Version 0.117 went live yesterday. It features the ability to edit ropes and joints in the layout editor. It's just another step in migrating to a full in-game level editor, with the last major step being editing of the ground. Grass and rocks went in with 0.116, but they weren't fully working until 0.117 as well. For a game about destruction, I find the grass/rocks surprisingly important to making the world feel more alive and complete.
The previous rope/joint editing made everything about rope editing tedious. It let you edit the data directly (and that works fine for grass and rock generation), but many times you want to abstract that data away and just pick two connections that should have a rope between them. That's what the new editor does, and it's now as easy as dragging from one node to another to create a joint or rope. There's still more to do, particularly in adding more joint types and letting you edit some of the parameters of those joints (such as motor speed, mass of the joints, etc), but it's far better than what existed before.
Getting to this point in the editor has been challenging. There is a lot of data in different places within structures and layouts, and lots of ways to generate/propagate it around. The editor code is a bit of a mess because there are so many things that have to be tracked and updated at different times. That has meant a lot of bugs or broken things. I've fixed a lot of the bugs, though I'm sure there are even more still lurking in the editors.
Not surprisingly, I've been getting burnt out by working on editors for the past few weeks, so I'm going to spend the next update (0.118) working on some new parts and other tweaks that I've been putting off. My brain just needs a little break from so much UI and data management/manipulation work. It's been a while since I added new parts, so I'm sure it'll be nice for everyone to have more stuff to use for vehicles.
WORMS Featured Vehicles
Speaking of vehicles, I recorded myself trying all the new WORMS Featured Vehicle entries, and compiled the honorable mentions and selections into a video. There were a lot of entries this time, and I really appreciate everyone who took the time to enter:
Doing the video took about 3 hours altogether, and I avoided doing voice on purpose because that would have added at least 2 more hours. I'm not sure I'll do videos for future Featured Vehicle Themes, but I thought it was worth trying it once to see the process and results.
I selected 12 vehicles to add to the Featured Vehicles section. I'll be sticking with multiples of 4 wherever possible just because it fits the UI better. In any case, having a longer timeframe seems to work better, so I'll do the same for the next theme as well.
New Featured Theme: SKIDS!
The next theme will be using skids as a main feature of your vehicle. I'm not going to set any limits/budgets on this one, as I don't think it matters as much for Sandbox-style vehicles. I still prefer small/efficient vehicles personally, but I don't think specific requirements are needed. In any case:
Create a vehicle featuring skids. Doesn't have to *not* have wheels, but I will be testing the vehicles on large islands (Aries and Test Island). The deadline will be May 15th.