Logic World News

I like my menu backgrounds how I like my coffee: dark, blurry, and with four or five different settings to configure how they look.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


I’ve completed my quest to update all of Logic World’s user interface! This week I tacked some more complicated menus compared to last week’s updates.

You can click on each of these images to view them in 4k.



When I updated the console, I fixed a longstanding and very annoying issue with resizing it. Resizing the console is now very satisfying:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

I am happy to announce that 100% of Logic World’s UI now meets my standards for quality and usability. In my opinion, these last few weeks have seen the UI go from passable to pretty good. I am pleased.

All of the code and assets used to make the game’s menus are part of a package called LogicUI, which we will release for free sometime after Logic World launches. We’ve spent a lot of time and effort developing these systems, and we hope they’ll help others make great UI for other games.

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Bit of a short update this week, but we’ve got some exciting things cooking for you. Stay tuned for a very awesome next Wednesday!

We'll keep releasing these weekly updates right up until the game comes out. To make sure you don't miss them, you can sign up for our newsletter or join the official Discord, and of course you can wishlist and follow the game right here on Steam.

View this post on logicworld​.net. More Logic World Wednesdays

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1054340/Logic_World/

Recently I added Sockets to Logic World. This week I’ve improved their logic for connection detection, and I’ve started experimenting with bigger socket sizes.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

As shown in the video, Sockets can now detect whether two world-space squares, both with arbitrary rotations, are overlapping. This is the hardest math I’ve had to use in a while, and I’m very happy I got it to work so well :)


This week I’ve worked more on the modding documentation, and it’s now public at docs.logicworld.net!



The docs aren’t finished yet, but they do have a “Getting started” tutorial to give you an idea of how mods will work, as well as all the reference documentation for the LogicAPI assemblies, which mod code will use to interact with the game.

Right now the docs only briefly mention C# scripting, and in the coming days I want to write some tutorials and other reference documentation about the different systems that make up Logic World.


A little over a year ago, I showed you a system for switching the palette of colors Logic World uses in its menus. This system exists by necessity; we need an easy way to ensure all of the menu elements use the same color, and that same ability lets us switch those colors whenever we want.

This week I’ve finally added the in-game option for switching the UI theme! Now, you can customize the menus to look however you want.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Themes are stored in simple text files like this, and mods can easily add custom themes.


I’ve continued my work from last week in redesigning game menus. Some of these old designs were over a year old, and I’ve learned a lot in that time about UI design and programming. It's been very satisfying to apply that knowledge and bring old work up to my new standard.

You can click on each of these images to view them in 4k.



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We'll keep releasing these weekly updates right up until the game comes out. To make sure you don't miss them, you can sign up for our newsletter or join the official Discord, and of course you can wishlist and follow the game right here on Steam.

See you next Wednesday!

View this post on logicworld​.net. More Logic World Wednesdays

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1054340/Logic_World/

This blog was originally posted last week, but I forgot to post it here on Steam. This week's Logic World Wednesday will be coming tomorrow, on Thursday.


Hello everyone. This week's piece is called 'Traveler's Peak'. It is one of my favourites so far in this soundtrack. I look forward to chatting with you all on Discord, and I hope you enjoy my piece.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


I’ve spent most of this week working on Logic World’s UI. Since I started designing it over a year ago, I’ve learned a ton about UI programming and design, and I’m now going over all the existing UI to apply those lessons.

Logic World’s UI is now better-looking and easier to use. It’s also, in general, much smaller. One of my major mistakes early on was designing the UI in a non-fullscreen environment, which meant that once it was expanded to fullscreen, it was much too big.

One particularly delightful upgrade is the new Edit Component menus. They can now be moved and resized just like windows in your operating system.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


I’ve started rewriting our cloud architecture, getting rid of the main and bulky web service and migrating to a completely microservice oriented architecture using Go, Micro and Kubernetes. We’re also using DigitalOcean’s managed Kubernetes service for this, which abstracts away the concept of individual machines for the most part. This means that our services will be able to automatically scale up and down depending on our needs.

I’ve decided to do this rewrite because right now we have a single monolithic service (the one that serves the logicworld.net page), which is hard to scale since it’s got a lot of functionality. The switch to Kubernetes from Docker Swarm also means using a newer technology that’s been built from the ground up to support the microservice architecture, and while it’s a lot harder to learn at first, it’s also a lot more powerful and flexible.


This week I’ve been working on making the game files themselves a mod. This helps us ensure that the mechanisms we use for loading mods work properly and have all the required functionality. I’ve also been improving the modding documentation, I’m in the process of documenting all the SUCC files that mods can have. This includes files to add components, settings, instruments, game translations and more.

We’ll be releasing modding documentation as soon as it’s ready, but I’m not yet sure when that will be.

Last week I added teleports to Logic World. Once our beta testers got to try the feature, they told me they wanted a more fluid and simple way to teleport, one which doesn’t require someone to manually type in coordinates.

This week I’ve added just such a teleport, which takes you to whichever point you’re looking at.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

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We'll keep releasing these weekly updates right up until the game comes out. To make sure you don't miss them, you can sign up for our newsletter or join the official Discord, and of course you can wishlist and follow the game right here on Steam.

See you next Wednesday!

View this post on logicworld​.net. More Logic World Wednesdays

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1054340/Logic_World/

This week we have made the unfortunate decision to postpone the release of Logic World… again. The new, and with any luck final, launch day is June 12. Read more in the official announcement.


This week I finally added a big missing feature to Logic World: when you exit a world and then enter it again, you will now be in the same location you were when you left. This also extends to other player position values like the direction you’re looking in, whether you’re crouching, and whether you’re flying. Each player now has their own file within a world folder where their data is saved. This opens the door to persisting more player values, such as which items you have on your hotbar.

I also added save-dependent world spawn points, which is the location a player will be in the first time they join a world.

Finally, I added commands for teleporting players to different positions. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to do something fun with that...

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

I’ve open sourced one of the tools I used to make the teleport effect.


This week I’ve been working on finally finishing the build pipeline, it can now successfully build the Unity game and publish it to Steam!



By popular request last week, I added a setting to choose the open state of the Quick Color Chooser. This new setting was all by itself in the “Color Choosing” settings heading, and I decided it needed a friend.

Enter Fun Spinny Triangle, the best setting ever added to Logic World.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


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We'll keep releasing these weekly updates right up until the game comes out. To make sure you don't miss them, you can sign up for our newsletter or join the official Discord, and of course you can wishlist and follow the game right here on Steam.

See you next Wednesday!

View this post on logicworld​.net. More Logic World Wednesdays

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1054340/Logic_World/

This week I’ve added one of the coolest new components yet: The Socket. Sockets let you build modularly, with data interfaces and plugs.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


This week I’ve been working on LogicScript, our custom language for programming component behavior. I’ve created a wiki where you can find the syntax reference as well as some code snippets. One of the neatest things about LogicScript is that it can be hot-reloaded while the server is running, and I’ve made a video to demonstrate this.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


I’ve spent most of this week working on Logic World’s UI code, which has been badly in need of attention. There are many small fixes and improvements, but one of the niftiest new features is the Popups system.

Popups allow us to take an element of the user interface and “pop” it into the foreground. Other UI is darkened, to make the popped UI stand out, and clicking outside of the popped UI closes it.





Making the popups system was surprisingly difficult and intricate. Here are just a few of the things I had to worry about while programming it:

• If a popup starts off-screen, it must be moved on-screen
  
• If a popup is taller or wider than the screen, it must be compressed to a size where it can be viewed in its entirety, and a scrollbar must be added to it
  
• If a menu closes while it has a popup open, that popup must close as well
  
• If the screen resolution changes while a popup is open, the popup must resize itself appropriately
  

But after many many hours of programming, all of those worries and more are solved, and our popups system is robust and reliable.

Popups are a necessary prerequisite for some very important menus I have planned. You’ll be seeing those menus next week.


This week I’ve had something of a shift in philosophy with regards to how players choose colors.

If you’ve been following Logic World for a while, you know that I’ve spent a lot of time and energy making the color picker a powerful tool. Indeed, I’ve succeeded in that; Logic World’s color picker is the most fleshed-out of any video game I know of. But my pride in my color picker has made me lose focus on how people will actually be using it.

When you go to change the color of something, you almost never want to bother with a huge complex interface for choosing from 16 million different colors. Usually you’ll just want to choose between the same 5-10 colors that you use everywhere else -- your builds aren't a hodgepodge rainbow of random colors, they use a specific and limited palette.

With this in mind, I’ve designed a massively streamlined color picker UI. It lets you choose colors in the way I described above, but it still gives you powerful control over the colors for the occasions when you need it.

For the first time since I started working on the color picker, ten months ago… I am 100% satisfied with how you change the color of things in Logic World.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]



I’ve also been working on remaking our build pipeline. Previously we were using Semaphore for building and uploading the game, but we were running into issues with Unity license activation, since each build was performed on a different machine. This is the main reason we switched to hosting our own build server, since this way we could install and activate Unity with a GUI, making things much easier.

The server is currently hosted on DigitalOcean, and it’s running a Jenkins instance.



The new system should be finished and deploying builds within a day or two. Hopefully, this is the end of our build pipeline woes.


As of last Saturday, it’s been one year since we announced Logic World.

It’s been a crazy and amazing year making this game for you. We both feel extremely lucky to be doing this, and to have a community as supportive and passionate as you. Thank you. Here’s to many more years of Logic World :)

Not coincidentally, it has also been one year since Bobby entered the world and our hearts. @Red_3D finished their amazing animation in celebration. Please enjoy this incredibly high-effort Logic World fan video!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


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We'll keep releasing these weekly updates right up until the game comes out. To make sure you don't miss them, you can sign up for our newsletter or join the official Discord, and of course you can wishlist and follow the game right here on Steam.

See you next Wednesday!

View this post on logicworld​.net. More Logic World Wednesdays

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1054340/Logic_World/