I got a lot of great feedback from the programming open beta. I've been spending some time reworking it yet again to address some key concerns:
- Allowing the creation of complex programs compactly and efficiently.
- Avoiding the clutter introduced by physical wires.
- Minimizing the amount of space required to display functions, variables, and events.
This is an open beta and as such I'm not going to be providing a massive writeup on every change made. So here's a rough outline:
- Introduced 'programming mode'. Any programming-related activity is only available when programming mode is enabled. It can be toggled by pressing caps-lock (this will be rebind-able shortly).
- Links are now only visible when programming mode is enabled.
- Links can now be created and destroyed only when programming mode is enabled.
- General-purpose functions are no longer massive physical objects - they are now contained within the newly added computer. See below for more detail.
- Added 'computers'. These are a necessity for advanced programming and allow access to general-purpose functions. These can be viewed and edited when programming mode is enabled.
- Variables no longer have a separate port for getting and setting. They now only have one port - click and hold this port to view a radial menu. From here you can choose to get or set (if possible) the variable.
Please keep in mind this new system is still in a very early state. Here are some important things to keep in mind:
- There are many temporary textures and models in use - none of the new stuff looks pretty yet, but it will.
- To get this update out ASAP I have not yet modified the appearance of objects to accomodate the reduced size of functions, events, and variables. I will do this shortly.
- At the moment there is only a 4 input, 4 output computer. I will be adding more computers with varying input/output amounts. Computers with more ports will have larger workspaces.
- Newly introduced features do not yet have finalized appearances, feedback audio, or nice smooth animations. Everything should work, but it might feel a little janky for now.
- Games created prior to this update are not compatible with this version of the game. This includes games created with the existing open beta.
- There's probably going to be quite a few bugs! I made the mistake of spending too much time refining and bug fixing the last update, only to throw all of that work away when I found that people did not like the update. I'm not going to make that mistake again.
I hope everyone enjoys this revised version of the programming system. I'll continue taking feedback and further refine it over the next week or so. I'm aiming for a full release in early February.
Thanks for reading,
Tyler
