It's only been one month since the last update, but I feel a whole year older. You're probably wondering (or maybe not) how it went. The answer is... uh... I rewrote almost all of the game. This is gonna be a more technical post than my others simply because I spent a ton of my time coding.
WHAT? WHY?
OK yes I know that sounds like a huge waste of time and one of the CLASSIC pitfalls of every indie dev; but seriously it was 100% necessary. I originally started working on this game back in 2022 (actually late 2021) and didn't plan on releasing the game on Steam, just playing with my friends and other random people (shareware, baby!). So I just blasted through the code as lazily as possible without thinking about the consequences LOL. It was really bad and no way to handle a commercial release.
What did I do? (WARNING: nerd stuff on this section)
Code wise:
The entire base class that manages the whole game. GlobalGameManager now PregoWarsGame that's actually static, has properly exposed APIs, and is overall much more robust.
I moved player input handling outside of the character controller, opting instead to drive them with an IInputAdapter interface. I did this because I wanted to use the same character controller for the local player (client), dummies (spawned in training mode), and networked players. Now, I've got an implementation of IInputAdapter for these three uses cases and all the code is nicely organized.
Every entity has a Team now and they can't attack others on the same team. This was a pretty big refactoring because it turns out there are a lot of things that do damage in this game. I also moved everything up to have a 64-bit Id rather than the old dinky 32-bit one.
I added the IGameMode interface that every game mode in the game will implement. Game-modes can define match parameters that can be changed by the host before the game starts, they can define teams based on those parameters, they can control the match timer, and have a ton of events we can hook into. The new teams system that goes along with this is super flexible, allowing people to choose teams or get automatically shuffled. It also supports no-teams (FFA) and defining teams which don't get automatically filled, such as a "spectator" team.
I implemented a simple game-mode for training mode called GameModeDeathmatchEternity that has no teams and no time limit. We can FINALLY die and respawn.
You also finally get points when you get a kill.
I knocked all the old hardcoded content out and replaced them with easy-to-use Registry systems. The characters, debuffs, and match mutators all now use a registry/loader pattern that makes it super easy for modders to add their own content.
I rewrote a portion of the map editor so that tools are now dynamic, not hardcoded. We can define map editor tools now (IEditorTool) and they have tons of events you can play with. When you register them, they'll also show up in the topbar now and be pickable with the number keys.
I started working on official docs for modders to use as a reference, so no guessing on how to make stuff.
Got custom maps to load (woohoo!). It's early days but it's nice to see all that work come together. I'm getting giddy just thinking about this OMG!
Created a wrapper for Steamworks' lobby system and hooked it up into a test UI.
This is not how it's gonna look in the end, but I need a way to invite people, adjust match settings, pick maps, etc. while I'm developing.
NON coding stuff:
I finally figured out how to do proper IK in Blender, animate individual actions, and then export them out to Unity. I'm gonna be spending some time this month getting our new models into the game. Woo!
Upgraded to Unity 6.3 LTS all the way up from an old 2022 version. This was surprisingly easy but I had to move to the new input system which took up a full day. One plus is that resolution no longer affects your sensitivity though! Input rebinding and input glyphs are gonna be way easier now too.
Had to spend half a night in Fusion combining textures because Unity for some reason uses the ALPHA CHANNEL of your COLOR TEXTURE as the ROUGHNESS! WHY?!
Watch the Video:
I also dedicated three full work days to content production and managed to get out one long-form video and four short-form videos (two unique, two snippets of the main video). Check it out!:
View game page
What's Comin Next?
This month I plan to get Multiplayer testing going with the buds over in the discord server, get the new characters added into the game, work more on the map editor tools, and whatever else I can sink my grubby mitts into. Possibly localization, input glyphs, and lots of other smaller stuff.
Follow Development
Join the Discord Server for progress updates, give feedback on anything, hang out! We even have a full week planned where you can only talk about Italian food.
Subscribe on YouTube, I post shorts and a monthly devlog vid.
I'm on TikTok now too but have no clue what I'm doing.