About

In early march 2009, Matthes Bender told the other developers of Clonk Rage that he wouldn't have any time to work on Clonk anymore. As the Lead Designer of Clonk since Clonk 1 and Directing Manager of RedWolf Design, the company selling the Clonk titles, he left a significant vacancy. The development of Clonk Rage, the last commercial Clonk title, was mostly done as a hobby by the other developers and although they wanted to continue doing that, they felt that more contributors were needed. RedWolf Design agreed to put the game engine's source code under an open source license, the ISC license. The source code was published in a public repository, allowing everyone to freely modify the source code and game content and discuss the future directions in an open forum. It was also decided to drop a lot of the "old" game content and drop the backwards compatibility requirement.

New Features since Clonk Rage

Since the project went open source, quite a few new experimental features have been introduced. In this newest installment of the Clonk series, we've left behind the old shackles and created something more advanced than anything you've ever seen in Clonk.

New in OpenClonk is the possibility to zoom in and out. Now, the clonk can be displayed in a proper size, larger than a mouse cursor ;-). Use the scroll wheel on the mouse or F5/F6 to zoom.

Also new is the possibility to add 3d models to be rendered ingame. As opposed to the classic sprite graphics, 3d models are much more versatile: First, the models don't get blurry and the animations don't seem edgy when zoomed in. Animations are directly saved in the model, they don't need to be pieced together from single renderings in different animation phases and then exported into a big Graphics.png anymore (goodbye, anigrab.exe). This allows to add a lot more animations than before. Currently, the clonk has more than 100 different animations.

The renderer loads models in the Ogre 3D format, a lightweight format for 3d models tailored to be rendered in realtime. Models in the landscape are projected orthographically and pictures of objects perspectively. Apart from the basic stuff, the renderer supports:

• UV mapped textures (including multitexturing)
• Transparent textures / alpha maps
• Texture animation
• Skeletal animation including blending of multiple animations
• Backface culling
• Live script-controlled mesh transformations and attachments

See the Artists Guide for how to create models that will be rendered in realtime.

The controls have been overhauled completely. With the new control system, it is much easier and intuitive to control your clonk. For new players, learning the unusual and unintuitive controls of Clonk has always been a huge obstacle to overcome before they could appreciate the bustling gameplay of clonk. The controls are now completely customizable and can be adjusted in any scenario/mod. The standard mouse controls are based on a well known scheme from many other games: Movement with WASD, throwing, aiming and using tools with the mouse. Space for interacting with objects in the landscape (like entering a building or grabbing a vehicle). Details of the new controls are explained in the first tutorials in the game. Apart from the keyboard+mouse control, it is also possible to use a gamepad. However this feature is still experimental and does only work for one gamepad. It is also not possible yet to customize the controls but this is planned in the future. An extensive documentation of the custom controls feature can be found in the C4Script documentation

The new control system goes hand in hand with the complete overhaul of the HUD. The minimalistic HUD was a thing that was repeatedly critized on Clonk. Now, the HUD is completely controlled by script (rather than controlled in the engine) which allows more flexibility for scenario and mod authors. The default HUD shows all clonks in the players team on the upper edge, all with an energy- and breath-bar right below their picture. This picture shows the actual clonk live, so if he is attacked or drowning, you see it in the picture. On the lower edge of the screen, the two items that the clonk is carrying in his hands which can be used with left and right-click are shown. Also, all other objects that can be interacted with in the landscape are shown there. All buttons that are shown in the HUD can be clicked to be used or to be selected and items can be dragged and dropped around the HUD where it makes sense. This feature is also interesting for mod makers.

Closely related to the controls and the HUD is the inventory system of the clonk. Every clonk has a backpack now, in which he can carry five items (which can be adjusted for any scenario). He can open the backpack and easily exchange any object in the backpack with one of the items in his hand. There is a big focus on tools in OpenClonk. The clonk needs a shovel to dig, an axe to chop and a hammer to build. In exchange, the clonk can not only carry more than the classic clonk, but he can also use any item: A sword, a bow, a shovel, a musket, a magical staff, etc.. There is no need for special clonks anymore, the abilities of a clonk are defined by his equipment.