Information
Something we've wanted to explore for a while is the possibility of an internet-based item editor. We want to get it in a position where anyone on the team can edit items. Then we want to open it up to the public - like TF2 did with hats. Obviously items submitted by the public wouldn't automatically appear in game. We'll be looking through them, you'll be voting on them, we'll be editing and accepting them and making sure it all works.
That's our dream anyway. The website side is really easy. It's getting the items in game that's a bit more involved and might take a couple of weeks.. because a lot of stuff needs replacing. The good news is that it's all crap and needs replacing with a better system, and once we've laid the foundations we'll be able to add new items like it's nothing.
As part of these changes above we're making a run at changing the UI. This is something we've been wanting to do for a while. At the moment we use a GUI system called NGUI. It's the devil. Our version of the devil is quite a bit worse though because it's been chopped up and edited. So we're working to get rid and use DFGUI - which is what all the menu, chat and popup notifications use.
So why bother updating the UI when there's so many other things that need doing? Well - we're doing it because of those things. Right now we're restricted by the UI because we know we want to replace it eventually so we're putting off adding things (like putting stuff in stuff, weight effects etc) because we don't want to write code to throw it away. The pass we're doing on the UI should mean that we're able to push even further forward.
Helk has started working on Farming. It's what it sounds like. We need to explore a bunch of performance issues we may or may not have with the system - so this is taking longer than expected too.
So sorry guys, no update this week. We've been dealing with a bunch of business stuff, and Helk is having some personal stuff to deal with, so progress has been slower than we'd like.. but we know what we're doing and I'm positive that we will make you happy quite soon :)
