Logic World Wednesdays #122: The Numbered Edition
[p]We've been working on Logic World for eight years, and we've been sharing our progress on this blog for six of those. This week, we've decided to start counting our blogs, and it turns out this is the one hundred and twenty-second Logic World Wednesday.
Numbering the blogs gives them a sense of their place in our overall journey. This blog is #122, so you can tell we've done a lot of work before today! And it makes us consider the future. What will this game look like when we reach LWW 200? or 300?
We were inspired to start doing this by the Factorio crew, whose most recent blog is Factorio Friday Facts #438. If they never release another blog and we don't miss a single week, it will only take us 6 years to catch up 😉
Anyways, on to this week's news about Logic World, the indie video game we're building where you can invent a new computer!
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[/p]
We're nearly ready to release Logic World v0.92, The Subassemblies Update. We're done adding features, and now we're just applying minor polish and fixes to the update to make sure it's rock solid stable and has great usability.
We have a new preview version you can try out today (more info at the bottom of this blog) which is very close to the final 0.92 release. Our intention is to have a release candidate next Wednesday (October 15th). If no major issues are found in that release candidate, the update will be fully released the following week, on October 22nd.
The Subassemblies Update has spent a long time in the oven and we're very excited to finally get it done and out :)
[/p]
As we move to expand the scope of the online services we offer for Logic World, we've just completed a pass on all the URLs on our website. The new URLs are prettier, give more context for where they lead, and are future-proofed for new features we want to add later.
Notably, our domain has changed from https://logicworld.net to https://logic.world. I think we can all agree that `logic.world` is far hotter and more awesome compared to `logicworld​.net`
Here are some URLs before and after, let us know what you think![/p][p][/p][p]
All the old logicworld.net URLs should redirect to their new home on logic.world. If you find any broken links, please let us know.
There were a lot of details to consider with the new URLs, and it took a lot of team discussion to get it right, but we're very happy with where we landed. Here are a few new things we'll highlight:
[h2]The blog is special now[/h2]
We moved all the blog posts from a section of the forum to a dedicated blog page at https://logic.world/blog.
Additionally, all blog posts now have custom URL slugs, instead of being auto-filled by the post title. For example, this blog is at https://logic.world/blog/lww-122. (And if you're looking through the archives, note that LWWs are zero-indexed, so the first LWW is at https://logic.world/blog/lww-0).
[h2]Gotos[/h2]
We've added a system that lets us create redirects under `/goto/`. For example, https://logic.world/goto/discord leads to our discord server, and https://logic.world/goto/bluesky leads to our bluesky account.
The main purpose of these redirects is so that we can include these links in the game client. This way, we can still include links to third-party websites in the game, but we fully control the links and we can update them if the destination link changes or if the website we're linking to becomes evil.
We currently have 7 gotos. Can you discover them all? (please don't crash our servers trying)
[h2]Shortlinks[/h2]
Finally, we've added really short links to every piece of user content on the site! These links have just 6 characters after `logic.world/`, making them super easy to share around. For example, @kwuk's recent Mandelbrot build can be found at https://logic.world/r72FZS.
You can find the shortlink to a piece of content in a little box on each page.
When we introduced Fixed Perspective, a lot of you gave the feedback that `[ctrl + shift]` is an awkward binding to use for it. We agree with the feedback, and so the new default binding is `[Left Alt]`. Although left alt is convenient to press, we're a little nervous about this choice because it is often used for system shortcuts. We'd love your feedback on this.
Additionally, the Fixed Perspective keybind now takes full advantage of our new tap-to-toggle system. This means you can tap it once to toggle Fixed Perspective on and off, but you can also hold it down to to enable Fixed Perspective and then release it to disable Fixed Perspective.
Finally, we've enabled player movement while Fixed Perspective is active, and the keyboard buttons for looking around (bound by default to the arrow keys) now work in Fixed Perspective.
Please let us know what you think of these changes! We think Fixed Perspective can be a really good feature that makes playing Logic World a lot nicer, and we want to get it right. You can try it out in the latest preview (see the bottom of this blog).
When the game displays keybindings, it now uses symbols in some places instead of text. On all platforms, arrow key bindings will now look like the icons on arrow keys (previously, they would just say "Up", "Down", "Left", or "Right"). On MacOS, the game will now display symbols for the Command, Option, and Control keys, in accordance with Apple's Human Interface Guidelines.
There's more work to be done here, particularly around gamepads. Those are tricky because what currently shows up as `Gamepad North Button` should show up as a yellow Y button on an Xbox controller, a green triangle on a PS4 controller, a colorless X on a Switch controller, and probably other cases...
As we talked about in LWW-119 and LWW-121, we recently completed a massive overhaul of the infrastructure powering the Logic World Online Services. Part of this process involved rewriting the API that the game uses to communicate with our services. This API is used to authenticate user identity in verified multiplayer servers, to upload Creations, and to use the in-game Creation downloading feature.
The old API was based on gRPC, whereas our new API is based on HTTP. There are numerous advantages of the new API, including:
The new API has been live for a few weeks, but nobody could use it! However, we've now finished integrating the new API with the game, so all of the advantages listed above will be available to our gamers (you).
As part of this work, we've also made the game flexible so it can work with anybody's online services, not just ours. We've added values in the config files for the game client and server to specify the services endpoint; by default these are set to `logic.world`, but you can set them to whatever you want.
You probably don't have a reason to do this right now. But we're thinking about the long-term. We want this game to outlast us, and the simple truth is that one day https://logic.world will be no more. When that day comes, anybody who wants to continue using the online features of Logic World can provide their own API endpoint, change that config value, and everything will Just Work. (Yes, we are strong supporters of Stop Killing Games!)
We're keeping the old API running for now so the old game clients can still play online in verified mode, but we'll probably shut it down sometime after v0.92 is released.
Currently Logic World is priced at $15 USD (and regional equivalents). When update 0.92 is released, we will increase the price to $25 USD (and regional equivalents). With this update, the game is reaching a level of stability, polish, and overall value where we feel this new pricing is appropriate. Additionally, we are currently trying very hard to increase our revenues so that we can afford to work on Logic World full-time, and this price increase is part of our strategy to achieve that.
We feel it's fair and appropriate to give you a heads up on this plan. As mentioned above, we plan to release 0.92 (and do this price increase) on October 22nd. So if you've been waiting to buy Logic World for yourself or for a friend, now is a good time to pull the trigger :)
As we shared above, we're getting very close to releasing update 0.92! This week's preview contains some of the last fixes and improvements we want to get in before the update comes out. You can try it now and help us test by selecting properties -> betas -> public previews.
Here's everything new in Preview 731 (since Preview 613):
Online
Outlines
Zoomies
Fixed Perspective
Keybinding displays
UI
Export
Miscellaneous
[hr][/hr]
See you next Wednesday :)
Subscribe to the Logic World newsletter
Read more Logic World Wednesdays
Numbering the blogs gives them a sense of their place in our overall journey. This blog is #122, so you can tell we've done a lot of work before today! And it makes us consider the future. What will this game look like when we reach LWW 200? or 300?
We were inspired to start doing this by the Factorio crew, whose most recent blog is Factorio Friday Facts #438. If they never release another blog and we don't miss a single week, it will only take us 6 years to catch up 😉
Anyways, on to this week's news about Logic World, the indie video game we're building where you can invent a new computer!
[/p]
The next update is just around the corner!
[p]We're nearly ready to release Logic World v0.92, The Subassemblies Update. We're done adding features, and now we're just applying minor polish and fixes to the update to make sure it's rock solid stable and has great usability.
We have a new preview version you can try out today (more info at the bottom of this blog) which is very close to the final 0.92 release. Our intention is to have a release candidate next Wednesday (October 15th). If no major issues are found in that release candidate, the update will be fully released the following week, on October 22nd.
The Subassemblies Update has spent a long time in the oven and we're very excited to finally get it done and out :)
[/p]
New URLs!
[p]As we move to expand the scope of the online services we offer for Logic World, we've just completed a pass on all the URLs on our website. The new URLs are prettier, give more context for where they lead, and are future-proofed for new features we want to add later.
Notably, our domain has changed from https://logicworld.net to https://logic.world. I think we can all agree that `logic.world` is far hotter and more awesome compared to `logicworld​.net`
Here are some URLs before and after, let us know what you think![/p][p][/p][p]
All the old logicworld.net URLs should redirect to their new home on logic.world. If you find any broken links, please let us know.
There were a lot of details to consider with the new URLs, and it took a lot of team discussion to get it right, but we're very happy with where we landed. Here are a few new things we'll highlight:
[h2]The blog is special now[/h2]
We moved all the blog posts from a section of the forum to a dedicated blog page at https://logic.world/blog.
Additionally, all blog posts now have custom URL slugs, instead of being auto-filled by the post title. For example, this blog is at https://logic.world/blog/lww-122. (And if you're looking through the archives, note that LWWs are zero-indexed, so the first LWW is at https://logic.world/blog/lww-0).
[h2]Gotos[/h2]
We've added a system that lets us create redirects under `/goto/`. For example, https://logic.world/goto/discord leads to our discord server, and https://logic.world/goto/bluesky leads to our bluesky account.
The main purpose of these redirects is so that we can include these links in the game client. This way, we can still include links to third-party websites in the game, but we fully control the links and we can update them if the destination link changes or if the website we're linking to becomes evil.
We currently have 7 gotos. Can you discover them all? (please don't crash our servers trying)
[h2]Shortlinks[/h2]
Finally, we've added really short links to every piece of user content on the site! These links have just 6 characters after `logic.world/`, making them super easy to share around. For example, @kwuk's recent Mandelbrot build can be found at https://logic.world/r72FZS.
You can find the shortlink to a piece of content in a little box on each page.
Fixed Perspective UX improvements
When we introduced Fixed Perspective, a lot of you gave the feedback that `[ctrl + shift]` is an awkward binding to use for it. We agree with the feedback, and so the new default binding is `[Left Alt]`. Although left alt is convenient to press, we're a little nervous about this choice because it is often used for system shortcuts. We'd love your feedback on this.
Additionally, the Fixed Perspective keybind now takes full advantage of our new tap-to-toggle system. This means you can tap it once to toggle Fixed Perspective on and off, but you can also hold it down to to enable Fixed Perspective and then release it to disable Fixed Perspective.
Finally, we've enabled player movement while Fixed Perspective is active, and the keyboard buttons for looking around (bound by default to the arrow keys) now work in Fixed Perspective.
Please let us know what you think of these changes! We think Fixed Perspective can be a really good feature that makes playing Logic World a lot nicer, and we want to get it right. You can try it out in the latest preview (see the bottom of this blog).
Better keybinding displays
When the game displays keybindings, it now uses symbols in some places instead of text. On all platforms, arrow key bindings will now look like the icons on arrow keys (previously, they would just say "Up", "Down", "Left", or "Right"). On MacOS, the game will now display symbols for the Command, Option, and Control keys, in accordance with Apple's Human Interface Guidelines.
There's more work to be done here, particularly around gamepads. Those are tricky because what currently shows up as `Gamepad North Button` should show up as a yellow Y button on an Xbox controller, a green triangle on a PS4 controller, a colorless X on a Switch controller, and probably other cases...
New services API, now in the game
As we talked about in LWW-119 and LWW-121, we recently completed a massive overhaul of the infrastructure powering the Logic World Online Services. Part of this process involved rewriting the API that the game uses to communicate with our services. This API is used to authenticate user identity in verified multiplayer servers, to upload Creations, and to use the in-game Creation downloading feature.
The old API was based on gRPC, whereas our new API is based on HTTP. There are numerous advantages of the new API, including:
- It's easier for us to manage, maintain, and expand on.
- You don't need to maintain a constant connection to our server while using it.
- Your login token can automatically refresh, so if you open the game regularly, you'll never be logged out. (Currently "regularly" means at least once per year, but we may tweak this.)
The new API has been live for a few weeks, but nobody could use it! However, we've now finished integrating the new API with the game, so all of the advantages listed above will be available to our gamers (you).
As part of this work, we've also made the game flexible so it can work with anybody's online services, not just ours. We've added values in the config files for the game client and server to specify the services endpoint; by default these are set to `logic.world`, but you can set them to whatever you want.
You probably don't have a reason to do this right now. But we're thinking about the long-term. We want this game to outlast us, and the simple truth is that one day https://logic.world will be no more. When that day comes, anybody who wants to continue using the online features of Logic World can provide their own API endpoint, change that config value, and everything will Just Work. (Yes, we are strong supporters of Stop Killing Games!)
We're keeping the old API running for now so the old game clients can still play online in verified mode, but we'll probably shut it down sometime after v0.92 is released.
Notification of upcoming price increase
Currently Logic World is priced at $15 USD (and regional equivalents). When update 0.92 is released, we will increase the price to $25 USD (and regional equivalents). With this update, the game is reaching a level of stability, polish, and overall value where we feel this new pricing is appropriate. Additionally, we are currently trying very hard to increase our revenues so that we can afford to work on Logic World full-time, and this price increase is part of our strategy to achieve that.
We feel it's fair and appropriate to give you a heads up on this plan. As mentioned above, we plan to release 0.92 (and do this price increase) on October 22nd. So if you've been waiting to buy Logic World for yourself or for a friend, now is a good time to pull the trigger :)
v0.92 Preview 731 is now available for testing!
As we shared above, we're getting very close to releasing update 0.92! This week's preview contains some of the last fixes and improvements we want to get in before the update comes out. You can try it now and help us test by selecting properties -> betas -> public previews.
Here's everything new in Preview 731 (since Preview 613):
Online
- Updated the game to use the new HTTP-based Logic World Online Services API, which replaces the legacy gRPC API.
- Added secret setting: `MHG.Secret.Online.Endpoint`
- Added server config value: `OnlineEndpoint`
Outlines
- Outline thickness is no longer based on the screen resolution. Outlines should now look like they have the same thickness at 480p and 2160p.
- Updated the default outline thickness.
- Hopefully fixed the issue where outlines could sometimes become extremely bright and look like a miniature sun exploding on your screen.
Zoomies
- You can now only use the Zoom function (bound to `Y` by default) in the regular Building game state. It won't work in other first-person game states like Resizing and Grabbing.
- Fixed the Zoom binding conflicting with other input actions (it would previously conflict with `Ctrl+Y` for Redo).
- Fixed being able to get stuck zoomed-in if you opened a menu while zoomed-in.
Fixed Perspective
- Changed the default binding for Fixed Perpsective from `[ctrl+shift]` to `[left alt]`
- "Use Fixed Perspective" is now a tap-to-toggle binding. This means that you can tap the key to toggle fixed perspective as before, but you can also hold it down to enable Fixed Perspective and then release it to disable Fixed Perspective.
- While Fixed Perspective is active, you can now use the player movement controls, as well as the keyboard looking controls.
- Moved "Use Fixed Perspective" to the "Looking" category of controls.
- Fixed the keybind hint for turning off Fixed Perspective not updating properly if Fixed Perspective is toggled while the UI is hidden.
Keybinding displays
- When displaying a binding for an arrow key, it will now show an icon of an arrow instead of text that says "Up"/"Down"/"Left"/"Right".
- When displaying a binding on MacOS, the Control, Option, and Command keys will use symbols instead of text (in accordance with Apple's Human Interface Guidelines)
UI
- Fixed weird glitchiness with our "start typing to automatically focus a text box" functionality. This is used for search in the Selection Menu, the Edit Singer Menu and the Edit Drum Menu; as well as for the textboxes in the Chat window and the debug console. In all of these menus, you should now be able to start typing something without having the text box selected and it will Just Work again.
- The Help menu no longer states whether a binding is tap-to-toggle (this information was just visual noise/clutter).
- Hotbar: fixed some weird visual glitchiness when trying to insert an item into the middle of a full hotbar.
- Subassembly Detail Window: fixed some weird behavior when hitting return or escape while typing in the Title and Description text boxes.
- Missing mods disconnection screen: the list of mods is now ordered alphabetically.
- Download menu: fixed broken text on the "Cancel" button while a download is in progress.
- Download menu: removed the button to go to your singleplayer sandbox list after a successful download.
- Download menu: added a character limit to the URL text box.
Export
- Removed OBJ export and the associated `objexport` commands.
- Added `3dexport` commands, which support glTF and glb export of worlds and subassemblies.
- After using the commands `Thumbnails.RenderComponentToDisk` and `Thumbnails.RenderSubassemblyToDisk`, the rendered image will now be shown in the system file manager after the render is complete.
Miscellaneous
- Updated engine version to Unity 6000.0.58f2.
- If a Key is hacked to not be bound to an input, it will now display "[None]" on its label. (Previously it would display "FancyInput.RawInputType.None" which was way too long and looked bad. Don't worry, hackers, we're looking out for you.)
- Changed the default binding of Offset Hold to `H`.
- Fixed Font Awesome icons not rendering in regular text such as chat messages.
- Fixed the Flag's thumbnail looking too dark.
- Fixed the thumbnails of very large subassemblies being cut off.
- Fixed bug which prevents new subassemblies from appearing in the subassembly menu after the first rejoin.
[hr][/hr]
See you next Wednesday :)
Subscribe to the Logic World newsletter
Read more Logic World Wednesdays