List Of Discussed Topics

• Ingame Feedback And Bug Report System

• Lua Modding In Works

• NPC Autonomy / AI In Lua

• Refining UI As Modding In Lua

• Affected Saves And Saved Construction Blueprints

Ingame Feedback And Bug Report System

It is important to mention, that implementing UMeFate ingame feedback and bug report system, became highly valuable and the time spent adding it to the game, as shown, was well worth it. Our early playtesters were already able to use the system, to report multiple bugs. Some are more, or less critical. But saying all that, there is quite a list of them. Funnily saying that, bug report itself has also own bug, which need to be addressed

The main benefit of the bug report, when the player submits it, it allows to collect important information. For example including the screenshot, plus player description. But there is more.

Also, when an ingame bug, or feedback report is submitted by the player, they are reported to the discord, which gives immediate feedback to UMeFate dev team. Now these issues are in the backlog and are planned to be reviewed and tackled respectively. Soon after the current task regarding modding and UI is resolved.

Lua Modding In Works

At the current time, UMeFate focuses on various modding aspects. Specifically in the respect to Lua modding. Until now, Lua side code only handled spawning and navigation destinations of UMes in their world. Spawning and moving to the destination are mostly random and decided, when UMes have arrived to their destination.

Code and structure wise, it was actually a bit of dumpster fire. More proof of the concept than anything, without much of files structure. All lua logic was placed into one file. Even tho, not so much of the code itself. In the end, we have saying: “first make it work, improve it later”. 

But it was expected, for Lua modding to work, these have to change. So currently our UMes are working on restructuring whole Lua directories, how files are read and how they are accessed. Mod directories will be organised per modders and their mods names. There is a bit of flexibility here for the future modders, regarding how things can be organised. But the base is already there.

From now on, various UMeFate Lua related logic will be written as mods. This hopefully will ensure that Lua modding is as stable and functional as needed.

One of the additional features of Lua modding system is, that some Lua code will be possible to change at the runtime, without needing to restart the game. While not perfect and has some limitations, for example atm., if syntax code error is present, unfortunately this requires restarting the game. Hopefully this will be resolved in the future. But the system has already shown benefits during recent testing of UI (more about UI in a bit).

NPC Autonomy / AI In Lua

Since major logic of UMes and their autonomy will be in Lua, solid core and the architecture of Lua modding is required. This is the part of approaching work on Classic AI / Autonomy for UMeLand inhabitants. This is a very exciting time for UMeTeam.

At the moment our UMes are testing possible and right paths for implementing whole autonomy logic along with modding in general. Once that job launches, there will be tons of work ahead. That is regarding UMes behaviours, relations, needs and whats not. 

And not to forget, all aspects related to split-screen.

Refining UI As Modding In Lua

As the result and the requirement for UMes autonomy, there will be needed new UI informations and inputs for players. 

Considering the current version of UMeFate, one of the natural approaches would be to keep polishing and adding features to the current UI system. Which is fine in a design sense. However there are various bugs still, which need to be fixed first. But if being able to refine and test changes of UI at the game runtime and without needing resetting the game, this would be a massive workflow improvement. So to not dive too deep into the current UI architecture, while still needing to resolve various bugs, the current UI state gives a great opportunity, to make it moddbale. Or at least partially (for now) moddable.

So the first part of the process, which has already started last week, is to rebuild the current UI, but as mods. That where we earlier have discussed restructuring modding architecture for Lua. 

Following that, ensuring that new UI features works at least as good, or better than the current UI.

Then existing bugs and new features should be easier to tackle.

With all that said, there is a significant time cost for these implementations. But we believe in the long run, we can see huge benefits of UI being able to be modded. Also doing UI from almost day one as mods, as previously mentioned, will make UI modding and designing much more stable. Additionally, that allows to clear up any technical depth early.

It is similar in a sense, as UMeFate split-screen that has been implemented early in the development, as the core mechanics. Now anything regarding UI, or game mechanics is much simpler and more fluid.

Affected Saves And Saved Construction Blueprints

Following changes to the restructuring mods system, all current models moved their location.

That breaks any map saves and saves construction blueprints, which use objects like chairs, beds etc. Naturally things will keep breaking with consecutive updates as all is in the early development stage.

Fortunately, the fix is relatively simple. But since there is no game update yet, this will be left for the future to discuss.

And that's all for today's update.

Until the next one