Hello everyone, welcome to our latest development report! A lot has been going on behind the scenes lately and so let me get you filled in before we get into any walls of text on changes completed over the last two months.
First and foremost is that other events have been pulling me away from the game recently. As a result the audio/image work is not as heavy as I would have liked it to be for this update. That said we do have a bit to discuss on the coding side. First though I will commit that the next update will see some first beta audio tracks that will be used in the game as well as some more iconography for the game.
So, as you know we are going to have a very in-depth and robust modding system. Originally the plan was to just give you the ini file and let you have at it but after working in that file I have to admit it is:
- daunting
- very complicated even with half of the file being comments on what stuff does
- hard to keep track of things
Due to these I have decided that I will be releasing a full fledged modding tool that will allow you to edit everything within the ini as well as database and save file editing. The tool will include these features as well as some other interesting stuff like allowing you to see the outcome of your changes without having to run the game itself by plugging your changed settings into a simulator of sorts that will spit out all kinds of data relating to the things you have changed.
You will be able to fully edit the database as well from modifying weapon attributes to moving entire blocks of items around to make more space without the need to know much about SQL queries. My plan is to have much of it be automated so all you have to do is select a certain range of records and where you want to move them to (as in where the first record of your selection will start). The tool will work behind the UI to produce the query code to do the actions you have selected. You will also be able to edit your save files as well.
There may also be more features in the future as we progress in the development of Odyssian Void. The tool will be written in C# so that rapid development is possible without all of the distractions and gigantic amounts of code required by the Windows API. Currently the base features are already well under development with the database editor being the least completed and the INI Editor being pretty much done structurally.
A lot of the developer's vlog videos are on the mod tool so if you are interested in seeing the current pre-alpha build in action take a look at some of the later videos.
On the coding front for the game things have ground to a halt, but this is a good thing. Due to some changes in how the ini is being structured (which has added a lot more complexity to it) the global variables class has had to almost be recoded from the ground up. And because of these changes many code edits are going to be required as well as some rethinking of how some of the game code operates on the imported data.
For this reason the coding work on the gVars class has taken top priority for the moment and I am halting all other work being done in the code until I have finished working on it. This also ties into the modding tool which is why a lot of time has gone into that this month.
I am hoping to have this work done by the end of December or into mid January.
For the audio work I did manage to get some basic tests out but a lot of the time I allocated went into experimenting with new content in Zeta+ 2 and as a result not much was really done. These test tracks are rather simplistic but I wanted to return to that style for a while before delving forward on creating actual music that will be in the game eventually; a refresher course in the basics if you will.
I am also planning on some big purchases related to this with the EastWest CCC2 which will give me over 400GB of new audio samples, tools, and other interesting stuff to mess around with and improve the quality of the audio I am producing for the game. I may also start looking for a sound designer/composer as well if I decide on delegating that task out so I can focus on something else.
Here are the tracks I mentioned:
I was originally going to have three new info-graphics along with the old ones placed in a new template for that particular kind of information. The events I mentioned above have ruined those plans though for this update. I will be getting these done for the next one in February though.
And that leaves us with the developer's vlog. This one is another pretty long one, 20 videos. I will follow the same upload structure of five a week with the uploading being on Saturday.
Thanks for following the project!
