Devlog 24.46

Edit (12/2): I completely forgot to mention the localization framework.

It has been two weeks since my last post.

Release Status: Let's get down to brass tacks--the release isn't ready yet. Partway into last week I was overcome by holiday inertia and I didn't get back to work until yesterday morning. The alpha release is in an "any day now" state as I try to complete features before the end of the year. My target for this release was the end of November but...

Code Maintenance: My good luck streak continues! Very little code maintenance required the last two weeks. That said, I did have to set aside my LCARS-inspired UI components and move to a component set with more options and that took more time than I would have liked. When I return to the LCARS-like UI, I hope to generate the visuals programmatically instead of using PNGs, so I can make more complex layouts and components.

Feature Updates: With the move to simpler UI components, I made a lot of progress on Crew Generation. I added navigation for every member of the crew, along with navigation to each set of options for each crew member. I think I'll leave it open-ended enough the player can switch between characters and options freely so there's none of this, "I had a better idea for Character A after I made Characters B and C, oh what do you mean I can't reopen a Character for editing and I have to throw out all that work and start over from scratch?!"

None, if any, of the character options are dependent upon one another, so a player can conceivably make every choice and 'Next' through each option for each character, or they can do so in a more 'Random Access' fashion.

I decided, for the purpose of this release, the only significant character option will be 'Service' wherein the player can choose the character's Education and Career goals. These will be resolved during the Embarkment phase.

Embarkment: Once the user has finished the preliminary work of selecting character options, they have the choice to save the current crew as-is and return to the main menu, or 'Embark' on the crew's "first mission," which is essentially an origin story for how the crew got together in the first place, and where each character came from--their service record, their recent history, some battle scars, that sort of thing. In a future release, I want to create "flashback" and "retcon" mechanics for the player to append items to a character's personal history. 

Think of a character's personal history as a "linked list" of episodes from their life, with limited insertions and deletions. These episodes may feature other characters and the acquisition of various skills or starting equipment.

Over this last weekend, I began implementing a drag-and-drop interface for the player to roll dice and then apply them to various checks, allowing them to determine the shape or outcome of an event (or encounter, see below).

Encounters: Something funny happened while I was implementing the Embarkment system--I realized it contained components I wanted to use for an encounter system. It makes sense, considering the Embarkment is in many ways, the "first mission" or "first encounter" of the game, it's just that I wasn't expecting it to come together like that. So that's a thing.

Localization*: I implemented a framework to support localization. I only read/write/speak the one language so there isn't a whole lot to it right now but the framework is there so additional languages could be added.

Next Steps: We're in overtime now, so let's look at our release blockers--

• Embarkment. I just implemented a drag-and-drop interface over the weekend and I need to make sure that works with the dice and the skill checks. Once that's done, I need to make sure skill checks are associated with the correct characters and that results are applied persistently.
• Character (Crew) Creation. Right now choices aren't connected to anything other than a 'placeholder.' I need to make sure choices are correctly associated with each intended crew member. I need to make sure the crew is properly assembled during the finalization step so it can be persisted to the Embarkment step.
• Trade Interface. Just a glorified bunch of lists for now, but this is pretty important to the core game loop. First, trade inventories need to be connected to specific vendors, then the player's goods need to connect to the ship's cargo hold.