I had another work trip this week so another lighter week for me. But I did get a few patches pushed out which I was pleased with.
I finally got the source of several bugs nailed down. I wrote the code for targeting quite a long time ago, and systems changed around it, leaving it in the dust. Most of the time when something like that happens, one can just staple on the new functionality and have it work. In this case, I continued doing that and it eventually broke down due to a logic problem. But now that's fixed.
I also added new functionality to the game this week, namely, a more convenient way to save games. Now, I know Rogues of Europa is a roguelike, and saves are a bit of an anathema to roguelikes. I do want to keep saves because I expect the finished game to take over a single session to complete. That opens the door to save-scumming, which was much less user-friendly to do before patch 0.0.38b. It's still up in the air for me whether or not I'll keep easy saving, but for now I'm on board with it. At least during the development phase, I think it's more important to give you all the ability to save frequently, especially with crashes being as frequent as they are.
Games can be easily saved, for now. You're on notice.
I finished out the week finishing out my ideas for the safecracker puzzle. One of the main issues I was dealing with was balancing the pared-down nature a puzzle must have and a property of virtual systems called skeuomorphism, or the resemblance of a virtual system to its actual counterpart. Put simply, it needs to look and feel like cracking a safe, while retaining the spirit of the puzzle.
Remember, it's not a blatant Wordle ripoff. Its a ripoff of what Wordle ripped off.
There are a few tweaks that need to be made here, like changing the size of the combination and the number of touchable numbers in the dial, but I think the bones here are pretty good. I'll wrap this up next week, add some penalties, and call it good. Remember to email any questions, comments, and prayer requests you have to [email protected].