Logic World News

[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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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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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 2019-12-18)

Welcome back to another Logic World Wednesday! This is our last post before the holidays, and we’ve got some real goodies for you this week.

[h2]Draggable Colors and More - Jimmy[/h2]
Logic World’s color picker is something I keep coming back to and tweaking, but this week I think I’ve finally settled on its final form. I’ve shifted the menu elements around so that the HSV wheel is bigger, and I’ve packed the sliders together more closely to save space. I’ve also removed the ability to hide blocks of sliders; dynamically resizing the menu was causing some issues, and I literally never used the option anyway.

I’ve also added a number of new features to the color picker, including the much-requested draggable saved colors. You can see them all in this video:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Mod Hooking - Felipe[/h2]
This week I’ve been working on the hooks system for mods. Hooks provide a way for mods to listen to game events, like placing a component or a wire, and optionally cancel it or modify it. Right now hooks are implemented through “handler” classes, which are abstract classes that contain a virtual method for each hook. Mods can then make classes that inherit a specific handler class and then implement any hook methods that they want.

This is an example of how a mod’s handler class may look like:

public class MyHandler : WorldHookHandler
{
    private int Counter;

    public override void OnPlacingComponent(PlacingComponentEventArgs args)
    {
        bool cancel = Counter++ % 2 == 0;

        if (cancel)
            args.Cancel();

        LConsole.WriteLine($"A user is placing a component of type {args.ComponentType.TextID}, cancel: {cancel}");
    }
}

This hook would stop the player from placing a component every second time they tried to. Handy for annoying your friends.

[h2]Player Identification - Felipe[/h2]
Up until now players in the server were identified only by a username they choose. While this works fine, if someone was to connect with the same username as you they would be able to impersonate you. Now players are instead identified by their logicworld.net user ID, which is unique to your account. You can sign in to the game with your logicworld.net account, and in the Steam version, you’ll be automatically logged in to logicworld.net with Steam.

Servers will also have the option to turn on “offline mode”, reverting back to the username identification system. This is useful in case logicworld.net goes down, as an offline server doesn’t need to verify the players’ identities.

[h2]Yet More Unexciting Code Work - Jimmy[/h2]
Last week I spoke of two very cool features I was working on, and I’ve continued that work this week. Unfortunately, I didn’t finish in time for LWW, but most of the architectural groundwork is now laid.

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Thanks for reading! We’re going to take a two week break over the holidays, during which time we intend to start beta testing. Logic World Wednesdays returns January 8.



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/

(this blog was originally posted 2019-12-12)

[h2]Better Saved Colors - Jimmy[/h2]
The old system for saving colors, and managing your saved colors, just wasn’t working; it was too complex and too clumsy to use. This week I’ve redone it, using the same UI as saving Display configurations.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

I’ve also added a button for sorting your saved colors - which is a surprisingly complicated thing - and a button for choosing a random color.

[h2]Website Work - Felipe[/h2]
I’ve been working on some minor website QoL adjustments:

• Post embeds on Discord, Reddit, etc are much nicer. before, after
• The Facebook link has been smited from the site. More info
• When logging in you will now be redirected to the page you were previously in
  
• Comments will now be counted recursively in the comment section
  
• All notification emails will now contain the reason why you got them
  

I’ve also been working on an updated “About” page for the site. This new page tells you a bit about us, and it lets your see our faces (to be revealed).



Unfortunately I haven’t been able to deploy these changes for this LWW (LWT?), but you can expect to see them shortly.

[h2]Unexciting Code Work - Jimmy[/h2]
I spent most of this week laying the architectural groundwork for two very cool features. I was really hoping to show at least one of them off today, but they just didn’t get finished in time.

These two features are the final building mechanics for Logic World, and they’ll complete the set of tools you have to manipulate the world.

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See you next Wednesday!

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

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

As we discussed in a previous LWW, mods’ source consist of up to three Visual Studio projects as well as the assets and libraries you want to include. This week I’ve been working on a tool that lets you create these projects from a template and upload the source for it to be compiled: Logic Maker.



The UI is a WIP, it currently has no styles at all.

Logic Maker is meant to be a tool to aid you in creating and developing mods. While it isn’t necessary (you could for example just copy a template project), by using the tool you can create your mod solution with the features you want, and it will automatically output the minimal code to get your mod running.

Logic Maker can be used in one of two ways: through the UI or through the CLI. The UI is made with [Avalonia](https://avaloniaui.net/), which means that it’s completely cross platform and it will look the exact same way on Linux, Windows and MacOS. On the other hand, the CLI will let you perform the same actions as the UI, but with arguments instead of buttons:



In the future I’d also like for Logic Maker to let you build the project using the same Docker image that logicworld.net uses. That way you can locally verify your mod before you upload it.


The menus in Logic World have many small, circular buttons with icons on them. When you’re like me and you programmed all those buttons yourself, this isn’t a problem, but if not, it can be a little confusing. What does the button with a gear on it do? What does the button with a folder on it do?

Back in the Dark Ages of Last Week, there was no way to know. That’s why this week I’ve developed a system for displaying more detailed information about a button when you hover over it.



The size of the hover text is configurable, as is the delay between mousing over a button and the hover text appearing. You can also disable hover tags entirely.


When you’ve saved a board, you can view an interactable in-game preview of the saved board in 3D. This week I’ve upgraded the camera controller used in these previews. It is now much more configurable, and it now supports moving the pivot position by holding right click and moving the mouse. This feature was already present in the web previews, which you see when you share a board online - interactive demo of that here.

I’ve also added a button to reset the camera position, and saved boards now remember where you had the camera when you saved them.

Finally, I’ve refactored the system for rendering the models so that it can also render a static image of the models. This will allow me to generate thumbnails for saved boards.


I’ve spent most of this week going through the game and fixing various bugs that have cropped up. Multiplayer bugs in particular have been getting my attention. The game has been through several major code architecture upgrades in the past few months, so there were a fair number of these.

Now, though, Logic World has reached a very stable state. The core gameplay is smooth, incredibly fun, and mostly without issues. It was important that I go through and clean it up this week, because we intend to start beta testing soon.


Previously the website was using the ASP.NET Core 2.1 framework, which runs on .NET Core 2.1. However .NET Core 3 came out not long ago, so I’ve been working on upgrading to ASP.NET Core 3.1. This update comes with a ton of performance upgrades, which means that logicworld.net can now handle 5x the amount of concurrent users!

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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/