Logic World News

[h2]Relays - Jimmy[/h2]
This week I’ve added a very cool new component, called the Relay!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Huge thanks to @TheWildJarvi for suggesting Relays. I can’t wait to see the builds they are used for.

[h2]Store Pages - Felipe[/h2]
As you may know, we’re going to sell Logic World directly from our website in addition to our third party stores like Steam. This week I’ve been working on the store page design.



[h2]Settings Menu Generation - Jimmy[/h2]
Last week and The week before, I was working on the design part of the settings menu. This week, I’ve given the menu functionality; the settings you tweak will now affect things in the game, and their values will be saved between sessions. Additionally, the settings menu now dynamically generates from values you set in the code.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Getting the menu to dynamically generate, with all the different kinds of settings there are and all the different properties a setting type can have, was extraordinarily difficult. But the system works beautifully, and I am very proud of it.

I plan to open source this library - LogicSettings - sometime after Logic World launches.

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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/

Welcome back to another Logic World Wednesday! This week, in The Shiny Edition, we’re polishing up the game and getting it prepared for release.

Before we begin, we have a very special announcement. Logic World is going to have a full original soundtrack, and we’ve found the perfect person to write it. It is our pleasure to introduce Markku Wainman, composer for Logic World!

[h2]Soundtrack - Markku[/h2]
Hello, everyone! I am happy to have a chance to talk about the music I am writing and producing for Logic World with you today. Myself and the creators wanted the music to compliment the beauty of circuits doing math while helping the player to focus on and engage in the gameplay. We also concluded that the addition of live musical sources would breathe life into the synthesized instruments that are sonically emblematic of computers. I want these carefully selected instruments to help the melodies and musical textures stick with you after playing the game to remind you of Logic World and the beauty that is created in a computer. Working on creating an effective score has been a challenging and rewarding process that I feel very lucky to be a part of. I hope you enjoy my music!

Markku

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Completed Integrated Server - Felipe[/h2]
This week I’ve been working on reimplementing the integrated server. Previously the server was being compiled targeting .NET 4.6 in order to be loaded by the Mono runtime Unity uses. However, this was less than ideal, because the server couldn’t benefit from the performance upgrades .NET Core 3 brings.

The server is now launched as a separate process from the game, allowing us to use the .NET Core 3.1 build. In order to communicate between the game and the server instance we redirect the stdin and stdout streams, allowing the user to send commands to the server and read its output as if it were a regular server.

Doing things this way is more complicated and difficult, but this upgrade ensures that you’ll always have the best possible performance while playing Logic World.

[h2]SHINY BOBBY - Jimmy[/h2]
SHINY BOBBY SHINY BOBBY SHINY BOBBY SHINY BOBBY



SHINY BOBBY SHINY BOBBY SHINY BOBBY

[h2]Character Customization - Jimmy[/h2]
In all seriousness, this week I’ve added some options for customizing your Bobby. You can now choose bobby’s colors, and if you so desire, you can enable SHINY BOBBY.



We’ve previously talked about including full custom multiplayer avatars. Unfortunately, there isn’t time to include this for 1.0. That feature will be coming in 1.1. Until then, everybody is Bobby.

[h2]Settings Menu - Jimmy[/h2]
I’ve made a ton of progress on the settings menu this week!



Let’s take a look at all the new things:

• When you mouse over a setting, you can see a written description of what the setting does, a visual preview of it, and how performance-intensive the setting is.
  
• There are now multiple profiles for settings (bottom right). When you edit the settings on one profile, all the other profiles are unaffected.
  
• I ran into several issues using the built-in Unity dropdowns and toggles, so I programmed my own. Every single thing you see in that screenshot is now running custom code.
  
• Many parts of the visual design have been tweaked and polished since last week

The menu isn’t quite done yet - I’m still working on getting it to generate from code - but I’m extremely happy with how it’s coming along.

[h2]Lighting & Graphics - Jimmy[/h2]
This week I’ve been polishing the lighting setup for the game. In particular, I’ve done my best to normalize the difference between light and dark; I don’t want fully lit objects to be overwhelmingly bright, and I don’t want objects in shadow to be so dark it’s hard to see them.

Before:



After:



Click here for high-res images to compare: before 1, before 2, after 1, after 2. (Please excuse the wires in the after screenshots that are black when they should be red - it's a bug I forgot to fix before taking them :P)

Lighting is really finnicky and difficult, especially in a game where the same lighting has to work for every situation: I don't know what you're going to build, but I need to have a lighting setup that works for the things you build. The results you see took many hours of tweaking and experimenting, but I'm feeling pretty happy with them.

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We'll be announcing Logic World's release date very soon, so stay tuned. To do so, 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/

[h2]Pick Up Component - Jimmy[/h2]
Pick Up Component is a new building mechanic I’ve added to Logic World this week. It lets you pick up a full component, including any data you’ve edited on it.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Pick Up Component is the second last building mechanic planned for Logic World 1.0. Just one more to program, and then the building is done!

[h2]Settings Menu - Jimmy[/h2]
I’ve been working on Logic World’s settings menu. I think I’ve got a pretty good design for it.



Let us know in the comments what settings *you’d* like to see in Logic World.

[h2]Sexy Notifications - Felipe[/h2]
The notifications system on logicworld.net has been very unstable since I put it together, as I didn’t put much thought into it. This has now changed. I’ve rebuilt the system altogether and now it’s much more robust and pretty.



If you’re logged in, you can check out the new notifications page at https://logicworld.net/Notifications. Make sure to leave lots of replies to each other today so you can properly experience it ;)

[h2]Open Source Shenanigans - Jimmy[/h2]

This week I’ve been working on a few of the open source libraries we’re developing for Logic World. These are chunks of code that we’re releasing for free, for anybody to study or use or even contribute to.

Firstly, I've made a number of improvements to SUCC, the tool Logic World uses to save and load data in configuration files. SUCC can now save and load null - that is, no object - and it’s better at figuring out what value to load if it doesn’t find that data in a file.[/size]

Next, I developed an extension for SUCC called InterSUCC. InterSUCC allows you to treat SUCC data files as objects with properties, rather than requiring you to input text to use as data keys. InterSUCC also contains a nifty feature called ConfigWithOverride. ConfigWithOverride allows you to have a master config file, but have some parts of that file overridden by a particular additional file. In Logic World, we use this to give you per-world settings. For instance, the game has a global setting for simulation speed, but you can change the speed for just one world by editing that world’s config_override.succ.[/size]

Finally, I updated Jimmy’s Unity Utilities with all the goodies we’ve added to it in Logic World’s JUU copy. It now has extended support for color names (used in Logic World’s color picker), tools for saving and loading images to disk (used for saved board thumbnails and for the flags in LW’s languages menu), a precise timing class (used to animate Logic World’s intro), a utility for setting the contents of the system clipboard (used in Logic World to copy console messages), and more.[/size]

While I was at it, I also made a small library called PersistentData. PersistentData isn’t something that will be used in LW, but I’ve been meaning to make it for a while and I’ll definitely be using it in other future projects.[/size]

[h2]BobbyBot - Felipe[/h2]
This week I’ve written a bot for the Logic World Discord Server. His name is Bobby Bot, and he posts updates from logicworld.net to the discord. Right now, he sends a message for each new post in the forum. When Logic World releases, Bobby will send a message for each new WorkItem you upload to logicworld.net: boards, worlds, mods, ect.



Bobby will also help us out by posting our biweekly discussion topics: Philosophy Phridays and Miscellaneous Mondays. Never again will these be late! Look out for our first Bobby-posted topic this Phriday at 18:00 UTC.

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If you’d like to receive an email each time we post one of these blogs, you can sign up for our newsletter. Be sure also to join the official Discord and follow @LogicWorldGame on twitter.

See you next Wednesday!

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

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

[h2]Resizable Components Polish - Jimmy[/h2]
As part of my ongoing efforts to make Logic World’s building mechanics as fluid and easy-to-use as I can, this week I’ve been polishing up the mechanics for building with resizable components. You can now directly start resizing something while you’re placing it, and I’ve added a new Drawing mechanic for building with boards.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

I’ve also polished up the look of the resizing UI: there’s a snazzy checkmark in the center that you can click to confirm the new size, and all the UI elements now change color when you mouse over them, to communicate that they can be clicked on.

[h2]Outline Tech Upgrade - Jimmy[/h2]
When I was working on the new Resizable Components UI, I ran into a limitation of our outline tech that was preventing the checkmark outline from showing up.



The problem was that all of the outlined objects were being outlined together as one pass. This image explains what that means better than my words did:



Since the checkmark outline was nested inside the outline of the component being resized, it couldn’t show up; the checkmark edges were not part of the edges of all the objects.

This has been a limitation of our outline system for a long time, and this week I finally set about fixing it. The outline system now supports multiple independent “layers” of outlines, where each layer can overlap with the others.



With these new outline layers, I can now draw the checkmark outline, and you can see it in action in the video above.

I also added one outline layer that has “depth culling” enabled. This means that only the visible parts of the objects get outlined. The depth culling layer is being used for the outlines of interactable objects, and drastically improves their look.



Finally, I added some options to the outline rendering for folks to tweak to their preference. You can now adjust the outline thickness, the outline fill amount, and the outline intensity.



[h2]Spinny Compass - Jimmy[/h2]
After I showed off the Compass last week, many of you suggested that it should rotate as the player does. After playing around with it some more, I’ve come to agree, and so the compass now always points in the direction of rotation.

You can see this in action in the video above.

[h2]Status - Felipe[/h2]
This week I’ve been working on a status page for all the services that make up logicworld.net. A service is a little piece of software (in our case mostly written in Go) that is responsible for a task, like sending emails to users or building mods. This status page is made using Cachet, which allows us to notify you about maintenance ahead of time and it lets you see the status of every service as well as a real-time graph of visits to logicworld.net.



You can check out the status page at https://status.logicworld.net/.

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If you’d like to receive an email each time we post one of these blogs, you can sign up for our newsletter. Be sure also to join the official Discord and follow @LogicWorldGame on twitter.

See you next Wednesday!

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

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

Welcome back to another Logic World Wednesday! We’re back from the holidays, and the push for release is underway.

[h2]Checkerboard World - Jimmy[/h2]
The world you’ve been seeing in the LWW videos has been sort of a placeholder. The ground was completely static, with no customization whatsoever.

This week I’ve begun an overhaul of the world, starting with a lovely ground shader. The shader supports custom colors, as well as dual-color checkerboard patterns.



When you create a world with a grid ground, you’ll be able to choose the color or colors used and the grid size. It’s worth noting that Logic World will support several different world types, and mods will have the ability to add world types. But that’s a topic for a future LWW :)

[h2]Modding API Consolidation & Documentation - Felipe[/h2]
Over the holidays I’ve been working on documenting the Logic World mod API, known as LogicAPI. This documentation is done with XML comments in C#. When coding mods, Visual Studio will show what each method and class does while you’re typing. We are also going to upload a generated static site containing all of the documentation over at docs.logicworld.net. This is a preview of how it will look:



This site is generated by DocFX, and it will contain all the aforementioned code documentation as well as some concrete concepts that may require explaining.

We are also going to have a wiki at wiki.logicworld.net, which will contain broader modding guides and tutorials, as well as some other non-modding related info.

[h2]Tons of cloud stuff - Felipe[/h2]
I have also been doing a big revamp of our cloud architecture:

• We have migrated from having a single server to having two: Phobos and Deimos.
  
• Migrated from a monolithic architecture to a microservices one, which means that we now have a small service for tasks like emailing, logging, storage, etc.
  
• Migrated from regular Docker to Docker Swarm, allowing us to deploy these services very easily and scale them up by changing a single number in the configuration file. This will let us easily scale up the server to meet the demand if we find the need to do so.
  
• Migrated from Caddy to Traefik as our edge proxy.
  

Initially these services were written in C# just like the web application is, however, when migrating to Traefik I realised that every single application we were using in the server was written in Go. Go is a language that’s widely used in reliable and widely used software like Traefik, Caddy and Docker. This sparked an interest in Go inside of me, so I spent a few hours learning this new language and rewriting the logger service. This service is the simplest, all it does is receive messages from all the services and log them to the database, so I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to dip my toes in Go. When I was done writing this I noticed that the service was using just a fraction of the memory that the C# service was while being a lot more CPU efficient. To sum up, 5 out of the 7 services we currently have are written in Go.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love C#, however it’s become clear to me that Go is much more tuned towards web server-side software development.

[h2]Refined Building Mechanics - Jimmy[/h2]
I’ve done a pass of our basic building mechanics to ensure they are consistent, intuitive, and easy to use. Most notably, I’ve removed the Rotation Lock mechanic; the lock is now always on. Rotation Lock was sort of an awkward and unintuitive mechanic. It was sort of a holdover from when I was trying to copy Minecraft’s building mechanics, back in 2017. But Logic World has grown up a lot since then.

To help communicate the new objective nature of rotation, I’ve added a little compass rose to the UI with a pointer for the object placement rotation direction.



Notice the pointer above the hotbar on the left. As the inverter being placed rotates, so does the pointer.

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If you’d like to receive an email each time we post one of these blogs, you can sign up for our newsletter. Be sure also to join the official Discord and follow @LogicWorldGame on twitter.

See you next Wednesday!

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

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