Hey everyone!
Hope you are all doing well. Sorry I'm a day late on this dev log. I wasn't home yesterday to write.
This dev log won't be too exciting. I'm still working on a lot of room-related tasks, and, although things are going very well, it's taking a long time to finish up. Mostly, it's tons of data entry to properly set up the room functionality, and fixing edge case bugs related to rooms auto-creating jobs. So, I don't have much to show off today other than some small HUD things.
Ok, HUD stuff. As I go, I'm always tweaking the HUD to make things more enjoyable. One small change I've made is moving the search panel out of individual screens, and into the toolbar. It's a nuisance to have to add it to each screen, and I've made it so screens can easily listen for input from the search panel. So, the intention is that you can quickly type here, either by clicking it, or holding shift, and then your input will filter out items for each relative screen you have focused. This is really handy for finding entities as well. You can type in the name of an entity and the camera will start following the first one that matches the input.
Or, as you are probably used to, use the input to filter out large lists. This works for job/blueprint/room lists and I'm going to update all the other lists to listen for this search input too. i.e., the settler lists, item lists, diet lists, etc.
Another small thing I've improved is the performance when placing jobs/blueprints/rooms. In the live build, when you do this and move around the map, or change layers, there's quite a bit of lag. Especially, when you are zoomed out. Now, there will be none. The reason there was lag before is due to the fact that the game would check every block to try and determine what overlay should be shown when placing things. Now, blocks update this overlay information when their state changes.
Oh! I've also changed the TAB hotkey to show any overlays that would be hidden when the build/room menu is closed. It's a nice little way to quickly see where jobs and rooms are placed without opening those toolbar menus.
So, that's pretty much it for this dev log. I was hoping that by the end of August the beta would be good to go but it's likely I'll miss that date. This last chunk of work is agonizingly tedious and I appreciate that you are all waiting so patiently. By the end of August I will be very, very close to putting out the update on the beta. Unfortunately, I do have a family vacation in early Sept (one I planned a long time ago to see family I haven't seen since before the pandemic) and it will mean the update won't be coming out until after then. But, of course, I'll be sure to keep you friends updated with my dev logs.
Thank you so much for the words of encouragement and unwavering tolerance for my slow development!
Waylon