MyRobot Development Part 41

Video shows the summary, text shows the technical!

This week:

• Pause Menu

• UI Improvements

• Primitive Larva Husbandry

• Bug Report Tool First Impressions

Pause Menu

This was badly needed. Previously everything was thrown into the Achievement Menu and that didn't make any sense. It was also ugly! But alas we have a pretty and organized proper pause menu!

Features such as the Save and AI Settings menus were moved to this pause menu for convenience since they should always be available. The Robot Editor will still be in the computer requiring a connection.

The inspiration for this menu was similar to that of Viva's book pause menu, which was originally inspired by the pause menu from The Grinch (2000) a PlayStation 1 game.

UI Improvements

 I watched a lot of videos of people playing my game and the #1 problem with most playthroughs was "How do I disconnect the head from the USB?". So to combat this I added a visual ring reticle that fills up when you hold down right mouse button. This is to let the player know that you can hold RMB to access the alternative item menu to detach parts.

Additionally, this visual cue was added to the "Move Here" command and all tools like the grapple hook.

I expect this final week to change the keyboard layout so that tools aren't activated with Middle Mouse Button. It's a challenge because I would love for left mouse to control that but left mouse has the grab-drop-physics commands. I'll work something out.

Primitive Larva Husbandry

This was necessary for two reasons:

One, the larva were still a nuisance to deal with just the laser especially with hordes of larva. The mushroom bait will completely override the active target of all nearby larva so that the robot is ignored entirely. The mushrooms grow back after 1 minute. The bait does not last forever as the larva will eat it promptly and move on to other things to eat!

And two, I have recently been studying the efficiency of my game development. What I mean by that is looking at how much game I produce relative to effort put in. This is a philosophical thing but it can manifest as replay-ability. For example, Minecraft maps have huge replay-ability because they are random and algorithmically created. They are not hand crafted maps and small features snowball into entire game systems. Likewise all the work I put into MyRobot should contribute to the game loop, even small art props like mushrooms. So the mushrooms should not just be pretty props in the map. They should serve a purpose and feed back into the main game loop. This way the game can expand in gameplay with me putting in less work. The other alternative would have been for me to make a new "larva bait" item which requires modeling, texturing, busy work. But now I reuse the mushrooms! Efficient game development!

Bug Report Tool First Impressions

In the two weeks that the bug report tool was live I received 61 unique bug reports! AMAZING! I have already crushed 15 high priority bugs! Luckily most of the bugs reported were low priority. This is a reminder that it is available in October builds and above in the pause menu or pressing F12. Your screenshot is sent to my secret Discord channel where I look at it.

Huge success for the stability of the game!

As stated in the video this last week will be a sprint to finish as many bugs as I can. If I have some free time I may put in a couple small minor features into game as well as expand the map a bit more.

Stay tuned!