... and am still very much unsure about what features are upcoming based on the recent blog post. But that's ok. Nicholas, you earned a cookie.
I am amused at how changing a possessive apostrophe into a semicolon totally flips that sentence's meaning...
Poetry Interpretation 101: Spoiler I. THE CAFFEINATION In the frozen lands of Gaslamp, in the midst of record wind speeds, while a power outage goes on, and our coders, drenched with fever, and the drippings of their noises, hunker over scarred computers plotting code for Clockwork Empires. Verily, a mighty plotting. Verily, it is cold season. A plague descending through the office, and our lungs are filled with wheezing. It's cold, windy, the power is out, and everyone has contracted the plague. Spoiler In the midst of Gaslamp’s office, strides the coder, Nicholas Vining, holding two large pints of coffee, in each hand, for double fisting in the manner of a wizard, or at the very least John Carmack – here we use poetic license – to do battle with the codebase. (Also, let us now please note that when a wizard double fists we’re merely talking about drinking.) Nicholas drinks lots of coffee, a la John Carmack. Spoiler “Tell me now,” asks Nicholas Vining, “Tell me, what should I be coding? Magic runes of lethal graphics, to dazzle bitter game reviewers, and the men of foulest Youtubes, craving 60 frames per second? Shall I work such magic runings, shall I weave intricate codings, in the mystic ‘Shader Language’ known to only true devotees of the sacred graphics circles?” Nicholas considers graphic upgrades, framerate optimisations, and shader tweaks. Spoiler Suddenly, there came a voicing of a man of mighty Business, as was recently acknowledged by Forbes’ “Thirty Under Thirty”, freshly returned from Seattle. Proudly ringing was his laughter, proudly calling, “Ha ha! Business!”, freshly returned from Seattle, not entirely sure what happened. “Nay,” admonished Dan Jacobsen, “do not cast your graphic weavings. This is why the other indies spend their coin to purchase engines, such as Unity or Unreal. But, instead, like proud Sisyphus, pushing up a hill a boulder, take from me these JIRA tickets, full of tasks you’d rather not do. Yet again the sprint is ending, yet again you slack in coding. Decision trees await your typing, and the offices need writing, ‘ere we can proceed with getting the hell out of Early Access.” CEO Dan Jacobsen, recently spotlighted in a Forbes 'Thirty Under Thirty' article (here!) admonishes Nicholas, and exhorts him to instead work on engine and pipeline issues, conceding that it may be comparable to the Classical Greek story of Sisyphus and the Boulder, i.e.: futile, unending punishment. He further acknowledges that other studios often purchase their engines as middleware to avoid exactly this. Spoiler Thus ashamed, your poor narrator, feeling not the least heroic, slunk back to his mighty fortress, clutching both his mighty coffees, and slumped into his throne of Aeron. Mighty was the throne of Aeron, powerful its weaving, for it keeps one sort of upright, in an ergonomic posture. The Narrator reveals himself to be the Nicholas, of the first stanza, and returns to his throne, named Aeron, to plot ruefully. Aeron is woven from some kind of black wicker, and lends its wielder the power of ergonomics. Spoiler II. THE ACTUAL BLOODY UPDATE So ashamed, our noble poet, proud programmer Nicholas Vining, sat down and split the building menu, sundering the earth from heavens. While the code was still compiling, all the office heard him musing, “We have far too many buildings, and it is very confusing for the poor neophyte user. See, a GIF by Chris Triolo. See, how well it’s animated. See how intricate the detail. Well, I’m sure not doing that, then.” How noble is the Lead Programmer! Knowing when he should be precious, and knowing when his time is precious, knowing when a thing can quickly be swept under the rug for later. Nicholas makes the building menu less overwhelming by subdividing items into categories. Meanwhile, Moomanibe has created a lovely animated GIF. Nicholas demonstrates the value of experience by efficiently separating Immediate Attention Things from Things I'll Do Later. Spoiler In a previous frozen winter, workshop code was quickly written by that mighty Wizard Whitman, for our original intentions. The intentions of the workshop slowly changed throughout the course of making a game in early access. (Once upon a time, the system did not have building interiors! We then threw out much of our artwork and code to add building interiors so that the actions of your people could be observed in fussy detail.) Yes, bits were often bolted to it by many hands, in great big hurries, adding one thing, then another. In fact, it was a load of bollocks. In a previous winter an indeterminate number of years past, Chris Whitman had whipped up the original workshop code. Ambitions for the workshops grew broader over time, necessitating drastic overhauls to both code and artwork - the end result was 'bollocks'. Spoiler Previously, it was rewritten, and the code was moved from Lua, where it was a great big pile of oozing from a, well, never mind. Now the workshop code is cleaned up and rewritten in C Plus Plus and it smells like new mown daisies and the smell of hay in summer. (Hopefully it lasts a few weeks.) The workshop code was moved from Lua to C++, and now functions satisfactorily. Examples are provided in the following stanza: Spoiler “Now,” he said, “the workshop code calls. In previous days, the artisan would have to wait for an assignment to be complete, before he could start a new one, with a fresh mandate. From now on, let all of our workshops be full of happy, healthy labour, and let every citizen amongst them do whatever work is able to be done in these conditions. Let’s instead have one assignment, which all jobs inside a workshop shall be attached to when created.” This was shipped in a fresh alpha, known as “Alpha forty-two-C.” Player feedback was quite lovely; we are thinking about letting the work crew affixed to a building also perform such small repairs to modules as may often occur when a proud and mighty module, over-used in its employment, becomes broken and needs repair. We may not; we’re not quite sure yet. Instead of completing assignments consecutively, artisans may now process multiple jobs simultaneously. Further, Alpha 42C saw groups of jobs attached to single assignments, one per workshop. Player feedback has been positive. The Devs are considering having module repairs come under the jurisdiction of the assigned workshop crew - this matter is unresolved and subject to active debate in the knife pit.
Poetry Interpretation 102: Spoiler From this revision, sprung a framework for running tasks inside a building. Now, when we look for a new job, if the building is an office, we examine all the jobs that are stored up inside this building. (We might have covered this already.) Thus a person’s wounds are treated by a happy half-crazed barber, or a demand for confession may be soon sated by a vicar, preaching their own choice of gospel depending on their mental status and alternative religions. A new “F-S-M” is added, where a member of your township may wait in place to have a job done, and will get angry when it’s not done, and thus forcing timely obesiance to your colonist’s ambitions to receive prompt medical attention before bleeding on the carpet, or for spiritual salvation, lest they do something they should not have. The workshop / assignment revisions have led to the development of procedurally-generated workshop-based tasks. Examples include colonists demanding surgery, or confession, at a barbershop and chapel, respectively. Colonists will wait for these tasks to be fulfilled, and will become upset if they are not done in a timely manner. Spoiler III. THE CALL OF THE KING-UNDER-THE-MOUNTAIN From the hills there came a shouting, and the hoarding of quinoa, (which only scans if read incorrectly, for actually it’s pronounced “keen-wah.”) Yes, t’was artist David Baumgart, freshly full of vegan lunchmeat, puzzling about a problem, vexed by user interactions. David Baumgart, a vegan who eats quinoa, raises some User Interaction issues: Spoiler “Here again,” he muttered idly, “things are put in the event system, things that maybe should not be there. For instance, bandit interactions. Should you wish to shoot a bandit, with your mighty flint and musket, you cannot change your past decisions, unless a new event is firing, caused by, maybe, other bandits, than the ones ripping your stuff off. In the past, we’ve said that buildings are the source of interactions with your townsfolk, and their worldview. Let us place, in-game, an office, a foreign office, where the player may make wise policy decisions – or not, as the case may yet be. Yes, a mighty foreign office, the perfect place for dreaded Novorus and Stahlmarkian interactions, and other sorts of jingo-ism.” David points out that it is not possible for a user to change a past decision without having the same decision event randomly occur twice. Users often cannot attack Bandits, because a peaceful policy was selected in the past, even if the current Bandits are a different group than the old Bandits. He suggests policy should be dictated at a physical building in the colony. Spoiler “For these things,” said Nicholas Vining, “we shall need all sorts of widgets. Yes, our code has many widgets, many widgets of all sizes, humble scroll bars and small buttons, text entry fields and tree view widgets, all hooked up by mighty signals, to a model view controller. Long ago, I cast these widgets, wrest them in a fiery furnace, actually a small apartment, and now they have grown fat and sassy. Yet, who amongst us can go in and write UI code for all offices? Alas, we must add widget code now, designed for use in office buildings, where the UI is configured depending on the type of office, and this must be done from Lua, for the many types of office.” Nicholas points out that the buttons and windows that will make this possible already exist in various states of implementation, created long ago. Nonetheless, someone will actually have to go and write the code, and it's going to have to be done in Lua. Spoiler Broken down, we see each office, has two types of interaction: some policies, and then a job list. Policies are sent as messages from the widgets, to the building and may be global or per-building depending on the type of office. For instance, inside a barracks, we may choose our choice of firearm, or the nature of our training, or when soldiers shall be training, requiring many types of widgets – rows of icons, and checkboxes, all drawn upon a WACOM tablet. Here your narrator is still coding, but stopped today to pen this update, in trochaic tetrameter, which may have been a poor idea. Hmm. Broadly speaking, offices may now have both policies and job lists. Further, policies may apply to all buildings, or some, or just one, depending on the policy. All of this requires new art, widgets, and icons. Nicholas took a break from coding to write this update, although he regrets doing so in trochaic tetrameter - a poetic meter that specifies four sets of long syllables followed by short syllables. A prominent example is The Kalevala, a Finnish National Epic, hence the reference to the 'Kalevining' later in the comment section. Spoiler IV. EXHORTATION Go about your daily grumblings, post today upon our forums! Send us all your broken save games, so we may yet fix nagging issues, for Early Access is like toothache, but the tooth is in a serpent. (Apparently, that’s like a cobra.) Bravely, we salute the warriors fighting on through Early Access, and are horrified to see that Prison Architect is coming out after thirty-six revisions. Now we pray to mighty Odin that he will take our souls in combat, which is why today we ordered many cans of silver spraypaint to adorn each other’s mouths with. (Next week’s blogpost is haiku, now.) An exhortation to the audience: the author encourages the listener to visit the forums, and submit broken save files to help the Devs locate and fix bugs. The author characterises Early Access as persistent pain, sharp and scaly. He salutes users who are participating in Early Access, and notes that Prison Archtect (in development approximately the same amount of time as Clockwork Empires), has recently announced their upcoming version 1.0. The remainder is a gentle reminder that the author is now returning to work.
I actually appreciated it. I was having a hard time understanding all the patches. At least it wasn't haiku?
