W5: focus on Nodeverse
This week I decided that I would mainly work on my game Nodeverse, which has just hit 2000 downloads on ContentDB 🥳. Here's what I've been able to accomplish:
- Now ships persist across server restarts, clients joining and leaving. Their data is serialized in a compact format to minimize I/O operations in future versions. You can even fly a ship, quit and rejoin, then keep flying right where you left off!
- Unboarding a ship will place you outside it, at a location that makes sense, like next to it at the nearest reasonable spot, or on top if you've landed on a liquid.
- I added a dozen new sound effects; these are all footstep sounds to make the experience more immersive. Still, I'm not quite satisfied with all the sounds and will probably polish some of them a little more.
- I've begun the work to compose a title screen theme for Nodeverse. I'd like it to be an orchestral piece with a more adventurous, rather than spacey, vibe to it. Not sure if this will land on 0.2 or 0.3.
- A little tweak to grass soil textures to make them more diverse, ported to the 0.1.x branch.
With this, most of the ship-related infrastructure is in place for 0.2. For your interest, here's the list of things I'm still planning to do before the release:
- Add many nodes for shipbuilding. The current ones are only for test purposes, and don't allow for very good-looking or customizable ships.
- Polish the sounds and textures a bit more.
- Finish the title theme. I may as well put this off.
- Changes to world generation, like a couple new nodes and more interesting caves. I'm also unsure about this.
- Make the ship code more general and add an API. This is because this code will be reused for other cool features in version 0.3. But it's also important regarding the next point.
- Create a new mini-game making use of the 0.2 ship mechanics. Something like finding various ship pieces on different planets and using them to improve or customize your ship. I'm open to suggestions :)
What nodes should be added? Should the focus be on making ships realistic, visually appealing or customizable? I'm not entirely sure of that, if you want to discuss this or other stuff, you can do so at ContentDB threads or forums, GitHub or @aerkiaga:matrix.org.
While that's been my main focus this week, I've also been working hard on my project to embed electronics into 3D printed parts. Right now as I write this, a small test setup is running and reporting voltages continuously on my laptop. It's still too early to determine if the test is going well, let alone whether the technique will even serve my needs... That'll have to wait until next week, so stay tuned!
Unfortunately, I've had an issue with my 3D printer, so that might delay further tests a few days. Also, while I try to be as productive as I can regarding these projects, as a medical student I'm still severely limited by time and exams. So streamlining my workflow (as I've done here building an electrical tool to automate these tests) is vital to ever seeing projects completed.