Hello Humans, This week was all about fixing and cleaning. Next week is all about adding new content. If you want to play and test the current build of Human Factory, please let us know here or contact us at firecyclegames@gmail.com. Early Access Release Date Confirmed November 2nd 2020. I hope everyone has a great weekend and I look forward to updating you all with more progress as I go back to adding new features. Monday 3rd: Summary: - Restructured the saving system. - Reprogrammed the Main Menu. Did some more fixing and cleaning to the copy pasting feature. There was a lot of weirdness to it, it was quite tricky. Making the plan for this week. Tomorrow I want to give my full attention to the saving and loading system and make sure it's completely tight, as well as the Main Menu code overhaul. Spent some time messing around in the save systems of other games to see what I can learn. Usually when I play a game I just make one save file and rarely if ever use an old save (unless I'm save scumming). Figured out my plan for how I'm going to do this. The old system is functional but I want to do a bit of spring cleaning. Shouldn't be too difficult actually, I will start today. Changed around the code for the save system. Before, all saves were in the same list with a variable called 'profile'. Now, more intuitively, we store a list of 'Profiles' which just have a name and a list of saves. As far as I can guess, it should work with minimal problems. Before I can test it, I need to program the UI. Now for the Main Menu. Started by deleting everything in the script. Wrote all the code to make this work and with the new system. Also jumped into the SaveAs function to make that better. It should, in theory, work really smoothly. I will test it tomorrow. Tuesday 4th: Summary: - Cleaning and fixing. - Started playtesting and fixing. Added a variable to the saves called 'Version' so I can future proof people's save files between updates. Made a little error text panel for the main menu for 'This name is taken' and 'No file selected'. I was going to add a feature to edit the name of save files or profiles from the main menu, but I think I had better do that on the next iteration of UI improvements to save time. Standardized the code for the Pause Panel. I could keep going like this and do the same for the pause panel but I think I will save that for the big UI overhaul that I know is coming. Had to fix a few things to get things working. Can save and load nicely. Issues were to do with some of the variables that have been shuffled around, like Music/SFX volume, Names and the 'New' bool. After organizing Items a bit, the 'Sort' function is throwing up an error. Maybe there are two Items in the list clashing? Sorted it using luddite technology by manually ordering the items. 'Icomparables' is black magic to me. Playtesting and fixing. Finding some bugs. Some fixes easier than others. Made a nice chunky list to start with tomorrow. Wednesday 5th: Summary: - More cleaning and fixing. - Playtested until current endgame. Fixed all the little things from the list I made yesterday. Not going to list the boring ones. Trying to fix/get rid of the warning for the negative scale on the box collider. Failed again. I could do that math.abs for scale and rotate the canvas instead of scaling it negatively, but to be honest that's a lot of work for something that isn't effecting anything right now. Added an option to see all the games Controls. Pasting Buildings no longer pastes their contents. This includes anything that might be going on with the Building that shouldn't be copied. There's quite a lot of things to reset/switch off here, hopefully I got all of them otherwise they might be quite hard to spot later. Found a problem with my new Transport code. Items are getting pushed into Mergers at the same time now, leaving one stuck on the cargo indefinitely. It's actually quite a simple solution: the cargo is being given the green light to move, and then it keeps going and tries to enter the next transport. I just have to check again when they reach the transport to see if it's still empty, and if not then simply wait for the counter to count down again. Found some bugs with the delete tool. Fixed a bunch but one happened which I can't seem to replicate so I'll leave it for now. Reversing the scale of Conveyor Buildings worked fine. (still get the warning though) That's everything on the list from yesterday and then some. I ought to reprogram the Options Menu for standardization and of course there is the sound effects. I'll do those tomorrow. Spent quite a while fixing some major bugs with Humans in the Item Splitter. Added a much nicer texture to the ground. Added a skybox and changed the environment lighting a bit. Looks cool all together. Got the whole build working. Very pleased. Thursday 6th: Summary: - Thorough testing and fixing. Started by fixing a few left over things from yesterday. This includes going through all 'Build' animations and making sure Looping is disabled. Clothing shape is now effected in the same way as the chest. Instead of reprogramming the Options menu, I did a quick fix for now. I think I will save that kind of thing for the big UI update coming soon. Some stress testing for the copy paste tool. I need to optimize the script for highlighting the buildings. Made a high end base with a separate section for the Tailors. This was made much easier with the new canvasing tools. Made a build and tried it out and it runs really nicely compared to the old build. I feel like I could do Early Access now. Going to do a bit more between now and then. Saved a ridiculous amount of frames by ditching the little lights since they weren't doing much anyway. Attached the directional light to the camera to keep it even. Planned the next steps, keeping in mind marketing and early access. Friday 7th: Summary: - Final fixes, uploading build and planning. Fixed a few minor bugs left over from yesterday. Right now the game is quite playable. Depending on how fast the player is and how much time they spend planning, I would say about 1-2 hours before they finish the content and will want something more. Game is running at >100 fps! Deleting a large amount of objects seems to make unity very busy. Fixed. Made and uploaded the builds for each platform. Marked as ready for review. There is more optimization and tidying that could be done, but the game is running pretty well now. What I do next is entirely up to me and what the game needs. I want to get to the Mating stage of the game. For that, the best way at this stage is to make Love Drug and put it in the vents. In order to make Love Drug, I need the Drug Lab and 'Organic Matter' from the 'Forest Node'. So here is what my plan looks like: - Fill in missing items like Cloner, Battery and Tailoring suit. (and Voices!) - Sort Automation. - Sort the Forest and Foraging. - Sort the Drug Lab, Drugs and drug Injecting/Venting. - Thoroughly test and improve Mating. And I think that would be a good place to stop again and review the plan, and update the build, store page and trailer. Each item on this list should take 1-3 days to fully implement. I have it down as 5 items, 5 days in my todo list for next week, but we'll see how long things actually take. Once these are complete, the framework for a lot of future items will already be there which will be nice.