Despite some traveling around the city today with various errands to run, I got quite a bit accomplished today.  It may not look like much, however, I designed a common use "button" than not only can be used as a general use button, but also, has a built-in progress bar, quantity counter, swappable icon, and changeable text.  All of this can be changed programmatically during runtime, so if I need to change the display, I can update everything in one place, a single time.  This first screen shows the various Skills that I've added.


I also got the panel switching to work as you can see in the second image.  I've done some minor moving things around as well.

So today while I was wasting away at work (instead of in Margaritaville), I got some thinking done.  I want to name the game with something along the lines of Circuit or Circuitry, or something like that, since the game will be set inside of a virtual computer that is being built.

I'm also wanting the core to be build around the individual pawns, the character-army that the player is going to create.  I want the pace of the game to be a slow one.  Many RTS games feature a clock or race that has to be beat.  I'm wanting to create something that's more casual.  The game is going to feature a pause system as well as a Save Game feature.  So that a player can come back to the game whenever he/she has time.  The competition will come into play when players link up in Multiplayer mode.  I'm thinking that the Resources could have limits, however, I haven't truly decided on this yet.

Who was the person who turned on the radio?  I've got Funky Town playing in my head on auto-repeat, now for the last fifteen minutes!

At least it's a good song!

Nice to see you back .

I was talking on Discord the other night and somebody slid into my DM's and wanted to talk about the possibility of working on a game collaboratively.  He'd do the 3D/artistic stuff, while I'd focus on the coding and Blueprint stuff.  While I really appreciate this, it would GREATLY speed up my development, because, let's face it, I know nearly ZERO about modeling.  I've worked within Blender for all of four hours, following a tutorial on how to make a Health Potion!

Don't get me wrong, it's a blast creating all this stuff, and learning new software is always fun, and challenging!  But I would still love to have some help with the creation of my pet project.  I've only dreamt about this baby for the last 15 years.  My buddy Jason could tell ya, but he's not on here.   Anyway, I'm always looking for friends who would enjoy learning and working on a game project!

Well, I've been super busy over the past few weeks.  I figured that I'd get a quick summarized update of all the progress that I've made so far.

First, I'll let it be known that for this project I'm following the RTS tutorial on YouTube, created by Two Neurons.  He's a fabulous instructor, and seems to be pretty competent with regards to software engineering.  Anyway, here's the tutorial completed up to episode 23:


I added the widget in the bottom right corner that displays the current Pitch, Zoom, and Direction, as well as the current location on the Map.  Other features that I've done were behind the scenes.  I reworked the GameTime function to use an easier method to speed up time.  Originally, the time operated at a much faster rate than Real Time.  I set the default time speed equal to one second.  Originally, you could slow time down, now it's defaulted to one second.  There are now also 16 time settings instead of the original 5.  These values range from 1x speed to 2500x speed.  Furthermore, the initial time was originally hard coded into BluePrint.  I have a setting that I can enable that uses the Real World Time as the initial start time.

Speaking of the camera manipulations.  Original, the camera was hard coded to 75 degrees, and the zoom worked within a narrow range (between 300 and 1350 Unreal Units).  Now the Zoom operates between 300 and 10,000 Unreal Units, and instead of only 10 zoom steps, there are 20.  I also set made the Pitch adjustable.  It now defaults to 60 degrees, however, by holding down the Right Mouse button, the player can adjust the pitch all the way to zero degrees, and up to 90 degrees.

Other things I've been doing behind the scenes:  I've been adding Resources (not the actual 3D models just yet), but only working on the internal Database.    I've also been working on a Configuration File and Settings User Interface.  Finally, I've been cleaning up some of the initially messy code blocks, expanding them and making them function more dynamically.

I've also been doing a lot of thinking.  Specifically about what features do I want to add and how am I going to implement them.  What is the Player's experience that I'm going after?  And finally what things would I like to expand upon going from version 1.0 into 2.0 when the time comes.  Because most of the time I'm at work, standing around counting shopping carts and stuff on them, and I'm not anywhere near my computer, most of the work I'm doing right now is mainly just thinking.  Do you smell toast too?

Comedy and romantic comedy are my 2 faves.

I'd pay off some debts, remodle the house some and maybe own a video arcade.

So, over the past a few days, I've noticed my TikTok feed has been blowing up with Generation X people.  Yeah, I've joined the "train" as well!  I can't help myself.  Gen X:  Let's do this!

I enjoyed the solar eclipse.