Welcome back to another dev log, much progress has been made and there’s plenty to show this time ’round. The editor is now in its first proper v1 state, and I’ve got plenty of GIFs to showcase it. Let’s get into it.
It finally works – Eureka!
The day has finally arrived my friends, we have now reached the first proper version of the editor, bells and whistles and all. We have finally landed on the definitive layout and functionality, and it’s now just a matter of expanding what’s there – no more rewrites (thank god). As per usual, let’s take a gander at some of the new features:
Here we can see the tile catalogue, the new tile preview panel, the flip/rotate buttons, and tile placement functionality.
This second one shows off the grid cell system, overlay toggles, and cell type assignment (structure, traversal, platform, etc) which is currently used for placement logic, but will later also be used for certain gameplay logic.
This third one shows the tile colouring system, available for select tiles, as well as the contextual tile action widget for placed tile manipulation (move, flip, rotate, delete, recolour).
And this last one shows the placement logic and validation for different tile types (ie. stairs and ladders requiring a platform above, hatches allowing a ladder to be placed through them, flipping placed tiles based on available cells, etc).
Most of the core functionality is now ready to roll, as well as much of the backend logic. From here, it’s really just a matter of adding in all the new tile types (ship systems, furniture, decor, spawners, etc) and creating unique logic for certain types that require it.
Overall, I’m super happy with how it all turned out. Looking back to prior logs, particularly the old compartment-based system, it almost seems like a whole other game. This new architecture and design is just WAYYYY more scalable and WAYYY less of a headfuck to build (pardon my French). I’ve also spent some time playing around in the live version, and I think I’ve finally hit that sweet spot between user freedom and technical feasibility.
There are still some rough edges, of course, but I’ll be ironing out all the critical issues in the coming weeks, then doing a final QoL sweep over the less-pressing ones later on, right before moving into gameplay. I tell ya, it feels damn good to finally be getting this close to the actual fun part of development (gameplay) after almost TWO YEARS of foundational work (rip).
Update Extravaganza
Along with all the progress on the editor, I’ve also gotten around to polishing some of the existing assets/UI, which I’ll detail below.
First off, I’ve given some facelifts to the placeholder tiles, as well as adding some much-needed TLC to others. The tiles themselves still look fairly similar to their prior renditions, but just that ‘lil bit more pleasing. Check it out:
I think we can all agree, that old stairs sprite HAD to go, lol.
Of all these sprite updates, the stairs were actually SUCH a menace to get right. I probably spent as much time on the stairs as I did on all the others combined, no joke. Not only did they have to look nice, but also had to work within specific dimensions for placement, traversal, and logical visual appearance.
I actually got so frustrated in trying to make this sprite, that I saved an in-progress screenshot of my struggles. So here’s a little fun one to give you an idea of the absolute bullshit I was trying to work through (before ultimately saying ‘nope, no more steps’).
Alla that just for the tiniest detail which, in hindsight, nobody would even pay attention to….. yeah noice.
I also went back and updated all the sliders in the character screen to now include buttons for manually controlling the step. Not sure why I didn’t do this from the start, since trying to fine-tune a slider with a wide index of options is a massive PITA – but it’s here now, so the disaster has been averted. I also switched the paginator buttons to localised text for ‘View All’, instead of that old crappy icon I made, and resized/rearranged the buttons.
Almost seems strange to see this screen, after so many months in the trenches with the editor…
Not the biggest of updates, all things considered, but a nice little QoL pass – likely just one of many still to come.
A Worthy Shout-Out: Part II
For the final part of this log, in similar fashion to log #13, I’d like to give a small shout out to some of the works that have aided me throughout my journey. Out of everything I’ve had to learn in my life, I’d wager that programming is probably THE hardest to pick up without any formal training or education. Whilst I’ve definitely made use of a vast selection of content and sources, including Pluralsight, YouTube, Stack Overflow (rip), Reddit, Unity forums, Exercism, Claude, modding, documentation, and more, these books are proving to be some of the best material I’ve come across, especially when it comes to structured and comprehensive learning.
That being the case, I figured a shout-out to these authors was well in order, as I can imagine how much work and effort was put into producing all these books, and I’m super grateful for it.
Left to Right: Learning C# By Developing Games with Unity 6 (8th Ed.) – Harrison Ferrone, The C# Player’s Guide (5th Ed.) – R.B. Whitaker, Learning Design Patterns with Unity – Harrison Ferrone, Real-World Implementation of C# Design Patterns – Bruce M. Van Horn Li, Grokking Algorithms (2nd Ed.) – Aditya Y. Bhargava, Clean Code with C# (2nd Ed.) – Jason Alls, C# 12 in a Nutshell – Joseph Albahari, Advanced Shader Development in Unity and HLSL – Ethan G. McCarthy.
This dev log is ending on a tragic note. This week, Callum Legge passed away unexpectedly. He was one of the best blokes I ever knew, and was loved by everyone. He was hardworking and disciplined in a way that made everyone around him want to be better.
Callum had spent five gruelling years studying law and had built a career as a fully licensed lawyer. He shared his life with a partner he loved deeply, and a family who meant the world to him. He had so much ahead of him.
He was taken far too soon, and will be missed forever.
Rest in Peace, my friend.
