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Progress Post

7/25/2024

*About

  • The past month i worked on trying to finish up the level editor as much as possible before the month ended. Adding things to make editing faster and more efficient, polishes areas, fixing bugs, etc. A lot of stuff got done, im excited to let people make janky stories with this. But read near the bottom to see when that might happen.

*Reworked the entire way materials are created and managed.

  • Posters are now the main way to manage materials.
    • The old way: Using “custom materials”. These could not be interacted with.
    • The new way: The poster now has the exact same material the entire time. All of the faces painted on blocks share the same material with the poster.
  • There are several benefits to this
    • Its easier to change media across multiple things. For example, if you have a grass textures on a bunch of other posters, all have you to do is change the base poster’s media.
    • The gameobject ID is now used, instead of each face on a block storing the entire path to the material
    • You dont have to have to use unique media paths anymore.
    • It optimizes the game.
    • You can play/stop videos on walls whenever you want.
    • You can use events to switch the media on walls.
  • If you have a bunch of posters that all share the same material… make sure to change the media of the main poster. or else a new material will be created for the current poster you changed. (In view mode #2, the game will render main source posters more opaue)
  • You can now color posters
  • Copy & Pasting a source poster + the group will create its own seperate hierchy group.
  • Footstep sounds have been moved to posters.
    • Footstep sound feature now works on both posters and blocks
  • Moved the texture scrolling to posters too.
  • Reworked “SwitchMedia” event. It now works like a “SwitchTexture” event
  • Added logic to the level loading that creates posters if the file contains legacy custom materials. (to not break maps)

*Painter Tool Updated

  • The material list now shows all posters in the map instead of custom materials.
  • Removed all windows related to custom textures.
  • The painter will now show the comment of the material currently selected.
  • The painter will show how many faces a poster material is currently applied on. (base source poster faces do not count)
  • Added indicator to show which mode is currently on (face/whole mode)
  • Switching paint mode and opening the material window are now enabled by the same key(shift)
    • Tap Shift: Switch between face/whole block painting mode
    • Hold Shift: Opens the material window

*Changed the “NewMap.json” and the logic for how default materials are applied to spawned blocks

  • The NewMap.json will now spawn with: 1 block and 2 posters.
    • These 2 posters have a “dev_sides” and “dev_top” comment to tell the game which materials to apply to newly created blocks.

*Polished the “Increment” levels.

  • Added a number that shows the current increment index.
  • Added an increment of /64 for very small adjustments.

*Scrapping all audio visualizers

  • There are several reasons for this
    • Sometimes it would ruin the mood of maps when it was unintentional.
    • Using a music video texture works better.

*Added poster Xray settings

  • Added xray parameters to posters: xray size, xray transparency, xray softness.

*Added Post-Processing

  • Added bloom to global settings
  • Added Depth of Field to global settings
    • Depth of field will foucus on whatever the camera center is hitting.
    • Depth of field will not focus on faces that have an xray effect applied.
  • Added Ambient Occlusion to global settings

*Added ViewPoster_ClickThrough event

  • This is what you would use to let players click on stuff when their camera is locked when viewing a poster.
  • Enables the mouse AND the xray effect automatically.
  • This is useful for interactive scenes or even some janky menus.

[see thumbnail for preview]

*Reworked harddrive/scanner gun

  • This was designed when the game was made for gallery exploration only. It has more uses than to just save images now.
  • New harddrive gun features added:
    • Can be used as an xray to see through posters (if they have xray settings enabled).
    • There is now a limit for the scanner gun. Its meant to be used to inspect and search for things up close.
    • When an image is scanned… the image will no longer automatically disappear(because it would break narrative in maps), its up to the player to decide what happens when something is scanned now.
    • Added “SavePosterMedia” event. The “twinkle flash” effect is still present on the poster that calls this event.
    • The scanner will show the comment/note left by the map maker on things that have “isScannable” toggled.

*Misc.

  • Made it so that when viewing a poster, it does not receive any post processing.
  • Made it so that when you open the file browser to select media… it picks the most intuitive directory depending if the entity already points to a directory. Otherwise it will open the path to template images/sounds
  • Added “StreamingAssests/SFX” template directory (for audiosources).
  • When opening a map in “edit mode”. The player will start-off in fly mode. (to make working with “OnLevelLoad” events easier)
  • Lots of other quality of life things.

*Change of plans: Beta Version wont come out

  • I kept mentioning about releasing a “beta”… however the game is already in early access and there hasnt been an update in over a year!

*Change of plans: Campaign will be released in episodes

  • I have big plans for story and art for the campaign. However completing all in one go could take a while.
  • Thats why i plan on releasing only 1-2 chapters next update.
  • Doing it this way would be better to prevent burnout and to have a good focus on each section.

*What to work on next (info about upcoming updates)

  • Roadmap for UPCOMING UPDATE:
    • Campaign (first two chapters): Will released with this update (1 or 2 months work time depending on how much additional fixing the map editor needs).
    • Ability for players to upload and update projects: a project is a collection of maps with a “project.json” for project info. and a “SaveData.json” that holds persistant saved data. The old workshop uploader was built to handle a single json file. This shouldnt take too long to add. (2-5 days work time)
    • Missing HUB robot helper functions (2-5 days work time)
      • I am undecided if i should cutout the “robot helper” feature since the campaign will have a lot of character interaction in it. Stuff in the campaign might not make sense if theres a “hub” in place.
      • Since a piece of story is planned, the missing features such as commisions and random workshop map event were taken out. However, they will be added back in. The problem is that the old campaign set-up used jumbled up scenes and logic to create that prologue + hub. A “hub” is still possible however functions like random workshop map and commissions would make no sense to add to a level editor. These functions might end up as simple windows pop-ups.
      • OR… an alternative would be to let players call the workshop events. (“OnClick” -> “OpenRandomWorkshopMap”, “OnPlayerCancelMapUpload” -> “PlayDialogue”, etc.)
  • Roadmap for LATER UPDATE:
    • More story content
    • VR: I want to add VR as soon as possible, the game works well with it. However, adding VR to everything would take a while.
  • Unconfirmed:
    • Music Mechanic
    • Undo/Redo
    • Object Hierchy Inspector
    • Multiplayer
    • Porting to Godot or a custom engine
  • Cancelled:
    • Flash Game support: most animations by artists these days are video files. Additionally, you can technically remake certain “flash game” styles with the new event system.