Logic World News

This week I finished converting all our web services to Mice, and it was finally time to work on the website frontend!

Our goal with logicworld.net is that it be a pleasant and easy-to-use place to hang out, share your builds/mods/ect, and generally discuss Logic World. To that end, I've been working on various aesthetic and usability improvements.

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[h3]Comment button rearrangements[/h3]
I've moved the "like" and "reply" buttons from their old awkward placing underneath the (still to-be-implemented) profile picture to the bottom right of comment boxes.

Before:


After:


On your own comments, the "edit" and "delete" functions are now tucked away in a dropdown accessible from the gear in the top right.

[h3]Better markdown styling[/h3]
I've improved the way the site displays user-submitted text, using github-style markdown rendering. The most noticeable improvement is that headers are much meatier.




[h3]Navbar social media links[/h3]
I've brought back links to the Logic World YouTube, Twitter and Discord to the site navbar. Some folks have told us that these have been hard to find, so hopefully this makes it easier.



[h3]Fun spinny loading icon[/h3]
I've added this lovely custom icon when the site is loading a new page :D

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

(It usually doesn't take that long lol. Loading times were artificially extended for the sake of demonstration.)

You can see it yourself by navigating through pages on the Logic World forums.

[h3]Cute error page[/h3]
I added a lovely graphic in the style of Logic World components to display navigation errors, like 404s. The lights even flicker as the page loads.



You can see it yourself at https://logicworld.net/thisisnotareallinklol

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Let me know what you think of these changes, and what other website enhancements you'd like to see. I love working on the site, and I'm excited to help it become a hub for Logic World discussion, community, and creation sharing.




I unfortunately wasn't able to work on Logic World much this week, but I did make an important behavior change to the undo/redo mechanics I showed off a couple of weeks ago.

In my first implementation of undo/redo, the undo stack was stored entirely server-side. However, a lot of the checks the game does to test if a placement is valid can only be done client-side. The server has no concept of the 3D geometry of components, so it can't check if (for example) a new component would be inside of an existing component, or if a new wire would have line of sight between its two ends. In singleplayer, this doesn't matter for undo: every individual step along the way is validated by the client, so undoing back to one can't get us into an invalid state. But it causes problems for multiplayer. Picture the following scenario:

1. Alice accidentally deletes an inverter
   
2. Bob helpfully places another inverter down where it got deleted
   
3. Alice, realizing her mistake, hits "undo", re-placing the inverter where she just deleted it
   

We now have two inverters occupying the same space, which isn't allowed. So, when undoing a build action, we need the client to check if undoing would violate any geometrical rules.

The way it works now is that when the server verifies and applies a client's requested world changes, a "reciept" is sent to that client containing an instruction to undo the action and an instruction to redo the action. The undo/redo stack is then entirely managed by clients, and for instructions that require client-side checks, the client performs said checks. To undo or redo an action, the client sends a world modification request to the server just like it does in regular building.

A side benefit of this approach is that per-user undo/redo stacks exist automatically without any extra code. If the stacks are handled on the server, per-user stacks would have to be implemented explicitly.


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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. Be sure also to wishlist Logic World right here on Steam and join the official Discord.

See you next Wednesday!

View this post on logicworld.net

More Logic World Wednesdays

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

I unfortunately wasn't working at all last week, and when I got back into Logic World work I wanted to start with something fun. As you may know if you've been following Logic World for a while, I absolutely adore the color picker UI, so I began my work week with some fun color picker stuff :D

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

(I tried something a little different with this video. It's heavily edited, and instead of just showing off game features, it tells a story of the features' development. Let me know if you like it and would like to see more development videos like this :))

I added the new Circle Picker style shown in the video, and I also made a few more tweaks. First I made the "save this color" button change color to reflect the color that's going to be saved, which adds a nice visual indicator of the button's function. I also changed the style of the pointers, from the old white & black targets to simple circles which display the selected color or hue.



I'm pretty sure I like this new pointer style better, but I'll probably add an option to switch between the two based on preference.

Finally, I added a little popup confirmation dialog when resetting a list of saved colors. If you're anything like me, you'll spend a lot of time carefully curating your color lists, and I don't want you to lose all that work accidentally!



After reinvigorating myself with the color picker work, I've returned to working on the new building mechanics & features. Unfortunately I've got nothing to show this week -- I've just done some minor refactors and code cleanup on my previous work here -- but that's my singular focus now, and I'll have cool stuff to share soon :D




I've been making steady progress on the transition to mice in the web services. All of the services are now migrated and working fine for the most part, and even though there are still some bugs left to solve and code to optimize I think you will read next week's LWW on the new backend if all goes well!

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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. Be sure also to wishlist Logic World right here on Steam and join the official Discord.

See you next Wednesday!

View this post on logicworld.net

More Logic World Wednesdays

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

I've implemented one of Logic World's most highly requested features: the ability to undo and redo your changes to the world!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]




This week I've finally finished my big refactor of how Logic World stores and modifies its internal world state! This is all the code to do with storing components and wires, and how updates to components and wires are handled. One player tells the server they want to place a component, the server verifies that this modification is allowed, the server sends information about the modification to all connected clients, and they all handle the update appropriately -- that kind of thing.

Before this rewrite, that part of the codebase was one of the oldest, written in late 2018. At the time, I was a generally much less experienced programmer, and I also had a much less complete understanding of how this code needs to work and be worked with. It didn't help that this system is necessarily very complex -- Logic World is a complex game, with complex builds, and it all has to work in real-time multiplayer, plus there's all the complexities introduced by supporting modding. As a result, the original code was a very shaky foundation, and it did *not* age well throughout the years as we extended and modified it. I knew that if I was going to really improve Logic World's building mechanics -- which I am determined to do before we release -- I would need to rewrite this whole module.

And now that's done! The new systems I've designed and implemented are robust, extensible, and easy to modify. They use everything I've learned since starting this project about how to write Good Code™. You can see the fruits of my labor in the video above -- something as complex as undo and redo would NEVER have been possible with the old systems, but the undo/redo implementation I wrote this week is under 100 lines of code and *stunningly* simple.

There's still some cleanup and improvements to do, but I'm honestly thrilled with how well everything is working. It's going to be so *easy* to add all these cool new building features I have planned.

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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. Be sure also to wishlist Logic World right here on Steam and join the official Discord.

See you next Wednesday!

View this post on logicworld.net

More Logic World Wednesdays

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

I've added two fancy shmancy debug overlays to the game: one to show your FPS, and another to show your coordinates in the world.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]




When I showed off the multiplayer menu last week, you may have noticed an unused "local network servers" tab of the server list. Well, this week I made it work: any servers that share a local network with your game will be displayed in a list here!



In a couple of weeks, I'll add some lovely UI that lets you open your singleplayer game to the local network, and opened singleplayer games will show up in this list. Logic World LAN parties will be incredibly easy to set up :D

[h3]Very nerdy technical tidbits[/h3]
You might recognize this feature from Minecraft, and indeed I did steal this idea from Minecraft. Thanks Minecraft. However, Minecraft's "Open to LAN" feature has never worked right for me. The problem is that when Minecraft servers broadcast their existence, they do so only on the first network interface found on the device; similarly, Minecraft's multiplayer menu only listens for multicasts on the first network interface. This might work fine for the normies, because most people's computers only have one network interface: the Wi-Fi or ethernet adapter. But I'm a massive nerd, so my computer has TONS of network interfaces: VPNs, virtual machines, docker instances, ect. So whenever I try to use that Minecraft feature, it inevitably picks the wrong network interface. I can't see other people's LAN games, and other people can't see mine.

However, Logic World does this right: it iterates through every network interface on the device, and every interface with broadcast capabilities is used for this menu. Servers announce their existence on all interfaces, and clients listen for servers on all interfaces. It all Just Works™ without disabling my VPN or anything. Since Logic World's audience is largely composed of massive nerds like myself, I felt it was important that things work properly here.

As an aside to the Minecraft people -- yes, I am available for consulting, send me an email and we can discuss rates.

• Fixed not being able to see your own reflection in SHINY BOBBY
  
• Fixed IPv6 networking not working on Windows
  
• Fixed being unable to initiate connection to a server from the server list if a discovery response packet hasn't been recieved yet
  
• Fixed "offline name" setting description using outdated nomenclature
  
• Fixed all the server config player lists (whitelist, banlist, admin list) not working
  
• Fixed items in the server list sometimes displaying incorrect data if you spam the refresh button too quickly
  
• Fixed being able get a Sandbox or Saved Board without a title by editing the title after creating one
  
• Fixed the "Create Sandbox" and "Save Board" buttons sometimes being hidden when they should be shown
  
• Fixed many text boxes throughout the game interpreting a "cancel" action (by pressing escape) as a "submit" action (what should only happen when you press enter)
  
• Fixed pressing tab/shift-tab to switch between textboxes not working properly when Popups are open; tabbing between textboxes is in general much more reliable
  
• Fixed Labels and Panel Labels having a slightly different color to the other off-white components
  
• Fixed being able to see the reflections of player nametags in SHINY BOBBY
  
• Fixed the nametag on the little bobby model in the Avatar settings not properly showing when you mouse over the bobby model
  
• Fixed the integrated server not shutting down correctly when leaving a singleplayer game
  

The things you can build in Logic World are very geometrically complex. It's not a simple voxel grid like some other 3D circuit simulators; you've got components and wires attached to each other, and everything can be arbitrarily rotated and positioned.

So the fundamental problem of designing Logic World's building mechanics is this: how do you make it easy and fast for a player to communicate their complex 3D ideas through the user interface? What is the best, most efficient, most intuitive way to take the structure in a player's brain and get it into the game?

It's a hard problem. It's a problem I've been contemplating since the first Logic World prototypes in October 2017, and it's a problem I've been contemplating especially hard over the past month or so; watching gameplay from our newest beta testers, and listening to their feedback, has led me to the realization that the building mechanics need to be much better before release. In my time contemplating the problem, I've had a lot of individually good ideas, and I've even implemented some of them, but they've never come together as a comprehensive whole.

Well, a week ago, all that changed. I was lying in bed after publishing last week's blog post, trying to fall asleep, when suddenly... I saw it all. The perfect building mechanics. Like a switch flipping on, this incredibly difficult problem became transparent to me, and I could see straight through it to the perfect solution. I achieved game design nirvana. I leapt out of bed to get my pen and paper, and I hastily scrawled down some of the best ideas I've had in my life. It's honestly one of the wildest psychological phenomena I've ever experienced.

I have mostly finished documenting my epiphany, and turning those documents into code is the next work I'll be doing on Logic World. I wanted to finish up a few other things before diving in -- see the rest of this post lol -- but now, building is my singular focus, and I am so excited to get to work on it and make building as smooth and intuitive as I can.

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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. Be sure also to wishlist Logic World right here on Steam and join the official Discord.

See you next Wednesday!

View this post on logicworld.net

More Logic World Wednesdays

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

The first big task I tackled when I returned from vacation was to make the Multiplayer Menu! I'm really pleased with how it turned out, under the hood it's one of the most complex menus I've ever made.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

The Multiplayer Menu requires a lot of networking functionality, and so while I was working on the menu I took the opportunity to beef up our network code. There were many lovely upgrades, but the two highlights are:

1. IPv6 networking is now fully supported, so we're future-proofed in that regard until something crazy happens that requires undecillions of network addresses. The default network protocol is IPv6 Dual-Stack -- meaning connections to both IPv6 endpoints and IPv4 endpoints are allowed -- but you can also choose to run both clients and servers in exclusive IPv6 or in IPv4.
   
2. You can now connect to servers by hostname instead of just by raw IPs. So if you own, for example, "EpicPeanutButter.com", you can host your server at that address, and others can type that into the game and connect to it. Previously you could only use raw IPs, which look much less interesting -- usually something like this: "217.160.0.132".
   

Making this menu was very difficult and time-consuming, far more so than I expected going in. I had a lot of fun learning about networking, but I'm really glad I never have to do it again.




As can be seen in the video above, there are presently two authentication modes for Logic World servers: Unverified and Verified. Unverified servers will allow any player to join, with any username, and this identity is not checked at all. Verified servers only allow players to join who are logged into their logicworld.​net account, and it is impossible to fake your identity to a verified server.

Verified mode is useful when you want to have a whitelist of players who are allowed to connect to your server; only the people who are really on your whitelist will be able to connect. But it's less useful if you want to have a public server and ban players from it. Because creating a logicworld.​net account is free, a banned player can simply create a new identity and rejoin your server.

With this in mind, we are considering the addition of a third authentication mode to servers, "Super-Verified". In Super-Verified mode, the server would only allow connections from players who are logged into their logicworld.​net account, and whose accounts are verified owners of Logic World. This means that to evade a ban, a player would have to buy another copy of the game, which they are a lot less likely to do than simply create a new account for free. However, Super-Verified mode would introduce hassle for players; unless you purchased directly from logicworld.​net, you would be required to link your logicworld.​net account with the account you purchased the game on (i.e. Steam) before connecting to a Super-Verified server.

We've been discussing this and we aren't sure how to proceed or how useful such a feature would be. And so, we ask you -- would you like Logic World to have a Super-Verified mode? If you're interested in hosting a server, would you turn it on? If you're interested in playing on servers, would you prefer to play on servers that have it on?

Let us know in the comments, on discord, or in an email :)




When I returned from my vacation, the first thing I needed to do was to test the services that I had migrated from Nitro to mice. I could have just created a "test" service that was hard-coded to call certain methods on certain services, but that's a very inflexible way of doing it. With that in mind, I started the MiceUI project. This project consists of an Electron application that lets you load protobuf files containing the method definitions of a given service, and then lets you send requests to the service instance and inspect the response.



This tool will let me test each and every one of a service's endpoints, making sure that the service is working as it should. In the future I plan on upgrading MiceUI with some sort of test suites, automating the process of E2E testing and even integrating it into the site's CI pipeline.




Many of our beta testers have been playing with the menu themes capability of LogicUI, and many more of you in the community have voiced interest in doing so. Until now, making new themes was very difficult, requiring tedious manual editing of individual RGB values in a config file, and you'd have to restart the game to view the results of your labor. I decided to make this process easier, and added some in-game UI for making a custom menu theme.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]




We've added several new testers to our internal beta! These lovely folks are helping us track down bugs, giving great feedback about features, and making cool content to showcase the current state of the game. There is a bunch of said cool content in the #beta-content channel of our discord, so join us there if you haven't already and check it out!

And if you haven't seen it yet, shortly into the break we held a big multiplayer playsession with a bunch of the beta testers. Jimmy's perspective of that event is up on youtube:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

I mentioned that the testers have been helping us find bugs, and well, holy moly they've helped us find a lot of bugs. An absolute tidal wave of them. Here are just the ones we've fixed...

• Fixed the "Pick Component" feature not properly recognizing the components already on your hotbar in some specific circumstances
  
• Fixed world rotations being bad and glitchy for components placed on the environment with a non-standard up direction (i.e. on the side of a hill)
  
• Fixed awkward-axis rotation being incorrect for grabbed boards placed on the environment with a non-standard up direction
  
• Fixed Edit Title textbox not being properly selected when you create a new sandbox or saved board
  
• Fixed linux version not starting up properly due to a file system error
  
• Fixed linux version not loading some important resources from GameData which was causing a myriad cascade of issues
  
• Fixed scroll wheel input direction being inverted on linux
  
• Fixed scroll wheel having 1/120th sensitivity on linux
  
• Fixed Keys going crazy when you try to press them if another player is in their range
  
• Fixed server giving a Load Board response to every player on the server instead of just the player who requested to load the board
  
• Fixed decorations on grabbed, cloned and loaded components not being tested for collision
  
• Fixed missing flag graphics in Choose Language menu
  
• Fixed double newlines in the beta start screen
  
• Fixed "Realtime GI is not supported in Universal Pipeline" console spam
  
• Fixed failure to connect to a server if another player makes changes to the world while you're connecting
  
• Fixed moving and then deleting a socket causing server errors and sometimes corrupted saves
  
• Fixed sockets not connecting properly after they've been moved
  
• Fixed error and disconnection if another player moves/rotates/deletes the chair you're sitting in
  
• Fixed various cases where the server could crash if a client sent them bogus data
  
• Fixed component position/rotation imprecision issues within deeply nested stacks of many child components
  
• Markdown renderer: fixed weird visuals on the first and last line of a list if that line is very long
  
• Fixed changelog saying "2020" for all the dates in 2021 lol
  
• Fixed client going to error screen if it tried to connect to an unverified server when the Logic World servers are unreachable
  
• Fixed servers having a hard cap of 32 maximum players connected even if a higher value was set in the config file
  
• Fixed servers crashing if a client sends garbage data in the discovery request packet
  
• Fixed clients connecting to the wrong server sometimes
  
• Clients now ignore the data instead of going to an error screen if a server sends garbage data in the discovery response packet
  
• Fixed the volume sliders on music components having the incorrect range (0-10 instead of 1-100)
  
• Fixed fatal error if you tried to delete a component on the same frame you modified its data (i.e. pressing a button and deleting it on the same frame)
  

This Christmas might possibly have been the best Christmas ever. Jimmy's mom and brother Andrew teamed up to make two pairs of got dang Logic World socks, giving one pair to Jimmy and sending the other across the ocean to Felipe.



Just look at those things. Absolutely fabulous.

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Thanks for reading our blog :) lots of fun stuff is coming up, so watch this space. We absolutely cannot wait to get this game done and into your hands.

To get updates on Logic World beamed directly into your inbox, you can sign up for our newsletter. Be sure also to wishlist Logic World right here on Steam and join the official Discord.

See you next Wednesday!

View this post on logicworld.net

More Logic World Wednesdays

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