Hey Fellow Brewers!
It's been some time since I last gave an update and I feel it's time to fill everyone in. So I've taken some time to myself, I completed a number of personal projects and tented to much neglected things. During this time I developed my programming and 3D artistic skills and freshened up on all the new happenings of Unity 3D. I started to look back on my older projects (mostly Draught Kraft) and realized that I went about it all wrong. Also Unity has changed quit a bit lately and I would like to try out some of the new systems. I racked up what's called a "technical debt" and saw why it would take so long for me to add anything new to the game. The architecture of the game gave way for convoluted and clunky controls, strange and weird bugs, and honestly not the best player experience.
So I got to thinking, "if I were to do it again, how?". And this where I am now. I want to rebuild Draught Kraft from the ground up (mostly, I can reuse a lot). I laid out some plans and ground rules but I think the core concept will still be intact.
Some of these rules are as followed:
- Don't reinvent the wheel. Although the new Unity input system didn't exist when I first started building Draught Kraft, I never bothered to switch over. My custom solution worked but wasn't pretty. There are a number of other systems that I "reinvented" that I shouldn't.
- Look for examples. I tried to make my own versions of things and this created some weird systems. Take the wall building for example. What I should do is look at how a game like The Sims does it since a lot of players are used to that system.
- No super classes. This a programming one but I had a number of manager scripts that tried to do a lot. I'll need to keep a very clean code base. A side rule I came up for this is: treat everything as an independent module or tool. Treat it as if someone else is going to use it.
- Content is created as if a modder made it. I want modding to be a thing for Draught Kraft and it always was an after thought. So I figure if I can add content externally, then anyone can. This will allow modding from day one.
- Know when to add big features. I think my timeline might have been off when coming up with what I wanted in different releases. If something interacts throughout the game, it might need to be created or at least have a placeholder. Like modding, I would like to have language localization. This would be a real pain to go back through and edit later on. So It's another feature that will need to be there from the start.
There are a number of other more technical rules that I set out for myself but I won't bore you with it.
But the other major thing will be a change in graphic style. I'll keep a cartoonish look but I've experimented with a number of styles lately and I'd like to try them out and see what is the most universally attractive.
This new path forward will be developing over the next few weeks and into 2021. I wish I could be more exacting with a timeline but as I've stated before, Draught Kraft has been shifted to a hobby status.
Check back soon for more updates and hopefully some pretty pictures of new development!
Happy Brewing!
-Vertnacular