Hey all, here’s an update on what I’ve been working on for the past couple of months.

Tutorial scenarios

The main challenge I’ve had lately is with the design of the tutorial scenarios, my original idea for these didn’t work out to my liking.  They ended up being rather boring and didn’t give a very good first impression of the game.  So I decided to try a new direction to create a more entertaining experience for first time players while introducing some basic concepts.

Unfortunately this will likely mean scrapping some of the work I’ve already done, but hopefully I can reuse some of it at least.  For now I’ll say no more about the new tutorial scenario design, until I’m further along with it and more confident that it’s going to work out.

I found all this rather dispiriting and frustrating to be honest, so to try and keep myself motivated and move things forward, I’ve also been working on some other stuff!

Building improvements

Recently I’ve been playing the game a lot (to build content for the tutorial scenarios and trailer video), this has highlighted some bugs and other usability annoyances, which I’ve been fixing as I find them.

For example:-

• When detaching selected parts from other ones, the attachment types between them would be lost, and after re-attaching them you’d have to change the attachments back to the desired type.  Now, the types are saved while the selection is being moved, and restored after re-attachment.
• Part highlighting has been improved so that tools only highlight parts relevant to them (e.g. only paintable parts for painter tool).
• Fixed several bugs (such as parts sometimes not attaching to engaged gears, random rotation after freezing a construction, part duplication issues, and so on).

Braking

On the subject of annoyances, I built a race car to showcase on the race track map, which was fun to drive around but really emphasised the need for proper braking.

Electric motors provide regen braking by running them backwards, but this was hard to control.  If a vehicle’s wheels had insufficient grip they’d slip and the motor would spin up in reverse.  So I made some changes to the motor part behaviour to address this:-

• Above a certain speed a “braking direction” is now set, which is then used to prevent the motor from spinning in reverse after coming to a stop during braking (the braking direction is reset once directional control is released).
• Added a separate tweakable value for braking torque.

Electric motor regen may not provide enough braking on its own however, and so I’ve now implemented a new braking part behaviour for wheels (that can be activated by a bound key).  This makes driving vehicles way more controllable and enjoyable.

When braking is enabled, a brake disc is shown inside the wheel.

I plan on adding separate brake and clutch parts in the future that will also make use of this same part behaviour implementation.

Analog joystick control

After spending some time driving vehicles around, I couldn’t resist implementing something that would greatly improve the experience – analog control.  More specifically, being able to bind a joystick axis to a controllable part behaviour (such as a motor).

This, in combination with braking, transforms the enjoyment of driving vehicles in the game.  It is optional however, and the regular bound keys are still a decent method of control.

Chase camera

Another thing I couldn’t resist adding was a “chase” camera, which is now selectable when the player is seated.  It’s similar to the existing third-person camera except that side-to-side movement is smoothly locked behind the seated player, and the mouse can only move the camera up and down.

This camera mode makes driving vehicles in a third-person view much easier, as you don’t have to manually track the vehicle by moving the mouse.

More parts and improvements

Again, after spending time driving vehicles, I wanted to improve how leaving seats worked:-

• Rather than having to look down at a seat to leave it, you can now simply press the “jump” action (i.e. Space by default).
• When leaving a seat, if possible the player is now repositioned at a free position in front or to the side of the seat, rather than on top.  This is more better for a vehicle with a roof for example, where before the player would just be repositioned on top of the roof.

I also improved some other part behaviours (e.g. key bind for differential locking, tweakable light brightness) and added several more parts (e.g. seat, gear, steering wheel, connectors) to facilitate some of the example constructions I’ve been making.

Grabber tool

Finally, I decided to implement the last remaining tool in the game, the “grabber” tool.  Although this wasn’t a particularly high priority, it was quick to implement and I wanted to get it done so that I have the option to include it in the tutorial scenarios, without having to go back and modify them later.

The grabber tool allows constructions to be moved around as physical objects, i.e. without freezing them first.

It has two modes, “grab” and “shove”:-

• 1) Target part of a construction, then click the left mouse button and drag, to grab that part and drag the construction around by it.
• 2) Target part of a construction, hold the right mouse button to charge up, then release to apply a shove force to that part of the construction.

The grab and shove forces are configurable, as is the ability to have free or locked rotation while grabbing.

What about the full game release?

Before the early access release of the game, there are two main tasks left I need to get done: finish the in-game tutorials and make a trailer video.

The tutorial scenarios have not progressed to where I would have liked by now, but I needed a break from them to clear my head, and work on something else.  Anyway, now I really need to focus back on finishing the tutorial scenarios, finish building content for the trailer video, and get that captured and edited.

I was hoping to release the game before the end of the year, but unfortunately it’s now looking like the date will have to slip by a few months.

This is really disappointing I know, but by way of compensation, I’ve decided to do another demo release update soon, which will include many of the improvements mentioned in this post, so keep your eye out for that!

Hi all, over the holiday period I decided to take some time out to try an experiment: attempt to add undo functionality to the game.  Specifically, implement a command history, to which a command would be added for each tool action (e.g. select, move, or attach parts, apply material or paint, etc.) and then allow the player to undo or redo the commands in that history.

The game’s tools were not originally built with this in mind, but the code is reasonably well structured so I thought it might be possible.  The initial prototype turned out to be promising, and showed the potential improvement to usability this would bring.

Well, I couldn’t resist seeing this through to completion, and so that’s what I’ve been working on for the past few weeks.  It required substantial refactoring of some of the tool code, and took a while, but the results are well worth it I think. 

Here it is in action, I’ve exposed the command history to Lua scripting, and made a script mod that shows the current list of commands:-

Implementation details

Rather than store an absolute snapshot every time something changes, the commands in the history store relative deltas.  A command keeps a record of the change that was made by a tool action.  This means implementation was kind of an “all or nothing” prospect: all tool actions must be accounted for the command history (in the right order!) for everything to work properly.

Here are the commands I ended up with, these are added to history when…

• Select tool: …a tool is selected (some actions are only valid when the correct tool is active, so this must go in the history).
• Select parts: …any frozen parts are selected or deselected.
• Select pivot: …a pivot point is selected, which detaches all the selected part(s).
• Move / resize selection: …the selected part(s) are translated, rotated, or resized via manipulators.
• Replace attachment: …an attachment’s type is changed.
• Lock attachment: …an attachment is locked or unlocked.
• Delete attachments: …attachments are deleted (whether directly, due to the selection being detached, or due to a part being destroyed).
• Spawn / destroy construction: …a part / construction is spawned or destroyed.
• Freeze construction: …a construction is frozen or unfrozen.
• Swap material: …a material is applied to a part.
• Add / remove links: …link(s) between link nodes are added or removed.
• Apply paint: …paint colour is applied to a part.

The command history has a buffer containing references to the added commands, in the order they were added.  This allows for the commands to be undone in reverse order, and redone in forward order.

The history maintains an index of the last undone command, and if a new command is added, it will go into the buffer at this point.  Any commands that came after the one most recently undone will be lost.

The buffer is a finite size (currently 256), if a command is added to history and it’s full, the oldest command is removed.

New demo

So, the game now has full undo / redo capability (using Ctrl + Z / Ctrl + Y).  This is a feature that this genre of game really should have, and I think it was worth making the effort to get it done.

Steam store page

There are still a couple of issues left to deal with, but it’s now in a usable state, so I’ve just updated the demo to include it.  A lot of code had to change, hopefully I haven’t introduced any glaring bugs, it seems stable so far.  Give it a try and let me know how you get on with it!

Hey all, I’ve made a fair amount of progress on the game over the past month, so let’s get into what I’ve been up to.

“Gary Island” map

One conundrum I had while designing the tutorial scenario was where to locate it (i.e. which map to use and whereabouts on that map).  I could have used one of the existing maps but they are all pretty large and “open plan”, which made it hard to lay out the scene for the tutorial.  I needed something small with clear boundaries that spatially confine the player.

For a while I had been resistant to the idea of adding another map for the tutorial scenario, but it became apparent that this was going to be necessary, and worthwhile investing the time and effort in.  So I decided to make a new map, an island surrounded by water, with a 250×250 m playable area.

For long time followers of the game’s development, I resurrected the water from those old procedural island maps!  I was also reluctant to do this actually, as introducing water brings about a whole host of implications (what happens when you go in the water? buoyancy? drag? sound & particle effects? player swimming animations?)  So for now the water is beyond the map boundary and is just there for visual effect.

As usual, first I started with making the terrain height map:

Then, painted the textures (reusing those from the other maps):

Finally, added details (e.g. grass) and trees:

Overall I’m quite pleased with how the map turned out.  It has a central area (which I’ve used for the tutorial scenario), and other areas that are connected via paths for a bit of variety.  I’m thinking this will be good for other scenarios, and also as a general starter map for players.

Water reflection optimisations

After bringing back the water, I needed to do some performance optimisations to the old reflection rendering implementation (water reflections are rendered using another camera with a view that is flipped upside relative to the main camera).

I improved the code by eliminating some expensive per-frame calls (GameObject.Find(), GetComponent(), etc.) and getting rid of GC allocs.  I also reduced the level of detail during the reflection render (by overriding the LOD bias, turning off terrain details, and reducing the tree LOD switch distance).

Finally, I added a “video options” setting to make the water reflection rendering only include the terrain & sky, or be turned off altogether (falling back to a reflection probe).

Tutorial scenario

To finish the final iteration of the tutorial scenario, first I had to create a scene in the new map.  I laid out all the constructions, checkpoints, and so on for each of the tutorial stages that the player completes in sequence.

Then I worked on the scenario scripting, organising the Lua scripts by breaking them up into the tutorial stages.  The scripts are responsible for tracking player progress through the tasks they have to complete for each stage, showing a UI window with instructions (text and videos), and helping the player get back on track if they make a mistake.  This turned out to be a huge amount of work, but I think the results turned out really well.

Here’s a sneak peak of the start of the tutorial scenario:

So the tutorial scenario is now (more or less) complete, which is a huge milestone, as that was the last major task before early access release.  There’s still a bunch of work to do, but I’m now in a position to prepare the game for release which is very exciting!

Part resizing indicator

I’ve implemented another indicator that shows unit dimension numbers near a part when resizing it with the resize manipulator.

This makes it much easier to see the part dimensions while resizing, as it saves having to look down at the part UI overlay.

Script mods

The script mods included with the game have continued to develop.  For example, I implemented a “builder tool extensions” script mod that provides an interface with options for precise part placement.

I also improved and added to the various debug tools, and added a simple “hello world” example.  I can’t wait to see what script mods of their own players can come up with!

Hey everyone, it’s been months since my last dev blog update!  As you will hopefully have seen, I recently announced the coming release of GearBlocks into early access for November 9th.

A lot of my time lately was spent preparing for this announcement.  The trailer video was the biggest chunk of this work: planning, building content in game (including many new built-in constructions!), capturing footage, and editing it all together.  I also improved the Steam store page and website with new screenshots, gifs, blurb, presskit, etc.

Tutorial scenario

I recently took the game to a local indie meetup, and had a few people try out the tutorial scenario.  It was really useful and informative to watch people play it in person.  The feedback was somewhat sobering though, some found it too complicated and struggled with information overload!

So I made some changes to the tutorial to try and simplify the information presented to players, and added more code to handle edge cases where players were getting stuck.

I’ve also set up a new build configuration for a special demo build with just the tutorial scenario in it, which I’m planning to use for the Steam Next Fest (coming on October 9th).

Lua scripting

I’ve continued to improve the Lua scripting interfaces, exposing more properties and methods for manipulating parts and constructions, adding more tool interfaces, and more vector / quaternion math stuff.

Further improvements were made to some of the included script mods, including the builder tool extensions (now with the ability to set / snap the pivot position & orientation, change the manipulators to work in world or local space, etc.)

Kit building

For the trailer video I wanted to show time lapses of some constructions being built.  I also want to try creating scenarios where the player follows instructions to build pre-designed blueprint constructions, a bit like building from a model kit.

So I implemented a feature I’m calling “kit building”, to cater for both of these situations.  Parts can now be assigned a stage index and constructions have an active stage that can be set (where any of their parts in higher stages than the active one are hidden).

I made a script mod tool for setting part stage indices, and previewing a construction’s stages.  I actually used this tool when capturing for the trailer, just manually advancing through the stages in order, revealing the parts.

I also prototyped a kit building scenario with a simple Lua script to allow the player to advance through a blueprint construction’s stages, automatically spawning the parts they need to build that stage.  This idea has potential I think, but will need work to make it more user friendly.

Minor demo update

I decided to release another quick demo update, out now with some fixes and other small tweaks:-

• Minor UI improvements, including a new “getting started” window that shows some helpful pointers when launching into a new game.
• Improved attachment locking undo / redo (single command for multiple attachments).
• Bug fixes (including fixing the differential idler gear centre-of-mass again).