Today we’re sharing what will be in release 102, and that it’s coming soon!

We’ve previously mentioned we’re working on multiple updates, not just the first crafting release. The fruit of that parallel development is… ripening. Ripening into a delicious, juicy update that turns our beautiful voxels into really beautiful voxels.

The next release of Oort Online (102) will focus on a complete overhaul of (almost) every texture in the game.

These aren’t just standard, boring textures though. We wanted our voxels to look unique and exceptional, unlike any other voxel game. And it was no small task…

Our art lead, Jason, painstakingly created the new textures at a very high resolution — over 4x the pixel density of the current textures. Each block is created as a highly detailed 3D surface, which is then baked into up to six separate textures per block: colour (shape/tone), normal (3D detail), specular (highlights/shininess),emissive (glow), alpha (transparency,) environment (reflection effect). In addition to that, blocks can also have another layer of texture called a decal that can also have those individual effect textures.

On top of these techniques, blocks also now have a new advanced texture blending technique. Grass blends and creeps onto stone, sand scatters over timber. As well as that, we have a shaded blend that makes the blocks look solidly embedded into the environment.

That’s a lot of textures! For example: the new tree trunk block has:

• Colour – 4 side textures, 1 top texture, 1 decal
• Normal – 4 side textures, 1 top texture, 1 decal
• Specular – 4 side textures, 1 top texture, 1 decal
• In total, thats’s 18 individual textures just for the tree trunk block alone.

The new stone block has:

• Colour – 4 side textures, 1 top texture
• Normal – 4 side textures, 1 top texture
• Specular – 4 side textures, 1 top texture
• Total: 15 individual textures

We don’t think anyone has attempted create anything quite as beautiful, or quite as crazy (!), as these textures in a voxel game before. As you can probably tell, we’re really proud of them. We can’t wait to show them to you in-game… very soon.