Hey Folks! As mentioned yesterday, we'll be looking into crew drama and management next. Basically, doing a hack job prototype to get some ideas up and running, and to hopefully figure out the best way of making this feature a viable game mechanic.
Hey Folks! First off, sorry for yesterday's missing news post. I was on a dev conference call that was pretty productive, and that ran long (into dinner).
That said, we have made some decent progress in the past few days. Front and center is Michael's latest feature: custom key bindings!
Hey Folks! My apologies for the missed news yesterday. We devs had a conference call at the end of the day, and it ran a bit long.
However, it was a productive chat! We all fired-up the game, and talked about how the salvage game loop felt. Each of us started in the same save file, in a salvage pod docked with a derelict. No starting tools, so first step was to board the derelict in search of useful tools.
Hey Folks! Got a little bit done on the work lamp today. Chris tried out a hacking effect. Michael's updated the inventory grid. And administrivia strikes again!
The work lamp now support a power toggle action, so it can be found in an "off" state, switched on, and used around dark places. Still no battery usage or anything, but it's getting there!
Hey Folks! Hope everyone had a good weekend. Mostly relaxing here, and discovering just how little insulation our old house's walls have :)
Back at work, I set about fixing the way AIs interact with locks. Previously, they could just grab anything they wanted from any container. But now that we have locks, that won't do.
Instead, I added code to selectively control whether the various "get item" functions allow bypassing locks. And the need for this varies quite a lot!
Hey Folks! Busy day today, as we continued to smooth out the salvage experience.
K-Leg station got a bunch of upgrades to shore-up the process of offloading and buying loot. There's now a dedicated hardware store and shopkeeper, from whom we can purchase tools to salvage, or sell tools we find. I also adjusted the forbidden NPC zones so the shopkeepers would stay in their store.
The shop back rooms and HVAC/reactor rooms on K-Leg are now behind locked doors. And I made a bunch of changes to ensure locks are reset when ships get spawned from templates.
Hey Folks! Today I tackled a few remaining bugs, so that I could finally test the stuff we've been working on: looting a derelict!
The first order of business was to fix the velocity calculations in the celestial bodies. After Chris upgraded a lot of the code to honor Sir Kepler, the velocities were no longer accurate. We chatted a bit about it yesterday, and he suggested we numerically solve for V, since the direct calculation would be a lot more complex/slow.
Hey Folks! Some more progress to show today on both locks and UI, plus a small fix to celestial mechanics involving precision.
The main thing on display today is data cards, which are sort of a stopgap I've added to cover our data/info item needs. Each PIN lock needs a unique code, so the first thing I did was to setup ship initialization to assign one to each lock when finished.
Hey Folks! Wall-to-wall busy today adding new interactions with the crate, and upgrading the interaction system.
First task of the day was to make it possible to use a laser torch on a crate. And this actually went really smoothly and quickly. Within minutes, I had crates breaking into scrap parts and spilling their contents on the floor with my trusty laser torch. A few bug fixes are necessary to ensure scrap loot didn't appear inside my crew when it happened, as well as a spawned loot not appearing where it should.
Hey Folks! Hope everyone had a good weekend. Since this is Canada's Thanksgiving holiday, but we're living in the US, we celebrated "Fakesgiving" yesterday. We had friends over, and a feast that left us all eager for leftover o'clock :)
Back at the office, Michael has his latest updates checked-in, and you can see them in action in today's screenshot. Inventory grids!
Hey Folks! Decided to tackle the UI for unlocking a crate with a PIN code today. Plus, Michael's off and running on his crate inventory grid. And Bjørn is starting to look at footstep audio based on tile material!
I spent a fair amount of time thinking about the lock UI, and scaring myself from working on it, before I decided to just dive in. Currently, I want the game to support a few different lock types, for use on different items. Some things require little security (a locker), while others should be near-unbreakable (access codes to a ship helm).
Hey Folks! Some pieces coming together nicely since yesterday. We have a new crate room for testing locks, and locked doors are now working!
Today's screenshot shows Michael's CrateRoom ship, which we're using to test these latest salvage actions. It consists of a central room with a crowbar on the floor, and doors leading to other rooms for testing.
Hey Folks! A bit more progress on the looting/salvage loop today, plus some movement on the audio front!
Michael was able to check-in a new layout for testing locked containers and doors. It vaguely resembles the opening sequence of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: behind a closed airlock, a locked crate sits bathed in light, beckoning :)
Hey Folks! Hope everyone had a good weekend. We hung out with some friends we hadn't seen in a while, which was nice. Unfortunately, I got really sick Saturday night. But it improved over Sunday, and I was able to work today.
And lucky for us, it's something I can show easily: new toys!
Hey Folks! I was able to get a little bit of work done today, mostly focusing on bugs with the social combat UI. But I also just wrapped-up a really fruitful chat with the other contract developers about what's next. I'll start with that.
Initially, this was a conversation meant to get everyone in sync after my vacation, since we hadn't chatted in a while. And I thought I'd create a document to help illustrate my plans for the project scope and dev schedule, so everyone was on the same page about what we were aiming for.
Hey Folks! Hope everyone had a good two weeks. I had a wonderful time visiting with family, exploring nature, singing karaoke, and trying out new bourbons :)
Back at the office, I've nearly clawed my way out of the email pile that accumulated. I still have a few things to reply to, forms to file, and tasks to finish, but I should be able to resume dev as soon as tomorrow!
What's more, I think that was the last major vacation for my foreseeable future. So I should be able to regain momentum from here and start making better progress.
