Devtober Day #6

Welcome back to Day 6 of Devtober, in which real-life catches up to me and I realize that I kinda suck at my own game.

Not too much in terms of progress today, unfortunately, as a slew of midterms, labs, projects, and homework have kindly reminded me that I do indeed have a life outside of making games all day. Drat. Anyway, today I made more progress on finishing the strike mechanic, implementing the "draw" and "dish" actions, as well as implementing the ability to flip the grid along either the X or Z axes.

As explained in yesterday's devlog, the draw and dish actions are context-based actions that occur whenever the "precise" strike is used in certain contexts. These are intended to allow the player to add additional detailing to their works in a simple and easy-to-use manner. While the effects of draw and dish could technically be replicated by using the engraving feature to simply carve out the same shape, having these as dedicated actions allow common features like edges and fullers to be created much more easily. 

And now that draw and dish have finally been implemented, here are the actual rules for which action occurs when a precise strike is performed:

• Create - occurs when a voxel exists behind the target, but not ahead
• Draw - occurs when a voxel does not exist behind the target
• Dish - occurs when a voxel exists both ahead and behind the target
  • Note: if a neighboring voxel has also been dished, a connection will be made between the two voxels.

As you can tell, it's a bit more complicated than the rest of the actions. 

Also, I've realized I'd made a huge mistake when designing a highly skill-based system, and it's that I forgot to factor in that I might suck at it. Since I haven't yet implemented the ability to destroy voxels, making even a single mistake while trying to smith the sword meant having to start all over. As it turns out, trying to avoid using the wrong type of strike is actually pretty difficult, and while that's exactly what I intended, it also has the side effect of making a demo much more difficult. I must have done over 15 takes just trying to forge the initial shape, never mind the actual detailing from using the precise strike. The number of times I'd accidentally use too much power and end up using a light strike instead of a precise strike was enough to make a man go mad. (Also, I realized that I didn't even completely finish the other side of the sword in the demo, but by that point, I was only too eager to just be done with it)

Thankfully, these issues should be completely gone by the time I implement voxel destruction, at least.

In any case, going through that ordeal did manage to provide a few insights on things I should probably change later. For instance, trying to see the subvoxels is pretty hard when they're all the same color, so I'll probably modify the voxel material to include a thin outline in the future, or even attempt to decipher the arcane rituals that are shaders if I happen to feel brave enough. 

Well, after I finish this schoolwork first.

Man, I hate coding projects...

Anyway, that's about it for now. 'Till tomorrow,

- Ian, Lunarium Works