Monday 1st: First is sorting the Telebox and Televat for the first time. They are all coded up, just need to sort the interface for connecting the Teleporters. At some point I'm definitely going to overhaul a lot of the non-standard building mechanics like the 'Teleporter' wire. For now, I'm just going to pretty much copy and paste the Automation Wire code. We have our first successful teleportation between two places! I feel like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly.
So this interface and the whole business of Highlighting Buildings is all wrong. Instead of adding more spaghetti to make it work for Teleconnectors, I'm going to skip that for now and keep moving on. Did the last touch of shuffling aside the UI when using the Telewire. So that's that for now. Next up is the Human Splitter. Human Splitter working! It was very easy because I just check for Transport.Subtype == "Human Filter", then do my CommonFunction.CheckHuman(...) which checks a Human against a Human Filter. Did a stress test with multiple Humans and multiple items on conveyors. And... yes! Works great! I think I might be good at programming!
The only problem is a spike which bring the frame rate to sub 60 everr 35 frames, and more depending on how many Humans I have in the scene. I feel like this is something I can fix over time, and I think the main problem is in 'UpdateAppearance'. One idea that immediately springs to mind is to not run 'update appearance' unless the player is looking at them, like animation culling. However, I would then want it to immediately do it when I look at them again if they have one queued up. The UpdateAppearance code itself could do with a lot of tweaks though, the first one likely coming from me deleting all the old cosmetics and re-instantiating them. I could probably just do that if a change has been made, or learn some new black magic to avoid having to instantiate/delete at all. Adding a note to optimize both Highlighting of Buildings and UpdateAppearance. I'm sure a lot of the garbage in the GarbageCollector is made in 'UpdateAppearance'. Next up is the Camera. Looks like I have the most complicated Buildings on the list first. I've technically done this one but it was one of the last things I did before this big overhaul. Camera is working too! Another great day of progress. A few troubles here, as with the Telewire, with highlighting and making these components visible/invisible, but I will fix that all together. UI for the Battery, again I'd already done this I just needed to make a few adjustments. Injector working fine. Leaving the Gas Vent for tomorrow because it's a tough one. Again, already done, but need to test and fix it and update to any new code. Ignoring the Freezer for now. It will really apply to the new system I'm going to use for decay over time. Clothinator working fine. Mine will come later as I haven't made Coal yet. Essentially it's a copy paste of the Forest so I'm not expecting any problems. The challenge in incorporating this is more to do with balance, and it currently doesn't have much use. Shuffling the Auto-Fabricator till later because it really is a pointless building at the moment. Could pretty much get started on the trailer and do one more run of testing and then upload the build. Got myself a big list of things but none of them are particularly urgent. Need to level the waters a bit and have a clear mind towards what to do next. Sorting out my chaotic list a bit. Bundled up all a bunch of bug fixes and things to test and do in my save file which I expect to take 2-3 days. In case you're curious: Random Fixes. - Sort MaxProgress on Blood Drainer. - TriggerPrevious on ConnectingTransports. - Sort connecting and disconnecting transports when moving multiple objects. - Do 'TriggerPrevious' on EmptyChecker (need to tag all 'EmptyCheckers') - Ignore Hitbox collisions of items when building transport from a transport. - Fridge bugged if the first item in there is not food. - Animate death. - Add automation inpoint to Human Gate and implement Camera/Human Gate setup. - Add 'Condition' to Items, 100/100 on creation. - Update stats: ActualBeauty = Beauty * Condition / 100. - Start making Forager clothes in base. - Add Coal and add Mine to base. - Make Babies poo at least once before childhood. - Improve/Fix relationships. - Tidy Delete Function. Some of these are pretty chunky but I have no idea how long each will take. After that I think it would be wise to optimize Highlighting (as it became fairly urgent to do so today) and cleaning up the Human UpdateAppearance which I think will drastically improve performance even more. This is good because at any point in this list, if I find it's suddenly February 13th and the update is scheduled for tomorrow, I can pause, spend a shift purely on testing and fixing and upload the build on time. Then Animations, Skills (new system and Buildings to go with it) and Vegod's Tier 3 Buildings, which would be a whole update in its own right. Great Monday! Tuesday 2nd: Going through my list from yesterday. 1st done. First tough one was fixing the connections when moving multiple objects. Took me a while to realize I had to set In.Out and Out.In to null before resetting them, but also In.Out.In and Out.In.Out. Yep. Works now. This all takes place in the common function 'ConnectPorts'. In the reviews I have someone mentioning that Copying and Pasting causes a lot of issues. The code here is very similar, so I wonder if fixing this has fixed that. Seems fine after a little test, so either it's fixed or I'll have to run into it naturally as I play. I had already put 'trigger building' on the Empty Checker when a Human exits. Don't need to 'Ignore Hitbox collisions of items when building transport from a transport.' because I already made it so items stay at the back of the transport and don't interrupt Building. Humans checking for Food in Food containers was wrong. Fixed it. Added code to animate the deaths of Humans. We'll see how it works as I play. Human Gate already had Automation, was just hiding in the mesh and so I moved it. Built my Camera next to Human Gate and attached the Automation. This way, the Human Gate will only Summon Humans if there are more than 10, therefore I should maintain a steady population. Playing a bit and my camera Human Gate setup is working fine. However, my base is using way too much power and it's difficult to balance that. I think this would be greatly offset by adding Mines and Coal, but I might have to reduce the difficulty a bit here. It probably wouldn't be too difficult to figure out exactly how much Power is consumed by a Human in a full Butchery Line, vs how much Power the average Human produces during their life. I think it should be about balanced, with more power heavy setups using Teleporters and such being for players who really make an efficient base. Anyway, that's more progress. Making great progress today, things are easier than I thought they would be, all thanks to preparation and planning. Next up is making a robust system for durability/perishability on items. At the moment I'm just kind of dragging down the numbers as the item perishes, but I should have a durability/100 kind of thing with each stat multiplied by durability/100. Fairly straight forward for me now having played so many games and learnt so much coding. Fairly meaty task though still and will probably be all from me for today. Planned next few days. I think tomorrow I will do what I want to do with Relationships and the Delete code, tidying them up. Then Thursday I think I should be able to focus on optimizing the Human Update and Highlighting. Then I have Friday as a wild card to test and fix. This means I should be ready to think about uploading the build any time next week from Monday, so if I am ahead at that point I will research into making a separate 'beta' branch like I've seen in other games for newer less stable builds and I can upload it there right away as I test and make the trailer next week. Now time for my afternoon nap before finishing the rest of my goals for the day. For Item Condition/Durability (going with Condition), I actually need to remember all the original stats of the item when it is. So for example Value = Condition/100 * XValue. This means adding new variables to the Item to remember its original stats. I realize I don't need to do this for saving, as all I really need to remember there is the original 'XValue'. Just need to make sure I am only saving and loading those. Since the Item is set to inactive when in a Container after it is spawned, I hope it will update its condition and stats via its own script before it becomes inactive. In fact, I made sure of it by effectively pasting those lines of code in the loading script. So that's that for Items. Now the same for Humans. With Humans I already have ActualStats, so I can just update those. Made sure to use the correct stats when making Items from Humans. Reset my population of Humans and set up the Wood to go to the Tailor so that we will start making Foraging clothes. Made the Mine and Coal and built a Mine into my base. Made Babies start with 45 waste over 40 in the hope they will Poo once before they reach childhood. Wednesday 3rd: I was thinking of overhauling the Relationships (Name, ID, Rapport) but actually I think it's fine. It's working well and I don't see any ways to fix it. So, how do I go about making it so that Parents and Children have a bias toward each other? Well, I guess it would make best sense to do this at birth, and just give them a bunch of rapport to start with. It would be nice to identify these for later to help with dialogue options, so maybe Relationship should also have a 'Tag', like 'Mother', or 'Child'. Not doing the tag thing for now, as that would come with a much bigger plan to improve dialogue and Human interactions. Instead I just need to add the relationships on conceiving the Baby, with both parents adding the Baby and the Baby adding both parents. While I'm here, I figured it would make sense for mating to cause an increase in rapport (which encourages monogomy) as well as feeding. So that's pretty much what I wanted to do with Relationships today. Next on my list is improving the Delete function. Again, it doesn't feel very urgent, but I need to fix the issue where WallFrames do not disappear when deleting objects. The code here doesn't seem great, but it's not too heavy on processing and doesn't get called too often so it's not a priority to uproot and fix that now. Just needed to add some code to check for a 'Wall Link' when deleting an object and set it to inactive. I was going to overhaul the delete function a bit, especially now that I'm copy pasting from 'DeleteBuilding' to 'DeleteBuildings', they should use the same code. However, I'd like to approach a bunch of these controls wholistically at some point. Ok, that's all I had for today, and it's 1pm. I actually lost 'Test and Fix Gas Vent' on the list somewhere, so I'll do that now. Pretty much works right out the box, as this is one of the more recent new Buildings from before the overhaul. 1 issue is that they end up getting the effect more than once depending on how many floor tiles they are overlapping with. Ran into some bug with Forager Clothes due to sometimes being referred to as Foraging Clothes. Ok so: - Cam Zone not saving/loading. - Need to improve camera controls a bit, first thing being I shouldn't unequip the tool when I finish a click-drag, but only when the tool is cancelled normally. - Smart Splitters should have the option of inverting. - Gas vent loads in an awkward position (probably due to old code where it would try to attach to a Wall or something, same issue may exist with the Camera). Hope to do this by the end of the day. Then tomorrow I can focus purely on these tricky highlighting and optimization issues. I'll probably be able to test and fix Vegod Tier 3 before Feb 14th. 2 down, 2 to go. Gas Vent was loading awkwardly because it has a NavMeshAgent to help it figure out its range. Made sure to have it off by default, and only switch it on and off before and after 'GetRange'. So I think Smart Splitters should have a little button above the Item Splitter options that switches it so that the filtered Item will go through the middle and the rest through the side. This means adding the UI, programming the Button to flip it, adding the flip toggle, code saving and loading it, and write wherever an item filter is questioned we ask if it is flipped and change the toggle. Bit of a meaty task and a new feature I just came up with today, but I'm in great time. Going with a Toggle just because it's easiest to make and fits easiest in the UI. Ok, got that done. Not too bothered to test it right now. Another great day so far today! Human Condition wasn't saving and loading properly. Just neglected to finish when I did it. Fixed. Thursday 4th: Taking an impromptu day off. Going to play some games and let my brain reset a bit. Got this optimization to do and as long as it's done by the weekend that's an immensely productive week. Grabbed They Are Billions on sale. Surprisingly good. Very satisfying and seems like its filling a gap in the market by being an extremely competent and well balanced Warcraft/Starcraft clone. And, of course, the unit caps almost right out of the window, giving great freedom. So, yeah, more of that today. It's 'research'. Did a backup of Human Factory, since I haven't done one in a while. Whenever I realize I haven't done it in a while, I get the fear of God in me for a while until I do it. I've never experienced losing too much in one go, but I've seen the horror in the eyes of those who have. ... [Following text not related to making Human Factory] Ok so it's Monday now and I lost almost my entire weekend to They Are Billions. For a number of reasons this game is scratching some hard itches for me. Essentially it's Age of Empires but with Zombies. The city building feels a lot more like Caesar type games. You can imagine Age of Empires with the housing limit switched off and made more flexible, so the limits of your colony and troop count are based on how much territory you can defend. The number of zombies coming at you can certainly be unfair, but at the same time, your creativity in strategies is often rewarded. Can I send out one of the fast cheap units to try and kyte the Zombies in a circle? Yes! But of course this can cause the hordes to clump up, meaning disaster if your efforts fail. I could write a long review talking about all the interesting things about this game and why it is perfect for my playstyle and what I like from this type of game, but my job is to make games, not analyze them. Anyway, losing a day and a half of work and an entire weekend to a game is not new for me and not something I'm going to beat myself up about. I'm a gamer with true, disturbing, life defining levels of 'gamer cred' and if I'm going to make a career out of this, I don't see why that should change. What is it that inspires a man to spend literally 24 hours on the same level? To accompany all that playtime I learnt a lot, mainly from Night Mind, about ARGs and some really creative things. Very cool.