This morning I chatted with Steve about some possible tablet UI concerns for NEO Scavenger. Seeing it on his phone's screen caused him some concern about usability and button size. So I tried running it on my 7" mini tablet and a 5" phone.
Hey Folks! I had a Skype interview this morning, which should be online in a week or so. In it, we discussed some of my career history and discoveries about gamedev, as well as tips for aspiring devs. It should be online in a week or two, so I'll let you know once I see it!
Hey Folks! Hope everyone had a good weekend. We had some much-needed rain here, and some cool temperatures to go with it. I got re-hooked on Cities Skylines, and was hell-bent on creating the perfect traffic pattern for a dense city. I managed to do okay so far, but I think there could be better...
Back on the prototype, I've been trying to get the sleep cycle running in a semi-realistic way.
Today was cut a bit short by some errands, including a trip to the vet for our cat, Brak. Unfortunately, it looks like he has some sort of genetic dental decay, and some more teeth are going to have to come out. He was not pleased with the poking, prodding, and general indignities of the vet's. And I fear he'll be no more pleased in a month when he visits again only to wake-up with massive jaw ache. Poor little guy.
Hey Folks! If any of you were on Twitch today, you might've caught me on Outstarwalker's NEO Scavenger stream for GOG today. For two hours, we watched Outstarwalker chase dogs, beat up Bad Muthas, and debate the merits of cannibalism. All in her stylish dogman coat!
I decided to switch back to prototyping for a bit today.
When I last left off on Friday, I had decided to start working on the Item class, to represent onboard tools and other objects crew could interact with. I had finished up making a new class that exposed most of the same tools as a crew. Basically, the item had a list of conditions, a sprite, a name, an ID, and a list of available interactions.
Hey Folks! Hope everyone had a good weekend. It was a purging weekend for us, as we took loads of stuff to recycle, reuse centers, and to the dump. We still have carloads left, but it's nice to have that pile on our floor slowly shrink!
Apart from some email catch-up, most of today was spent on some NEO Scavenger bugs. I was able to use a player's save game to reproduce some pesky bugs in the crafting system (usually seen by players who peddle tannin tea to the market).
I worked on a refinement to the autotiling code today, and I think it's in a much better place now.
Instead of the tiles that had to specify all possible neighbor tiles, I now have it setup to define the type of all possible neighbors. So a wall will only allow connections to other wall types, for example, instead of having to list each possible wall it could connect to.
Today was cut short by a trip into town for an appointment, so I decided to spend some time on NEO Scavenger stuff. I went through the tech support forums on both Steam and here, and tried to catch up on any threads that needed it.
I managed to get the autotile to roughly do what I want today, but it's far from perfect.
Early in the day, I figured out a few of the bugs that were causing weird autotiling to happen when painting. It turned out to be a mix of bad data in the tile connection stats, and adding a "priority" field to each tile, to control which tiles are preferred over others. With these fixes in place, I was able to paint just about any tile and get the surrounding tiles I expected.
Hey Folks! Hope everyone had a good weekend. We are finally starting to see cooler weather and even some rain here, which is very welcome after a hot and drought-like June!
Today's work almost entirely focused on some new tile data I've been working on. Basically, I want to create some rules for how tiles can be set, so the engine can help users create viable ship hulls more easily. E.g. if the user places a row of walkable floor, the engine will line it with walls, capping corners and adding intersections as needed.
Hey Folks! Hope everyone had a good week. Our vacation was a welcome break, and we had plenty of time to catch up with the fam. Blistering hot, though, and we spent much of our time chasing the shade, wading in the creek, and occasionally ducking into places with AC. Also, I may be losing my ability to drink beer. It could've been dehydration from the heat, though!
