UniverCity - Change log :: Thinkofname's blog

Gameplay⌗

Stylish conversion complete + UI Improvements⌗

The server connection screen from univercity with a new font

The conversion from the old UI system to stylish is complete. This did take a while but things look and work better because of it. It also made adding new windows/menus like the options menu much easier.

This change also comes with a swap in font from Indie Flower to Schoolbell. Schoolbell still gives off the handdrawn feel that the previous font but is much easier to read in-game (and easier to render without issues).

I also took the time to make things like scrollbars feel much nicer to use. Previously they would stop moving when dragging if you moved your mouse off to the side, now they use a fullscreen invisible box to keep hold until the mouse is released.

Logo Updated⌗

With the font change I dedicided it was time to update the game’s logo as well. As you can see i’m not an artist. The new logo uses the same idea of the previous one but is more compact. I also added a bit of a background to it as well in the form of a graduation cap.

Tooltips improved⌗

Tooltips can now include icons and highlighted text. This should make them clearer to players. The current icons aren’t that clear so they may get redone in the future.

Finally added an options menu. Supports audio levels, resolution/framerate and keybindings.

Keybindings support more control than the UI currently shows as its possible (via the config file) to bind to the direction of the key (up/down) instead of just a key. This allows, for example, to change the drag to select into a press one key to start selecting and press another to stop. This might be useful for some accessibility uses but i’m not sure.

Music/Sound⌗

Added music and replaced the clicking sound with just a basic clicking noise as the paper sound got old really fast. Doors have an opening and closing sound with basic positional audio as well as a sound when a student spends money.

Names and lists⌗

Students and staff members now have names generated for them. Along with this a list of staff members was added to allow tracking down staff. Clicking on students/staff will open an info window for them, the student window includes their current timetable.

Student spawning⌗

Students will automatically ‘spawn’ at the edges of the world and walk to your UniverCity. The limit is based on the capacity of the player’s class rooms so more will walk in over time as the player builds.

Model changes⌗

The animation rig for professors and students was completely redone and they now share the same rig. This allows for the animations to be reused greatly reducing the amount of duplicate work and work to add a new model to the game.

Along with this new variants of the exist models were added. The game now supports random variants for entities which can override certain properties of the base entity e.g. model, name list. The new variants are as follows: Female professor, Male student with trousers instead of shorts, Female student with trousers and a Female student with a skirt. The random color tints still apply to these models as well. Hopefully i’ll be able to add more variants later but currently my modeling skills are pretty limited as well as the amount of time I have to be working on models.

Plants⌗

Professors teach⌗

Instead of just standing in the middle of the room professors now walk around the projector and rarely stand next to a student. This is still missing animations but the basic framework is now there.

Objects can have behaviours registered to them (as seen below). These are run inside a coroutine allowing for synchronous code to be writen whilst being run async. walk_to_face and wait_tick both ‘block’ until they complete.

actions.register("base:chairs/single_chair", function(obj)
    local x, y = obj:get_position()
    local s = math.sin(obj.rotation + math.pi * 0.5)
    local c = math.cos(obj.rotation + math.pi * 0.5)
    helpers.walk_to_face(x + 0.4 * s, y + 0.4 * c, obj.rotation)
    helpers.wait_ticks(20 * math.random(4, 20))
end, 0.05)

actions.register("base:projector", function(obj)
    local x, y = obj:get_position()
    local s = math.sin(obj.rotation + math.pi * 0.5)
    local c = math.cos(obj.rotation + math.pi * 0.5)
    helpers.walk_to_face(x + 0.7 * s, y + 0.7 * c, obj.rotation)
    helpers.wait_ticks(20 * math.random(4, 20))
    helpers.walk_to_face(x - 0.7 * s, y - 0.7 * c, obj.rotation)
    helpers.wait_ticks(20 * math.random(4, 20))
end, 5.0)

Internal⌗

Added a green-screen room⌗

This exists purely to make taking screenshots of entities/objects easier. Should be removed before release (assuming I remember).

Lua bindings fixes⌗

This took a while to track down but my lua wrapper was miss-handling ffi functions being called whilst inside a coroutine. Since i’ve only just started using coroutines this hasn’t popped up before.

Minor things⌗

Students now randomly select benches to sit on instead of using the placement order
The button clicking noise was missing from a few buttons, this has been fixed
Various scripting issues fixed with students/staff leaving
Some unsafety removed when using my ecs outside of a system.
Timetable generation now handles students re-registering at the end of a term
The price of most rooms/objects was adjusted to make things fairer
Network error handling improvements
Added inner walls that are basically the inverse of the extension object
Staff summoning is now smarter in what entities it selects to go to rooms

UniverCity - Change log