Instruments of Destruction News

For the past 6 months or so, I had been planning to redo the camera system entirely. I didn't do that, as I instead found some good ways to work around the systems limitations. The changes went about as well as I could have expected, and I consider the camera system close to final at this point, though if you have any feedback/requests, now is the time to speak up. [NOTE: Free camera will receive some more attention later] I also spent a couple days working on the new Dropship (helicopter) sequencing/etc at the start/end of Story missions in the main campaign. The Kraken got some camera focus as well, so you'll see it more clearly when it arrives, departs, or destroys everything.

Now my focus shifts towards making the game as fun as I can. Part of that is vehicle and mission design, but before I go into extreme-content-production mode, I need to get the remaining objectives and other supporting AI/obstacles working. Need things like turrets, defense drones, and other trap-like things, along with more obstacles that can be used in light puzzle-solving.

KRAKEN TWEAKS COMING?

I'm also not 100% sure about how the Kraken works right now. I'll probably try making the failure state not analog. Basically any damage to the head triggers the end of the mission, but damaging the tentacles won't matter. That will require redoing missions/timing and slowing the Kraken down, but that's not a big deal. I'm also considering having obstacles/etc that the Kraken is drawn to (like a siren), and I'll think about how else you can interact with it aside from preventing damage to it.

About 25 of the final missions will use the Kraken, and I want to be sure they don't feel like glorified escort missions. They're on the edge of that right now, and the uncertainty of the mission fail state doesn't help. With some fine-tuning, better indicators of Kraken-danger, and a dedicated "where's the Kraken?" camera toggle/button, I think the Kraken missions will be as fun as the non-Kraken missions.

0.415 CHANGES

Here's an overview of changes for 0.415, which is not complete, as I didn't write everything down this time (too many camera changes/tweaks to track):

- A helicopter now drops off your vehicle at the start/end of the main campaign Story missions
- Some controls for a few vehicles were updated/improved
- Mission intro/ending camera now use custom angles/etc (no control)
- Camera modes now cache their zoom/rotation/etc so Orbit/Follow no longer depend on each other
- Follow and Orbit camera had numerous small improvements
- Vehicles with Momentum cam now work better with Follow cam
- The Kraken gets camera-focused on at 3 different times (entry, exit, and destroy)
- Isometric camera mode was removed (Orbit does the same thing, more or less)
- Full-screen blur is used for camera transitions where appropriate
- Sped up some sequencing to remove unnecessary frames/pauses
- Tracking mode was removed (for now)
- New transition from Build mode to playing the game
- Added a new Invert Reverse Turning to Power Wheels/Treads (checkbox, enabled by default)
- Outputs and signals now use a different highlight color to make it a little more obvious that inputs and outputs are different (and signals/controls are too)
- Fixed some bugs (custom missions and a couple others I forgot)

FUTURE UPDATES

As usual, I'm not sure about frequency of future updates. At some point in the next couple months, I'll probably stop updating the game until 1.0. There will be a number of new missions before then, and 1.0 will likely double the number of missions in addition to adding some other polish/finishing features.

The big unknown is really how long it will take to make all the missions/vehicles fun and varied. Not every mission has to be amazing, but having a lot more standouts like Push It Real Good and Initial Revision is the goal.

Let's start with the changelist this time. It's not a massive one, as some of the things listed took a bit longer than you might think at first. Here's what changed in version 0.410:

• Added 5 new build tutorial missions + islands
  
• Added new build tutorial system with step by step instructions
  
• Added challenge missions/objectives for first 2 main + 5 build missions
  
• Added new challenge mode logic and objectives
  
• Added new voice lines for new build tutorials + challenge mode
  
• Added new part unlocking system for Build&Destroy campaign
  
• --- Editor lets you edit the part locking per mission
  
• Added a Mission Complete/Challenge Complete popups when you finish
  
• --- 3-stars for normal missions (bonus and main objectives)
  
• --- Moment of completion for Challenges
  
• Added invert output option to direction sensor (Max Limit = 1 instead of 0)
  
• Islands now load their outline meshes from disk instead of generating them
  
• --- Speeds up going into either campaign for the first time after startup
  
• Level Editor: Added new tools to help place more entities faster
  
• Changed reset layout for vehicle controls to use a better default layout (assumes you haven't change mappings)
  
• Crystals are now semi-random on each load (3 chosen from ones placed)
  
• Changed campaign map islands to fade in/out as you get closer (instead of always drawing)
  
• Fixed campaign map scrolling limits to be dynamic based on islands in the campaign
  
• Increased build menu size of parts and part names
  
• Made shift+click work to select the same colored-parts again (on the Colors setting)
  
• Level Editor: Fixed popup for vehicle default selection deselecting
  
• Level Editor: Fixed cutoff sliders for grass/rock (switched to Wave Logic-style)
  
• Fixed not being to remap a gamepad axis (stick/trigger)
  
• Fixed resizing part reseting physics linkage
  
• Fixed CoM debug display (F11) being broken on certain maps
  
• Slightly reduced area damage boost to structures from 0.360 (particularly with lower mass)
  
• Fixed shortcut to hide/toggle handle not working (Ctrl+W)
  
• Disabled outlines on selections/etc during build mode (too slow with tons of parts)
  
• --- May bring it back later if it can be optimized
  
• Added debug function - Shift+F11 in build mode - disable BOTH as a dual input/output option
  
• --- May make this permanent, feedback is appreciated
  

The biggest things for 0.410 are the new build tutorials and missions in the Build & Destroy campaign, and Challenge mode now being a real thing that's fairly fun (7 challenges currently). There are a lot of smaller changes within those, and a lot of voice lines added as well.

I'm pretty happy with how the initial missions for the Build & Destroy campaign are shaping up, and the Challenge missions are working well. The build tutorial is hopefully good for new players, but really I need to test it a lot more. Feedback on the tutorial is appreciated. It's a different style than other tutorials, and there will be at least 5 more tutorial missions coming in the future. The additional ones will be less step-by-step and more general. The idea is to teach the basics and then slowly let the player take more and more responsibility for the vehicle design. By mission 11 in the BnD campaign, there won't be any instructions, though you'll still be unlocking parts throughout that campaign.

BUILDING NOTE: I'm considering removing the "Both" mapping option for part controls. Parts can have up to 4 inputs and 4 outputs, and you can assign 2 at once (as an "axis"). But I've been finding it more annoying than helpful when working on vehicles, and I added a mode to disable Both as an option. Hit Shift+F11 while in build mode, and you'll no longer have Both as an option. Just something to try out for advanced vehicle builders.

UPCOMING WORK

After a small bug-fix update or two to follow 0.410, my next two priorities for big tasks:
1) Revise camera system.
2) More objectives and things to support additional objectives.

The camera system work I need to look at more closely and figure out if I should rewrite the whole thing or try to wedge in transitions to animated/scripted cameras at the start/end of missions. Both approaches could work, and though I'm tired of messy code throughout the game, rewriting something that mostly works is not always wise. Having some way to override/blend into a different camera might work, and it could mostly reside outside the rest of the camera system.

For the objective stuff, it's time to finally add turrets and drones/orbs that attack the player (and Kraken). I'm not sure if those will be vehicle-based, or custom objects (like the car/truck/SUV). Beyond the enemies, I need to make sure all the other mission types I want to do are possible. The missions are turning out well so far, but I also see how it could become tiresome/repetitive due to too much focus on destroying stuff. Part of that also requires more creative level design and vehicle/physics interaction. Either way, having a variety of missions is needed to keep the game fun for both campaigns.

Beyond those two things, the biggest remaining task is adding all the missions to both campaigns. That's a massive task on its own, but I'll be breaking it into smaller groups along the way, and missions should get easier to work with fewer features being added. Beyond missions, there are quite a few small tasks, and I'm sure I'll find more things to fix/tweak along the way. It finally feels like I will finish the game someday, even if I'm not sure yet when that is.

Biggest thing is the Advanced Toolbar being added to Build Mode, but lots of other adjustments and fixes. Not expecting to make further changes to the Build Mode UI, aside from adding help text/tutorials. Full changelist:

Added Advanced Toolbar in build mode (need to enable it to see it)
Added buttons to select parts with comments, controls, signal inputs, or outputs
Added optional comment and control display on selected parts
Added input quick-assign on the edit parts popup - click directly on the listed controls on the right
Re-enabled multiple vehicle starts and let you pick them on build mode settings and advanced toolbar
Added direct-text-entry as position/rotation snap options
Aligned two popups for build mode to the left side (Quick Edit and Vehicle Control Layout)
Added Left-Alignment IOMapper option
Fixed direction sensor speed mode so the output matches the description
- Full output when speed is below the required direction/limit, falls off to 0 at max limit
Added a better timeout to Steam Workshop uploads (after 3 seconds, hold Escape if no progress)
Changed a lot of slider values to take/show decimal values (generally sliders with larger values)
Fixed gamepad being able to see Extreme IO version of popup
Fixed Shift-clicking on new Physics Linkage property doing nothing (it now selects parts with same linkage)
Fixed Gamepad double-clicking on build mode settings page
Changed how some values are displayed in build mode (move amount in particular)
Clicking outside a text box (build mode) now completes the entry
Fixed signal assignment issue with 2nd page and beyond when using extreme/compressed display
Fixed quick assign showing/assigning the wrong inputs with single-input assignment
Fixed some problems with part IO displays
Fixed Pegasus normal mission bonus objective count

I'll cover future plans and behind-the-scenes stuff below. First we're going to focus on the changes to build mode. Everything with the build mode UI has been revised or altered in some way, so there's a lot to cover. Let's start with one of the big objectives for the redo, which is adding gamepad support to build mode. Here's what build mode looks like while using a gamepad.


There are a few things that change when using a gamepad, and the top bar is the most obvious thing that changes compared to mouse and keyboard. I'm not going to go into too many details of how all the gamepad stuff works because only people on Steamdeck will likely use it for now, but many more people will use it when the game comes to consoles next year. You can't do everything with a gamepad, but that's mostly because I didn't want to deal with creating an in-game keyboard to edit various text fields. There are a few KB/Mouse shortcuts/combos that don't exist on gamepad, but none of those stop you from creating the same vehicle.

Moving on, let's look at the PC version of the layout with the most important popup enabled.


The shortcut for Advanced Mode (A) now brings up the part settings popup (on the right). This is a scrollable list of properties, and nearly every property has a tooltip that explains a bit more of what the setting does. This list scrolls using RMB or MMB Wheel. [I decided to leave the most of the vehicle settings in the cab properties, as I didn't want another pop-up, and there's so many vehicle settings, it needed to scroll anyway.]

The sliders in build mode have a new feature that's been highly requested: You can click on the value and enter a number directly. This also allows you to enter values outside the range of the slider. There are no error checks currently, so this is a good way to crash the game if you're so inclined (that crash won't happen 'til you play, most likely). There's also an optional comment field associated with each part so you can leave notes/comments for yourself or others (top right of the settings, only shows if the comment exists).

If a part has controls, they'll appear at the top of the settings. Click on the inputs/outputs and a secondary popup will appear. There's a new Quick Assign button at the top of that. Press that and this is what you'll see.


Depending on what you press, it'll either assign a new slot, or map to an existing controller slot. The old system of reassigning buttons/etc also exists in a 2x8 list, arranged vertically instead of horizontally now. There are now 32 button slots, up from 24, with the first 16 mapped by default. I decided to rename "Logic" connections to "Signals" to avoid confusion with the Logic parts. There are still 1024 of those available. I changed how signals render on parts a bit, but I might revisit it a bit more later to increase visibility/etc.

So that's the main pop-up and child pop-up you'll probably leave open/use most of the time, but other popups include Build Mode Settings, the Quick Edit popup, and the Layout popup. Build Mode Settings and Quick Edit are mostly a place to throw shortcuts/settings in a way that makes them more accessible to everyone. They all have tooltips and list the relevant shortcuts where needed.

The Layout popup is a bit different though. Here's what that looks like.


You can now edit the vehicle and creator names, along with editing how the control layout is displayed. Every used control will appear here, and you can select and move the controls around as you see fit. This is how they'll be displayed in-game, along with whatever labels you add. For previously created vehicles, the control hint will be converted to a label. You can have up to 8 labels at once. You can also create a gamepad-specific layout. As with most things that you can move, holding shift lets you move the controls/labels in smaller increments.

That covers many of the major changes, but I skipped the new move/rotate handle and many other minor changes and tweaks. There are a couple things that aren't quite finished, particularly the help mode/options, and switching between multiple player starts. I'm also considering redoing how sliders/ammo/overheating displays are handled (they'd be on the control layout, and be customizable), but I'm going to wait a bit.

Here's a quick summary of the build mode improvements (outside of the arrangement of things) if you want to know what to look for:

• Sliders now have optional direct text entry with no limits.
  
• New 3d handle for moving/rotating selected parts (resizable).
  
• Gamepad now works with 99% of build mode functionality.
  
• Parts now have optional comments.
  
• Customizable control layouts with up to 8 custom labels, and optional gamepad-specific layouts.
  
• Quick Assign feature to reassign button inputs.
  
• Added descriptions to a lot more parts, and they are always available.
  
• Added tooltips to the majority of part settings
  
• Improved display of shortcuts for buttons/etc.
  
• Many previous shortcut-only options now show as real options that display tooltips+shortcuts.
  
• New option to compress the build mode UI vertically.
  
• New option to display GP+KB shortcuts at same time in the remapper popup.
  
• Added an outline to selected/highlighted parts.
  
• Changed how signal inputs/outputs are displayed on parts.
  
• Added highlighting of parts using the highlighted button/signal (remapper popup).
  

WHAT'S NEXT? WHAT TOOK SO LONG?

As usual for any big update, I'll be following up with a series of smaller updates over the next day or two. With so many changes, there are bound to be issues that I didn't find. I have a list of smaller changes I might be making, but some of them will depend on feedback/requests/etc. Long-term I have a pretty firm list of what needs to be worked on/added, but at the moment I'm feeling very much burnt out and will work on whatever seems easy/enjoyable to work on. The only thing I'll do for sure in the short-term is update the control layouts of the Main Campaign vehicles.

In terms of why this update took so long, it's because it was a very large amount of work, much of which I was just not able to anticipate. Every time I changed one thing or rebuilt one part of the interface, that would spiral into a web of additional tweaks or fixes or new decisions that was difficult to predict. UI touches nearly every part of the massive codebase for the game, and Build Mode is the most complex system in the game by a significant amount. Every UI element changed in some way while also adding gamepad support, and gamepad support accounted for nearly half of the work because of the added complexity, special cases, etc.

To be completely honest, I've been miserable while working on this update. I only kept going because it needed to be done, and I used my desire to work on anything else as motivation to get this done. I'm glad it's done, and feel some sense of accomplishment, but I'd prefer to never work on a UI this complex again. I didn't enjoy working on the in-game level design tools either, but those don't have to be particularly good or work on console, they just have to work for me. The added pressure and need to keep things as user-friendly (and gamepad-friendly) as possible, along with the sheer number of elements involved, pushed it over the top. I was more productive working on this than the level editor tools, but I was even more unhappy about it.

Part of the problem might be the underlying UI systems I've built just aren't that great, particularly when it comes to creating complex visual elements. But I can't imagine any system that would create the resulting build mode UI/systems without a good amount of messy, difficult code.

Regardless, I'm determined to finish Instruments, and the rest should be relatively easy and enjoyable to work on compared to this.

[Apologies for the excess complaints. And please give feedback about Build Mode even if you don't think I'll like it.]