Status update, 2013/02/25

 Hi folks, I'm back with another update. This past week hasn't seen much time devoted to Rustbot, but I still managed to make hit some milestones. For one, I incorporated an inventory system. Once you grab an item (left-click on it), you can drop it or add it to your inventory by either left-clicking or right-clicking, respectively. So to add multiple items swiftly, it's just simply alternating left, right, left, right, left, right. Minimizing clicking or keystroke counts between desired actions is a strong key to good game design, so I'm trying to make it as streamlined as possible from the ground up.

Inventory system

Pre-pre-pre-alpha demo video what

I've spent the past ~twelve hours working on adding in hinges and springs, and the ability to add them to loose objects, compound objects, and vice versa. It's quite complicated and deep. Seriously. There's still some more work to do on it, some bugs to iron out, but overall it's almost somewhat robust. I decided to put ol' FRAPS (free version; I'm cheap) to use and get some quick vids out. Then I decided to put ol' AVS Video Editor (free version; I'm cheap) to use and make a cool compilation. And so here you have it!

After the break, that is.

Status update, 2013/02/14

Despite the recent lack of updates and the topic of the last post, I have been working fastidiously on the ol' Rustbotteroo. First, a screenshot (followed by wall of text after the break)!

At least I'm not the only one

This is *totally* me: Under the Gun: When Less Time Can Mean Better Problem-Solving

Conjoining objects

Being that the major mechanic in Rustbot is putting objects together to build structures and/or contraptions, I'd obviously better make sure that it is water-tight. Making this work on a dynamic runtime level while allowing for near-infinite combinations is really not as easy as it sounds. Here I'll be describing what I want in my model, and the different roads I took (and finally settled on). Be forewarned, this will get technical.

Just thinking out loud... er... on paper... er... on screen. Sure.

There's a study that suggests that telling people about your goals chemically satisfies your brain in a way similar to that when having actually achieved them. Extrapolating that, Derek Silvers advises not telling people your goals with the idea in mind that, having achieved that particular chemical satisfaction, you've satisfied the need to complete the goal and are therefore less likely to complete it. I don't find this to be far-fetched, because I love talking about Rustbot and, well, look where I've gotten with it.

BUT I can't help myself and will continue to blab. I favor the method of writing things down here because it makes them feel more solidified whereas, prior to doing so, they feel incomplete, abstract, and intangible. It's like collapsing the wave function of an electron to bring it from a cloud to a particle by measuring it. Anyways, here are my current ramblings.

More core features

Last night I was able to implement on-the-fly joining of objects, thanks once more to Unity's ease of use. Again, this is something with which I struggled mightily when doing the class coding myself. I had barely achieved it, and it was still extremely buggy a year and a half ago. But this? This is stable. And it's awesome.

So as I was fooling around with it, I created a little tower in the level, and challenged myself to get to the top. To do so, I had to dismantle a bunch of surrounding robots and use their components to build a staircase around the tower, thereby accessing the top. It wound up being quite challenging, because it became a sort of "make-your-own-platformer" game, complete with missing jumps and falling flat on your face, and having to start from the bottom again. I actually found it fun and reaching the top was quite rewarding, despite there being no actual reward in place. I feel like there's more to Rustbot than I'd originally imagined.

Anyways, here's the tower and the staircase I built around it.