding decorations
• Adding room teleport logic
• Adding project visualization in rooms

Hall of Stars - Character Sprite Animations & Walking Logic

First devlog for Hall of Stars, yipee! I came up with this idea while playing Pokemon Diamond on my old DS lite. I just like the way it feels, the movement is so jittery, but it still feels nice to play. So I came up with the idea to make a game with a matching style. I was kinda done with minecraft-themed projects, so I thought: “Why not do something with the Stardance API, since I’m building this project for stardance anyway.” I decided to start making a retro topdown game (just like Pokemon Diamond) where you spawn into a long hallway with doors on the sides. Those doors represent all the projects you’ve made on stardance. When entering a door it will give you more information on the project, like hours spent, number of devlogs and their contents, number of ships, and more if I get the chance.

New Features:

• Screen: Yeah, I added a screen. This makes it possible for your eyes to see what’s happening. It must be one of the best inventions ever in gaming.
• Character Sprite Texture: I textured the character in all the frames, this took long . The animation and character template are made by ErisEsra, so big shoutout to her.
• Character Sprite Animations: I’ve made sure the template animation works properly and the player now has idle and walk animations for all four directions.
• Player Movement: I implemented the logic for moving the player, with the same system as most retro games: Up, Down, Left or Right. No diagonal walking.

Future Plans:

• Constructing the hallway
• Adding the doors and rooms
• Making an API class that communicates with the stardance API.
• Add projects to the hallway through the API
• Add project details to the rooms

Hall of Stars - Character Sprite Animations & Walking Logic

First devlog for Hall of Stars, yipee! I came up with this idea while playing Pokemon Diamond on my old DS lite. I just like the way it feels, the movement is so jittery, but it still feels nice to play. So I came up with the idea to make a game with a matching style. I was kinda done with minecraft-themed projects, so I thought: “Why not do something with the Stardance API, since I’m building this project for stardance anyway.” I decided to start making a retro topdown game (just like Pokemon Diamond) where you spawn into a long hallway with doors on the sides. Those doors represent all the projects you’ve made on stardance. When entering a door it will give you more information on the project, like hours spent, number of devlogs and their contents, number of ships, and more if I get the chance.

New Features:

• Screen: Yeah, I added a screen. This makes it possible for your eyes to see what’s happening. It must be one of the best inventions ever in gaming.
• Character Sprite Texture: I textured the character in all the frames, this took long . The animation and character template are made by ErisEsra, so big shoutout to her.
• Character Sprite Animations: I’ve made sure the template animation works properly and the player now has idle and walk animations for all four directions.
• Player Movement: I implemented the logic for moving the player, with the same system as most retro games: Up, Down, Left or Right. No diagonal walking.

Future Plans:

• Constructing the hallway
• Adding the doors and rooms
• Making an API class that communicates with the stardance API.
• Add projects to the hallway through the API
• Add project details to the rooms

PROJECT CONTEXT: I don’t own a chair, so I sit on my bed, with my laptop on a desk so that I can play videogames (attached below is a detailed sketch of my setup). However after some time playing, say, Minecraft for example, my back begins to ache.

This could be solved by building a better posture or simply buying a chair, but I’m unemployed, and I’d much rather move backwards and rest my back on the wall. However, this makes it incredibly difficult to play Minecraft now that there is a significant distance between myself and the gaming device.

“Man, I wish I could play Minecraft without touching my laptop, like just by gesturing with my hands or something”

And this is how the general idea behind MotionCraft was birthed. The issue is: I have never made a Minecraft mod before, so this will be a learning experience in which I will learn ML and Java, as I take you all along with me on this journey.

Monicraft - Offline Player Caching, More statistics, Better Exception Handling & More

The final devlog for Monicraft is finally here. It has been a long, but really educational, journey. I’ve locked in for a last time and rewritten the whole player manager logic . It is now way more optimized and only updates the data for online players. I’ve switched from keeping everything apart to making a class for each player and storing all the data in it, and then keeping those objects in a dictionary with the player’s uuid as the key.

New Features:

• Offline Player Caching: The data for all players is now cached at all times, right into memory. It then checks the online player list and updates it every 30 seconds (by default).
• More configuration: You can now change the interval for the player data fetching and the online player list fetching. You can also set a prefix for the chat mode, like Admin Camilio13 > {message}.
• More Resource Management: You can now also see the disk usage (total size of the server) and network inbound and outbound on the main screen.
• UI improvement: I gave the main screen a little overhaul to make it look a bit better. And I tried to make the buttons and everything else as stable as possible, but they’re still sometimes shifting or not perfectly centered depending on your screen size and terminal zoom. This is a problem I can’t fix and will always be there when using Textual.
• Fixed bugs:
  • Several bugs with dummy mode, the app relied on non-existing API functions.
  • Cursor kept shifting when player list refreshed.
  • Pterodactyl client API rate limit was exceeded on big servers.

Monicraft - Offline Player Caching, More statistics, Better Exception Handling & More

The final devlog for Monicraft is finally here. It has been a long, but really educational, journey. I’ve locked in for a last time and rewritten the whole player manager logic . It is now way more optimized and only updates the data for online players. I’ve switched from keeping everything apart to making a class for each player and storing all the data in it, and then keeping those objects in a dictionary with the player’s uuid as the key.

New Features:

• Offline Player Caching: The data for all players is now cached at all times, right into memory. It then checks the online player list and updates it every 30 seconds (by default).
• More configuration: You can now change the interval for the player data fetching and the online player list fetching. You can also set a prefix for the chat mode, like Admin Camilio13 > {message}.
• More Resource Management: You can now also see the disk usage (total size of the server) and network inbound and outbound on the main screen.
• UI improvement: I gave the main screen a little overhaul to make it look a bit better. And I tried to make the buttons and everything else as stable as possible, but they’re still sometimes shifting or not perfectly centered depending on your screen size and terminal zoom. This is a problem I can’t fix and will always be there when using Textual.
• Fixed bugs:
  • Several bugs with dummy mode, the app relied on non-existing API functions.
  • Cursor kept shifting when player list refreshed.
  • Pterodactyl client API rate limit was exceeded on big servers.

Monicraft - Offline Player List, Async Player Data Fetching & More

Monicraft’s second-to-last devlog has arrived . I’ve now added the last feature I wanted to add, the “include offline player list” button. It works by simply getting the whole usercache.json file and getting all the names and UUID’s in it. After that it’s just using my old function to retrieve the saved data and stats on the server. I still wanna optimize it and take some time to fix and improve the application overall.

New Features:

• Include Offline Players: A toggle which toggles (yeah, the toggle toggles something ) the visibility of offline players in the Player List. Also added a extra column to the table to see who’s online and who’s not. Online players will allways show up at the top. You’re also able to use some of the Player Manager’s features on offline players.
• Async Player Data Fetching: The fetching of playerdata (stored in {UUID}.dat) now operates in parralel, so bigger servers don’t have to wait for seconds every time the table is built. This brings up the problem that the default rate limit for the client API is 240 requests/min, so really big servers with more than 40 recent (offline) players or even online players will exceed this limit. This is why I wanted to implement offline player caching, more on that in future plans.
• Improved Stats UI: The statistics pop-up was a bit too small and not all the data could fit in. So I made it a bit cooler by making it bigger
• Small Fixes
  • Only ping the server when it’s running to prevent errors.
  • Fixed a problem where my Unicode characters got turned into ugly emoji’s . I didn’t discover this until I ran it in my native terminal, I’ve done all the testing in my built-in terminal in my IDE.

Future Plans:

I think I will be doing one more devlog where I will add these features and polish it for the first SHIP.

• Fix a bug where you suddenly select the first row of the table after rebuilding it
• Create a cache for offline players
• Add disk usage resource data
• Settings: Changing the loop delay
• Settings: Chat mode and message prefixes
• Make the GitHub workflow files
• Make an installation guide in the README

Monicraft - Player Statistics, Asynchronous Networking & More

I’ve been working hard on some big changes to make the project, faster, more reliable and visually attractive. I’ve gone ahead and implemented one of the two final changes, the statistics screen for players. It was alot of repetitive work, but I managed to make it look good. At first I wanted to parse some of the saved stats (such as play time, deaths, etc.) manually, but I came to the conclusion that formatting the tag (minecraft:damage_dealt –> Damage Dealt) and showing them was a better idea. I found some naming logic in the tags so I could filter out time, distances and damage to format them into a readable format. All distance stats end with one_cm and are stored in centimeters (1/100 of a block). All time stats contain the substring "time" and are stored in ticks (1/20 of a second). And finally all the damage stats contain the substring "damage" and are stored as 10 times the damage for more precision (or 20 times the hearts damage).

New Features:

• Statistics screen: This screen is accessed trough the “Stats” button in the player manager and contains 3 tabs: General, Entities and Items. General contains stats like amount of jumps, distance walked and interactions with special blocks, entities shows the kill count for every entity you’ve killed and the Items tab shows how many of each item you’ve crafted, mined, used, broken, picked up and dropped.
• Async Networking: I’ve switched from the requests library to the httpx library to make it so queries, server statuses and normal requests all operate separately.
• UUID caching: Monicraft will now no longer have to send a request to the API to figure out someones UUID. On the first request it caches every user and their names, which are stored in usercache.json on the server, right into RAM for faster acces and less requests.
• Small fixes and optimizations: When starting up without any credentials, it will now scan for credentials until inputted in the settings instead of crashing. The request headers are also updated when new credentials saved. I’ve fixed a logging issue with the API class which was trying to show notifications, without being part of the actual GUI. It is now fixed by passing the app class onto the API class and giving it acces to the GUI.

Future Plans:

• Include offline players in player manager: Last real feature I want to add.
• Finalizing and polishing: I wanna make sure everything runs bug-free, the program doesn’t crash and also make it look good on most (I can’t make it look good on all screen sizes) screen sizes. I need to build the executables and make sure they’re working.

Monicraft - Player Manager, Dummy Mode & More!

I’m getting close to finishing this project (fr this time ). I think it will be one more devlog, it’s been a long ride.

I randomly realised that not everyone has a minecraft server laying around, so I decided to make a dummy mode, so everyone can test out the Monicraft dashboard. I’ve now polished all the player manager buttons (except for Include offline players and Statistics, more on that in future plans). You’re now able to message, kick, ban and change gamemode with the player manager. I made this more user-friendly by using pop-ups.

New Features:

• Pop-ups in Player Manager: You’re now able to give the reason for a kick or ban with the use of an interactive pop-up. The message feature also uses a pop-up to send a message directly to the selected player. Changing the gamemode is done trough a pop-up with a selection menu, which excludes the gamemode the player is currently in and let’s you choose between the other 3.
• Dummy Mode: This mode is accessed by adding the --dummy argument when running the program. This makes it so every command that is sent to the “server” is just displayed in the terminal, making you able to see what’s going on. I’ve added a stream_dummy_data() function that updates the stats every 2 seconds with random values. The mod list will be empty. The player list will display a random new player every 10 seconds (those are the default minecraft skins’ names + some random number). You’re able to use every feature from the player manager in dummy mode, everything being sent will be displayed in the console.
• Fixed Reconnect Logic: When the server disconnects for whatever reason, the dasboard will now try to reconnect every 5 seconds.
• Queries with statusses as fallback: The recent implementation used both queries and statusses if queries were enabled. It now only uses statusses if queries are not enabled. This makes it alot more optimized, using only one of two all the time.

Future Plans:

• Implement the Include Offline Players button: This makes it so offline players (cached in usercache.json in the server’s root) will be displayed in the player list. Maby I’ll also add the ability to manage offline players, but I’m not sure.
• Implement the Statistics button: This button will show a pop-up that shows all the player’s stats (such as blocks broken, mobs killed, etc.)

Monicraft - Player Manager, NBT Parsing & More

It’s been a few long session with alot of thinking and implementing . I never thought that getting the online players would be so hard. At first, I wanted to use minecraft’s list command and then parse the output from the terminal, but that was way too hard and would not work on big servers with terminals full of commands. So I decided to use the mcstatus library to get a list of all online players. This is done by:

1. Sending a query to the server.
2. If queries are disabled on the server or the query simply fails, it sends a normal status request (server list ping) to the server.

I then use the name to get the UUID of a player stored in the usercache.json file in the root directory of every minecraft server. That UUID is then used to get the saved {UUID}.dat file in the worlds folder. All the player’s data (e.g. health, hunger, position, gamemode, etc.) is stored in there. This brings the restriction of the server’s autosave time (which is 5 minutes by default). So I’ve also added a refresh button which saves the game and updates the player list. The player list is automatically updated every ten seconds and based off the lastest safe file.

New Features:

• Player Manager: A way to see all online players and their statistics. You can also kick and ban people by just selecting them and clicking a button.

Future Plans:

• Adding the functionality to toggle the visibility of offline players in the player list.
• Adding functionality to the following buttons: Stats, Message, Gamemode
• Adding a player stats screen (viewed by clicking the stats button) which shows all the statistics of a single player (e.g. mobs killed, blocks broken, distance ran, etc.)

Monicraft - Mods list, Server kill, Navigation buttons & UI/UX improvements

• I’ve added buttons to navigate between screens. I forgot to add this last time, so travelling between screens was a bit tricky.
• You’re now able to kill the server for when the server get’s stuck in a shutdown or crashes. It will sent a confirmation pop-up message upon the first click, telling you to click another time to confirm. This lasts for 10 seconds and then it will reset.
• I’ve also added a new screen with a list of all the mods you’ve installed on the server, including name, file size and last changed date.
• The UI/UX is now alot more stable. I had orginally designed everything on my monitor. But when I would use it on my laptop screen, the whole UI collapsed. So I made everything a bit smaller.

Future plans:

This project is close to being finished, but I want to add two last features.

• Player management: Quickly see who’s online on the server and manage them (kick, ban, whitelist, unwhitelist)
• Version manager: See what versions of Minecraft, Java and mod loader you’re using and modify them.

I spend my time today and yesterday to learn Python. So i did some assignments to learn it a bit. I made a little game guess the number with helped a lot to learn!

My plan for now on is to make a calculator for minecraft weapon damage. I still need to start working on it. But atleast im a bit more familiar with python.

I really want to get better at Python. So when a friend of mine invited me i started working!
I came up with the idea because i play Minecraft a lot and i was curious how the game calculates the damage. And a Sword is a bit basic. But the Mace and the Spear work allot differently.

I also switched from VS code to Antigravity IDE. So ai could help me more easy when i need it to.

Here is a screenshot of my guess the number game.

Monicraft - Settings, Power action buttons, Visual Improvements

• I’ve added a settings page where you can configure your API key, Panel endpoint and Server ID. It has a save button and automatically saves when leaving the screen, which writes the inputs to an .env file. You can also reset these value’s.
• I’ve added power action buttons, which can be used to start, restart or stop your minecraft server.
• I’ve added pop-up toasts for errors and informative messages.
• I’ve improved the connection funtions to retry every 5 seconds when the connection is lost.

Future Plans:

• Adding a button to navigate to the settings menu (it is now accessed by sending the settings command).
• Version manager for Java, Minecraft and Mods.