Eloraam

Still around, just posting more often on Mastodon lately. mastodon.gamedev.place/@elor…

The past two weeks have been an absolute whirlwind of engine coding. Can't really talk about any of it, but it's the biggest changeset in a long, long time.

In a weird twist, I'm writing the wire renderer. Getting some major nostalgia from it.

Still around. Still grinding on engine guts. Still dealing with burnout from the day job. Trying to clean up the list of "I'll get to it sometime before release" is slow and I don't end up with much to show for it, but it has to be done.

Paperwork season is over, and I've been digging into one of the major crafting systems. It interacts with a part of the world that was barely more than a skeleton before now. Making good progress. Already have the new recipe handlers working.

Wrote a major part of the background simulation today. It's been a major hurdle for literally years now, and it's done. Also improved my build system to directly integrate unit tests.

I've been doing what I hope is the last major refactor of the crafting systems. Going pretty well, except that this time of year has a lot of annoyances (mostly paperwork) that I have to take care of, and it's slowing down dev.

Got through the i18n work, at least. Ended up having to divert from world generation to work on some more engine core issues, but that's going okay now too.

Slowly working through world generation and i18n. Have been sick for a couple weeks, so it's been slow going. Nothing especially serious, but it did slow me down.

Longer post, more details: mastodon.gamedev.place/@elor…

Continuing with the new trend of rebuilding bits of the engine (especially bits that have been temporary hacks since the project start), I'm now rebuilding the world generator.

Happy holidays.

Lets see if the policy is really reverted. This is my Mastodon account. I'm a bit more active there now (especially if you want a bit more technical info), but for the moment, I'm still here too. mastodon.gamedev.place/@elor…

I was hoping to just ride out the weirdness on here, hoping it would settle out and go back to normal, but now we can't even link to other socials without getting banned? Looks like I'll be spending more time on the "mammoth site" from now on.

Given recent trends here, I figured it was time for a backup option. I'm now @eloraam@mastodon.gamedev.place

Always a win when more of the game is built with the content API instead of hard code. I think I'll use the term "content API" from now on, because "mod API" makes it sound like something I hacked onto the side only for modders, rather than how we make the game to begin with.

The next while is probably going to be pretty scarce on new content updates. I'm digging into the core engine issues list, and while it's a ton of work, it doesn't look any different on a screenshot. Still, can't release with major engine issues...

Pretty much done the GUI overhaul now. Took a bit longer than I hoped, but at least now I can add new GUIs through defs rather than modifying the engine. Also cleaned up a bunch of minor UX issues in the process, and added a couple new interactions.

Also, despite still not having a working Windows port, the game runs perfectly on the Steam Deck! Frame rate is good. I haven't added controller support yet, so it still needs to be docked to a mouse and keyboard for the moment, but I'm motivated to fix that situation soon.

Doing a much needed overhaul of the GUI system. The previous version requires an engine change every time we add a UI, even for something like a new chest. The new one pushes it into the content API, where it belongs.