Logic World News

I’ve worked on a number of things related to audio this week. Logic World sounds better than ever.

[h3]Output Groups[/h3]
Sound effects are now divided into subcategories, and you can adjust the volume of these individually.



[h3]Music Component Spatial Audio[/h3]
Singers and Drums are unlike other sound effects in the game in that the sounds are generated at runtime. Previously, their sounds would always play at full volume no matter where you were in the world relative to the component. But this week I’ve figured out how to hook these generated sound effects into Unity’s spatial audio system.

Music Components will now play at full volume in both speakers until you are 50 meters away from them. From 50 meters until 100 meters, their volume will gradually fade to zero. Within this range, the sound will also become progressively “spread”; it will play more in your left speaker if the sound is coming from the left, and more from the right speaker if the sound is coming from the right.

These changes really make music components feel like part of the world. The full volume range is still large enough that you can build big music contraptions that play at full volume, but they’re no longer able to teleport sound to your ears from hundreds of meters away.

[h3]Music Player[/h3]
I’ve been working on the code that plays the music from Markku’s beautiful soundtrack. The music is streamed from disk; not only does this give you easy access to the music files if you want to play them outside of the game, but it allows mods to easily add music to the soundtrack.

I’ve also added an option called “Music Components Stop Game Music”, which is on by default. With this option on, a Singer or a Drum playing a note will cause the game music to quickly fade out if it’s playing. This way, your music contraptions won’t be blocked out by the game music.


Back in August of last year I was working on the posts backend for logicworld.net I decided to implement an RSS feed endpoint, however I completely forgot about it until a couple days ago, so here it is! You can, for example, get the feed for the “Development Updates” forum at https://logicworld.net/Forum/1/rss.xml, and this is how it looks like:



You can import this feed into services like `Feeder` to get something like this:




This week I’ve finished our continuous integration system, which now also builds the server and uploads the whole game to Steam on all 3 platforms!

This is how the pipeline looks now:



As you can see, the build times for the Unity project have been significantly improved since last week, thanks to caching generated Unity files that are reused between builds.

And yes, the game is officially on Steam, including a separate package for the dedicated server!




I added some properties in settings.succ that let you load directly into a save file when the game starts, rather than having to go through the main menu.



This makes our lives easier when testing stuff, but hopefully it’s also a convenience to you :)


This week I added a whole bunch of features to the server, most of them related to security/permissions.

[h3]Whitelist[/h3]
Servers can now have a whitelist of players who are allowed to connect.

[h3]Banlist[/h3]
Servers can now ban players and IP addresses from connecting.

[h3]Password Protection[/h3]
Servers can now require a password to connect. Passwords are only sent over the network after being hashed with SHA-256.

[h3]Admins[/h3]
Servers can now have a list of players who are admins. Admins can run commands on the server, and they will be sent the server’s console output, viewable in the client debug console.
When you run an integrated server for a singleplayer game, you automatically have admin permissions.

[h3]Max players per server[/h3]
Servers can now have a maximum number of players connected to them. If someone tries to connect to a full server, that connection will be denied.

[h3]Pause empty servers[/h3]
Servers now have an option (enabled by default) to pause the simulation when there are no players connected. Servers will also no longer save the game or make automatic backups when there are no players connected -- nobody is changing the world, so saving or backing up would be redundant.


I’ve added some screens that tell the player important information about what happened to their game. First is the [h3]error screen[/h3], which lets the player know if there’s an error on startup or while loading a save. Next is the [h3]disconnection screen[/h3], which lets the player know if they’ve been unexpectedly disconnected from the server.




I’ve been fixing up the Mac OS version of Logic World! There’s still some work left to do, but here’s a picture of the game running on mac:



Shoutout to my friend Keaghan for lending me his macbook!


I made it work on linux lol



Next week, I intend to make a bunch of VMs with different Linux distros, so that we can test on as many configurations as possible.


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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/

Hello and welcome back to Logic World Wednesdays! In case you missed it, this week we announced Logic World’s release date: March 13, 2020.



We’ve got a big Wednesday for you today, so let’s get started!

[h2]As We Change - Markku[/h2]
Hello again, everyone! Thank you for your comments on my piece Endless Curiosity. I really appreciate the feedback. Today I'm happy to share another sample from the soundtrack. This one is from As We Change, a piece about the ebb and flow of learning new things. I look forward to sharing more of the soundtrack in future Wednesdays, and I look forward to chatting with you on Discord!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Actual Clouds - Jimmy[/h2]
This week I have been giving some love to the skies of Logic World.



This is still very much a work in progress. You’ll be seeing more gorgeous skies in future Wednesdays :)

[h2]Fake Internet Clouds - Felipe[/h2]
This week I’ve been working on setting up an automated CI service. This service will automatically build (and optionally publish) the game in the cloud, which is super easy and convenient for us.

This is a picture of a successful build:



We are using SemaphoreCI as our CI provider. As you can see, we are currently building for Linux and Windows, with MacOS coming soon.

This is an overview of the stuff that happens during a build for a single platform:

1. Dependencies are built (LogicAPI projects, as well as Lidgren, our networking library).
   
2. The Linux version of Unity is installed, as well as the Windows playback engine
   
3. Unity is launched, which runs the build itself for the corresponding platform.
   
4. The GameData folder -- which contains the base game data like components, languages, etc -- is copied over to the build result.
   
5. The integrated server is also built and copied to be bundled with the game.
   
6. The resulting build is compressed and optionally uploaded.

(Note: steps 4 and 5 are not yet implemented)

We’re going to start beta testing very very soon, and during beta testing we’ll be building and deploying the game several times per day. So it’s important that this complex task is automated for us.

[h2]Website Error Handling - Felipe[/h2]
Our website, logicworld.net, has had some issues in the past, like comments being duplicated and posts not working. More often than not the hardest part about solving these problems was identifying what parts of the site were causing the problem, which required digging into the logs to find out the exact message and stack trace.

This is the main reason I decided to implement an error logging system, which will gracefully detect and notify the user about any failed requests that have been executed, as well as helping us identify the errored request through the use of a request ID.



[h2]Game Flow - Jimmy[/h2]
Thanks to Felipe’s excellent work on the integrated server (you can read more here), this week I’ve been tightening up the flow of the game between macrostates. We can now connect to an external server, then disconnect, then connect to a local server (singleplayer game). Furthermore, I’ve added loading screens and an error screen -- though neither is particularly pretty right now, so I’ll show those off when they are :)

I’ve also added the ability for you to run commands on an integrated server. Everything is now seamless; we’ve fully merged the client and server software into one smooth and sexy game. Of course, the standalone server software will still be available for those who want to run dedicated servers.

[h2]Hotbar Shortcuts - Jimmy[/h2]
I added some hotkeys for managing your hotbar!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

With these hotkeys, I’m opening the selection menu less than half as much as I used to when I play the game. Once you get used to them, they’re a real time saver.

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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/

We have a release date! Logic World will be in your hands on Friday, March 13, 2020.

It's been an incredible journey to get to this point, and we are absolutely pumped to polish off this game and get it into your hands. Thank you, so much, for following and supporting us along the way.



For more details, and for information on pricing, see our blog post here: https://logicworld.net/Post/113

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

[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/