Skunkfrakker & Veelicious

November Week 1 Update! Hey Everyone! It's Monday! No build .. (SubscribeStar)

Published:

2020-11-09 21:37:00

Imported:

2021-03

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November Week 1 Update!

Hey Everyone!

It's Monday! No build this week, but I did get a ton of stuff done.

While I worked on a lot of things, the coolest thing is the new Theme system for Besti X, which is a Besti SDK tool that lets you make unique standalone Besti X executables that can then be distributed to others.

What's a theme though? Basically the whole look and feel of the interface, including icons, sounds, what menu options are available, default settings, and so on. The reason I wrote it is so I could make simplified interfaces for a couple of the upcoming programs that don't use all the buttons that Besti X does, but do it without having to "fork" (or generate otherwise incompatible code) the main Besti X program.

The consequence of doing it, though, is that the Besti SDK will be capable of making, essentially, a unique executable for your content that you can distribute as a standalone program. The origin of this is that I've had a few people who desire to be able to publish an interactive fanfic on Steam, but being deeply tied to an adult-oriented program that makes it a little inappropriate. This way, there will be an option to create standalone programs that use the Besti system without actually being visibly related to Besti. Making a VR game is way, way harder than most people think. This essentially gives a huge shortcut to creating a multiplatform VR game to anyone with an artistic interest in making one.

We'll figure out licensing and stuff later on that, but for now I needed it to be able to build 3 very-much adult-oriented things, but I didn't want to have to break compatibility with Besti in doing so. This makes the extra programs made in Besti X's system code compatible with Besti, which makes them easier to update and improve if people are particularly fond of them.

Big thanks to everyone who's submitted characters on the Google form last week! I'll be getting in there this week and adding those characters into the game <3

If you're still waiting on an email from me thank you for your patience! I'm down to ~85 emails and am continuing to work through them without needing to spend all week on them.

Here's the changelog for this week!

Besti X Beta 20 (No release yet)

Modified the MCP theme engine to be more intelligent and permit more things to be loaded in as a theme than previously.
Added additional logic to startup scene selection
Added code to permit a theme module to be created in the Besti SDK, permitting third parties to create their own front end, included scenes, included characters, etc. I need this to be a JSON file created in the BestiSDK so that'll be a somewhat complicated tool to make but
Made all the needed alterations to pull the basic UI sounds from the Theme Module
Made all the needed alterations to pull the sound effect testing sounds from the theme module
Made all the needed alterations to pull the voice volume testing sounds from the theme module
Made all the needed alterations to pull default control schemes from the theme module
Made all the needed alterations to pull menu setting options from the theme module
Resolved an issue that caused the current SDK build to not permit scenes loaded in the current Besti X release on Oculus Quest. This was done by altering how internally compiled places and friends work. Previously there were essentially two distinct databases which ultimately was confusing. Instead of doing that we're now injecting internally-compiled data into the pool of SDK-derived data to make them indistinct from SDK content (save for a variable that is set that indicates if it is internal or SDK-derived just so I can make a UI difference later if that's appropriate.) This is actually a very superior and easier-to-read solution.
Created a contingency to deal with a situation where a person could create a theme module that doesn't include a UI sound effect. Contingency in this case is just to have a non-theme UI noise available to prevent a crash for situations that require a sound effect.
Moved loading internal scenes to a threaded operation. This allows Oculus Quest to continue performing head-tracking on the Quest during a scene load. It takes one additional frame to load scenes on Windows (there's slight timing overhead on threaded operations) but that additional frame doesn't really matter.
Added theme module options to determine what options are available in the main menu
Added theme module options to determine what options are available in the in-game menu
Modified the code of the main menu to respect the buttons available in the main menu.
Modified the code of the in-game menu to respect the buttons available in the in-game menu. This was a bit more complicated than I thought it was going to be. Now creators can define what buttons show up in the menus.
Moved the Now menu into the theme module. I initially felt this would be better to be an online thing (where it pulled the data from the server on start) but with updates coming so quickly and a desire to let people make their own builds, putting this in the theme data. That might go online again, but it just feels like a needless security issue to me at the moment.
Moved the right panel (the one that will show loaded entities) into the theme system. Not all situations require that.
Created a BestiSDK tool for creating a unique theme.
Made the internal character base system. This allows me to compile-in characters that work on all platforms without needing to also distribute BestiSDK modules for these characters.

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November Week 1 Update!

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