Bit over a year since I switched from Unity to Unreal, the game is now at the point where enough of it works that I think it might work for other people, so:

https://jeremiahfieldhaven.itch.io/project-shinar/ - Windows and Linux preview builds are now available!

If you give it a go, I'm interested in feedback, suggestions, etc - with the obvious caveat that this is still a very early preview build, so expect bugs!

#GameDev #IndieDev #IndieGame #UnrealEngine5

@sinbad Please tell me there will be a very rare shout of "For Karl!" in there 😆

@sinbad Congrats! And hey, it's good to know that Fab is actually working, too.

@sinbad This looks wonderful!

Woke up this morning, and the house is really chilly. On the one hand, this would not be surprising: coldest night so far this side of the year, and it snowed overnight. On the other, it is much colder than it should be because we should have technology to address this.

Check the thermostat, it's set right... but when it clicks on, the combi-boiler does not. Fuck.

Hot water works, though. So it's either the controller, the cables, or the thermostat.

So, I take the cover off the thermostat and carefully bridge the wires with a piece of cable (gingerly because this is an older boiler with 240V going to the thermostat). Heating kicks on immediately!

I can hear the switch contact clicking when I adjust the temp, so my suspicion now is that the switch contacts are gunked up by decades of arcing. 15 minutes later when I'd worked out how to get to the contacts, sure enough they're completely black. Bit of cleaning later, and its working again.

@djlink On the one hand, if all you're playing the game for is visuals, gameplay tricks, and shooting people... sure.

If you're playing it for - or even passably interested in - the story?

I don't envy them, and I suppose I can respect that "it needs to improve on what's gone before or it's not worth doing", but at the same time I'm not sure I agree with that, or their decision.

Incremental improvements and a completed story, versus nothing?

But now it's far too late anyway...

@sinbad A while back I was navigating in the car for Mrs Fieldhaven, and things were Not Working Properly for various reasons. As part of trying to get the tablet I was using for the maps doing what I needed, I accidentally activated the voice assistant on it. When I said "Oh, piss off!" at it, it actually replied with "That isn't very nice!" 🤣

@psychicparrot42 @sinbad They're cats - they probably *can* read clocks, they just don't care! 😆

@sinbad @Bobbins Yeah, the loss and dissolution of collective experience over the last 15 years is pretty shocking. I've actually thought to myself a few times, "I should set up a gamedev forum," and I /could/ do it - I've hosted and managed forums before - but at the same time I have bugger-all expectation it'd get used, or ever appear in search results (and be essentially pointless as a result) 😩

@sinbad Yup, there's a handful of things that I use windows for as my primary, but I'm eyeballing CodeWaver's Crossover and plan to test whether it handles things like excel and word (which I need for work - the web versions don't cut it), and Lightwave.

If I can get that list down low enough, Windows is going in the bin.

@sinbad perfect naming, no notes 🤣

Oh gods, this feels so very bonkers.

It *works*, but damn.

@psychicparrot42 It's an editor plugin called 'Electronic Nodes' https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/electronic-nodes

I really highly recommend it if you're doing anything blueprinty. I find it *massively* improves readability, and it works in all the blueprint editors - actors, widgets, materials, etc.

My only real complaint with it is that it can result in some overlapping unless you place extra nodes. Would be nice if it auto-routed to minimise overlap - but overall, it's awesome.

As part of a conversation in work that was triggered by this - https://axleos.com/an-irc-client-in-your-motherboard/ I began to wonder if anyone had worked on making the best text editor (Emacs) work in UEFI.

Apparently not, at least not that I can find.

But to add insult to injury, https://github.com/mischief/efivim

I fear I may now be duty bound to make Emacs work under UEFI (efimacs?)

Spotted on street view: the rare 7 door hatchback Citroen dual-driver.