Progress update- new upcoming features ^^ (Patreon)

The cascade

I had a simple idea for a dev feature that kept unexpectedly unlocking big new player features. These are all planned features now.

So, I figure I can make character creation easier for myself by writing a tool to edit characters and items together from existing assets. It'll be a big upgrade over the spreadsheet software I'm using.

To actually be a boost to my dev speed, this needs to run in-engine so I can immediately see the results of tweaks. That means it'll be bundled with the game engine. So, it could be used by players too. Not a full Bethesda character creation screen, but a tool for easy-ish in-game character/item modding. 

For now, making completely new graphics like custom toys or manestyles will remain near-impossible, since this feature doesn't solve that difficulty.

But... making this tool requires the ability to read and write files for each new object or character. Which also means individual modded character files could be made and shared by players. 

(a reminder that these are future features, not currently implemented)

Since this involves saving/loading data, that means that saving/loading your game will also be able to use the same code. Which means... real save game files (finally)! This game would benefit a lot from being able to save things exactly how you set them up. Also, we could make and share pre-built scenarios or "levels" using save game files.

Then I realized... building characters and toys in-game also means I can use my debugging tools at the same time to quickly stress test the things I'm making. In fact, this whole situation is starting to look like a shoddy but functional game engine editor. It'll be hella useful for my projects, but I could see it being used by others for modding as well.

I'm hyped at how doable this stuff is.

This all started because I had a day out of the house with no wifi, and couldn't access my latest code. I finally sat down and confronted a difficult feature I'd been avoiding. As a reward I found answers to more problems than I was expecting. This really is the reason to confront the difficult problems rather than let the discomfort push you into avoiding them. I viewed this stuff as "too hard" for me and am a little embarrassed to see how many good things might have been missed out on, when they're relatively little effort to include.

Not that it's super easy, mind you.

This, like the extensive debugger I have now, will grow with my needs. I won't be stopping everything to build this, but instead working on small pieces of it to help my work go faster. It will slowly get more powerful and create the features I mentioned above as it does.

The debugger has taught me that building something that addresses your current issue, whenever you run into a repeated issue, is an incredibly effective approach to improving your process. You smooth out each jagged piece as it comes up but don't overthink it. Applying this wisdom to the character creation process feels like a natural fit.

Game structure

This week I also reworked the top down structure of the game. Over time all the different major systems and managers for earlier versions gathered in one spot. It was time to put them into a planned out structure. Doing this ended up in changes across hundreds of files for one change:

Now the game works from a sensible Game class, which holds all the top level systems like the mouse, camera position, and main game loop, plus a few others.

This simplifies some of the attempts I was doing to make things modular and easy to scale. I was a little stuck in the fancy new Entity Component Systems way of doing things, and forgot that simple problems are only made harder by using fancy solutions. Like, there's not gonna be more than one mouse, or camera, or game loop.

This time, though, I won't abuse the simplicity and use proper code architecture. Simplicity in the hands of past me was dangerous because I didn't know how to wield it responsibly.

... and that's all for now!

Y'all, I can only express gratitude for your support in this project. I'm delighted to see movement in the project, but quite impatient to get to the next stuff. You people deserve the best smut possible for all your support. I will do my best to make it <3