Monday 7th:
Bank holiday.
Tuesday 8th:
Summary:
- Side project and recovery from playing Pathologic 2.
Played Pathologic 2 over the weekend. What an amazing game. Achieved closure on this game at about 8am on Monday night, so I was pretty wrecked for Tuesday. I'm really inspired for 'Project W' at the moment, so I spent what energy I had yesterday on doing a bit of work and writing for that.
Seriously impressed by the writing here. I guess what makes it amazing is the literature it draws from and the fact that this world and characters have been alive since the first game. Could say a lot more but I'll get back to work.
Wednesday 9th:
Summary:
- Minor bug fixes.
- Finishing touches to Wall Builder.
This week I want to achieve 3 things.
1. Hook Lines.
2. Automation.
3. New Transport Building UI.
But first, I should play and fix this build and refamiliarize myself with it.
Playtested and fixed and made myself a nice little list.
Having a lot of trouble fixing a bug where the Wall Transport Frame doesn't appear, but only for the Solid Outpoint of the Printer. No idea why. So far I've spent about an hour just trying to figure out why.
Fixed that issue. Was a problem with any object with more than one outpoint.
Fixed the Animation for the Pipe and Pipe Turn (after changing the pivots). Also made a note to do the work of animating the mergers and splitters as well.
Fixed a minor bug with Quest Alerts for the Clients.
Made it possible to flip more buildings. I don't want the player to have to worry too much about criss-crossing transport lines too much. I still get the 'negative scale box collider' warning but it causes no problems. I wish I could turn that warning off or at least know why I should heed it.
Thursday 10th:
Summary:
- Fixing bugs and making my base.
- Smoothing out code.
Having a good think about how complicated the Fabricators are. With 2 Inputs and 1 Output, having several machines gets messy really quickly. At worst, it's the same problem Satisfactory has but with much less space. I think the best way for me to mitigate this would be with teleporters which will cost extra power to use. I thought about having Human haulers to maybe make things easier and maybe making the precursor to clothing and drugs in a separate machine that does not require a Human to operate. For now I'm just going to leave it.
In my own base, I'm trying a different strategy. Instead of having different sectors for each type of Human, having them all live together and clothing them appropriately on their way in.
Still getting a few bugs here and there with the controller. I've levelled up tons since I started this project. Right now the Controller code is getting caught in that loop where fixing one thing breaks another. So I'm combing through and fixing this code.
As much as I'd love to work on new content, I think I should do this first.
The first thing is making a function for 'Equip Tool'. This means I can delete a lot of lines for resetting the old tool and equipping(sometimes instantiating) a new one. Instead I can just write 'Controller.EquipTool(GameObject TargetTool)'.
There is still more I could do to make the Controller script a bit cleaner, but this should be enough for now. No need to fix what isn't broken at this stage.
Running into quite a few issues with the Pipe Builder. After a lot of stress and trial and error I figured it out though.
Thinking back to the complicated fabricators issue. The problem is in the way I've done the Splitters. My Splitters so far can only go right and left, but not forward. So I need to rethink this.
Should I make it possible to have a 3-way splitter? Should I make it possible to have a 2 in-2 out splitter? Shall I go back to the old 'Smart Junction' which was fully customizable?
Conclusion: I'm just going to go with a simple splitter that sends items forward except for the filtered item which can go to the side. This also makes it simpler to manage that interface.
- Deal with Pipe Clone issue.
- Make and upload build.
Friday 11th:
Summary:
- Sorted the new Y shaped smart splitters.
Looks like I'm not going to hit my goal this week. I feel like the time has been productive, working on things that are best considered sooner rather than later, but I definitely prefer ending the week with a bit more content to show for it.
So today the task is to change the Smart Splitters into 'Y's instead of 'T's.
This turned out to be pretty damn easy. I worked carefully and slowly, but it was really simple because of the way I programmed it.
With this new setup, the UI could be a lot simpler. However for now I'm going to keep it how it is and put a pin on it for a big UI update. For now I'm keen to get this build out.
Spending my remaining energy doing some groundwork for the Hooklines. I will probably do some 'Project W' work over the weekend.