Interview: Hardships of developing Blokoto

Hey there! Great to see you around! Have you checked out the latest updates about Blokoto Creators yet? No? Then what are you waiting for? Nothing in this world ever comes easy, right? Blokoto’s no exception. If we could, we’d summon flawless new features with a bit of magic and a shiny wand… and believe us, we tried. Unfortunately, Godot didn’t come with “spell support.” So, we’re sticking to the classic method: code, patience, and a healthy dose of hope.

As you can see from the conveniently placed arrow, that’s Inknight! Founder and lead developer of Blokoto. The visionary (and occasional madman) keeping this whole project standing! In this interview, he’ll talk about our pace and the challenges behind building the game. After all, life’s no walk in the park. We did plan to drop this update way before Halloween... but, like any good plan, it decided to take a little detour. It’s not easy, and that’s exactly why we want to show you the real side of things. Here’s an interview with Inknight: honest, raw, and completely unfiltered!

• What part of development takes more time?

"Before Jamesiin joined the team, I was the one handling the website design. I spent a lot of time planning it, and the results were always… well, very programmer art. They worked fine, but there was always that limiting factor. You can’t fully focus on something you’re not specialized in."

"Now that Jamesiin is our web designer, most of my time goes into the multiplayer and server-side systems. Since Blokoto is a multiplayer game, every system basically needs to be written twice, once for the client (your computer, the game you download) and once for the server (which lives in our cloud). So, if I add a light emitter in the game, I have to implement it on both sides."

Did you know that even character movement works this way? That’s right! When you move in the game, your client tells our server that your player is moving and needs their position updated. The server updates your position for everyone else connected — and then sends the result back to you.

It’s like there are two Blokotos running at the same time! Both behave differently under the hood, even though they look the same. That makes development a bit trickier. If Blokoto were a singleplayer game, things would be much simpler. But don’t worry! In Inknight’s own words: "Version 1.1.0-alpha really improved our workflow in that regard, since the object creation system has been rewritten to be much more automated."

• What's the hardest part of development so far?

"The hardest part of development is keeping every system connected. The infrastructure behind a project like Blokoto is… complicated. It’s made up of several layers, each one basically its own project. Just going through the process of creating an account, accessing the game page, downloading, hitting play, launching the game, and actually doing things inside it — that alone already involves around eight different services and projects working together. And that’s not even counting the payment systems, which are the trickiest and require the most care and security. Add the forum and Discord on top of that and… yeah, you get the idea. lol"

Keeping Blokoto running is tough work — but if that’s what it takes for masterpieces like Cathedral Ward and Armed Robbery of Neymar to exist, we’ll gladly do it with a smile on our face!

• Let's talk businesses, Inknight. Tell us a feature you'd like to add but it's not possible right now.

"Vehicles, like cars, bikes, jets, and jetpacks. They’re extremely complex and challenging to add in multiplayer games because of synchronization issues. It’s no coincidence that in most games, these systems are notoriously easy to break. It’s something I definitely want to add in the future, but the multiplayer side still needs to mature a bit before I can safely bring them into the game."

Yes — our dream of driving, flying, and speeding around is very real. It exists! …Just as soon as vehicles stop threatening to explode all our servers. Until then, we’ll keep dreaming of our races...

• Hardest feature to add til now?

"Without a doubt, it’s the Argila modeling system, specifically the tool that makes modeling possible. It’s not enough to just make a voxel system, it has to be heavily optimized so chunk updates happen quickly and don’t cause lag while editing. The current system took a long time to mature, and the modeling tool used to be a complete nightmare to work with."

Our veteran players will probably remember Argila’s early tools, from before the online mode even existed. One of our early mistakes was adding too many features before optimizing the game itself, and a lot had to be removed later. In Inknight’s own words: "It’s much more stable now compared to what it used to be, and even kind of satisfying to use. The hardest part was that I’m not very experienced with geometric calculations — and Argila is basically all about that. Using LLMs (AIs) during development really helped me visualize how to implement things in a stable way. The second hardest system was the weapons. It’s extremely tricky to develop multiplayer games where the server is the ultimate authority, and that complexity shows up in the weapon mechanics."

Today, Argila runs beautifully — and it’s only getting more optimized with time. As the foundation of the entire game, it naturally became our main focus early on. It just takes a lot of math… and a small piece of Inknight’s sanity to keep it all working.

• What's your credit card password and the three numbers on the back?

"a12345678! — 777"

Enjoy!

The Blokoto project is finally taking shape — but it’s still a baby finding its footing. You can help us grow by joining our Discord server or participating in the forum!

Join the Discord Server!

Join!

Thanks for following our journey — more news coming soon!