I SMOULDER WITH PROGRAMMER RAGE

Have you ever had one of those weeks where everything seems to go wrong? Work is being done. Oh yes, work is being done. But at every step, we are beset upon by mystery and woe! ARGH.

Loading doors! Mr. Triolo animated them. They are lovely:

Good, well-behaved shutters. (Seen in Maya.)

Good, well-behaved shutters. (Seen in Maya.)

Let’s put them through the same process that we use for importing everything else into the game, la la…

IMPORTER WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS

AAAAAAAGHH HNNNNNNNNNNRGH GRRRRGGH HRPP

AAAAAAAGHH HNNNNNNNNNNRGH GRRRRGGH HRPP

Seriously, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU.

Fine! Fixed that. Micah put in a big cleanup of the AI state code this week which lets us more efficiently create new types of animals and things that need AI (turret guns, vehicles, fish people, etc.) that are not proper citizens. Things explode but we put them out. Now, finally, we can finish the chicken. What a nice chi-

WHAT ARE YOU DOING CHICKEN

AAAAAGH HRNNNRGH HRMPPH

AAAAAGH HRNNNRGH HRMPPH [And we really must do something about that cog. – dgb]

ARE YOU POSSESSED OR SOMETHING

DO YOU NEED AN OLD PRIEST AND A YOUNG PRIEST

Fine! Fix the chicken. Fixed the chicken. Added a bunch more animals (foxes, frogs, The Tapir) and some special behaviours (egg laying, fox vomiting) Good! Let’s finish some UI.

We’re starting to plug away at getting a UI that is better than “a crude first pass, implemented by blind hedgehogs in a bag covered in dung.” David sent me a mockup for the Work Party dialog last week which looks like this:

David's original mockup, replete with comments about old-timey lithographs. [Now let's be fair -- this was more an image for visual brainstorming, if you will, not intended as a mockup proper. Seems to have driven Nicholas half-mad, so there's that. --dgb]

David’s original mockup, replete with comments about old-timey lithographs. [Now let’s be fair — this was more an image for visual brainstorming, if you will, not intended as a mockup proper. Seems to have driven Nicholas half-mad, so there’s that. –dgb]

A more refined mockup of the work parties. Pip Pip and all that.

A more refined mockup of the work parties. Pip Pip and all that.

Fine, we can make something like that. After some poking and prodding, we end up with:

Headed in the right direction, clearly.

Still placeholder UI, but headed in the right direction, clearly.

with a jolly drag-and-drop interface so that people can be moved from work crew to work crew. This spawned a number of discussions about military units (anybody dropped into a military unit gets drafted), finding various work crews, classifications of work crews, and whether or not we need a large button labelled “MILITIA” (answer: Yes.) That’s all fine and dandy, and easy to add – but why won’t it scroll correctly to the bottom of the screen?

Short answer: apparently, I wrote the scrollbar code back in 2003. Yes, that’s how old some of our codebase is. Now imagine me back in 2003, as a nineteen year old. I don’t know what I was doing back when I was nineteen – today’s nineteen year olds all seemed to be obsessed with something called “twerking” and “The Skrillex”, but for some reason MY nineteen year old self decided that the scrollable range of a scrollbar should always be 32 units less than the *actual* range of a scrollbar. Why?! I don’t know.

ARGH BUILD TIME MACHINE GO BACK IN TIME FOR TIME STABS CRUSH BUTTERFLY UNDERFOOT —

Okay, fine. Calm down. We can work on… music. That’s good. Music is good! Ryan has new code, let’s add the title music.

… why are you loading the wrong DLL, music code?

… why are there *four* different OpenAL32.DLLs on this computer, including some in obscure Microsoft Directories, none of which are the DLL that actually contains the extension that the new audio code needs?! SET MICROSOFT ON FIRE —

Buildings! BUILDINGS! We can work on buildings. Barbers can now claim buildings and perform useful medical, dangerous live-saving medical treatments! (Somewhere in here, people also got the ability to claim beds and claimable modules – provided that they are of a sufficient rank in life to claim beds as their own rather than just being forced to sleep Wherever, as is the custom of those days) Hooray! Progress!

The next construction to appear: a jolly little pie shop.

The next construction to appear: a jolly little pie shop. [I think we’re going to want to move that barbershop pole up a bit ‘eh. Yes, nothing can be okay this week. Nothing. – dgb]

The next construction to appear: a jolly little pie shop.  Let’s do clerks…

WHAT ARE YOU DOING AND WHERE IS THE REST OF YOUR BODY

WHAT ARE YOU DOING AND WHERE IS THE REST OF YOUR BODY

NO STOP THAT

AAAAAAAAAAAGH

WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

(Daniel here: we’ve sent Nicholas to bed with a small glass of whiskey and a pistol with a single bullet in it.)

Posted in Clockwork Empires, Programming | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
20 Comments

20 Responses to “I SMOULDER WITH PROGRAMMER RAGE”

  1. Bropocalypse says:

    That bureaucrat really gets into his work.

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  2. Bart de Ruijter says:

    “SET MICROSOFT ON FIRE”
    God yes please.

    Also the delightful bugfixing, the miracle of rage-programming 🙂

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  3. icepick37 says:

    What’s the single bullet for!? D:

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  4. Em Dash says:

    *sings* “Mrs. Lovett’s meat pieeeesss… Savory and sweet piiiieeessss!”

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  5. Headjack says:

    Experimental turret chicken for undetectable fortification.

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    • Kaidelong says:

      Presumably the chicken turret deployment is invoked by some or other incantation sounding something like “Chicken arise! Arise chicken! Arise!”

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  6. ghosttie says:

    Barber + pie shop = Sweeny Todd..?

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  7. Thomas says:

    This is exactly why i’m going to enjoy this game so much when it comes out.
    Just being here to witness the growing pains and code and sprites come together..
    ..and watching the entire team behind the game slowly crack and lose their sanity day by day as things keep blowing up and going to hell.

    Its a morbidly beautiful thing to watch.
    …sort of like a butterfly that keeps bursting into tiny flames.

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  8. Viken says:

    Hahaha. It seems that someone called upon the forces of Chaos a little too early.

    Pft! Be careful, you may have Cultists in your midst!

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  9. Bpy6 says:

    So, this is finally a long-awaited sneak peek into what the Wrong Geometries will look like?

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  10. Godwin says:

    Hahahaha great post as usual, hugely entertaining 🙂

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  11. Luxray says:

    The Imperial Chartered Guild of Loading Bay Doormakers deems them Perfectly Safe and not at all prone to Class Three rotation errors.

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  12. Robert Tseng says:

    why fix the chicken?!? it’s a CHICKEN TURRET (the angry bird!)! A Cogicken? Chicogs? Steampunk Fowl!

    Fight Cog… NEW IP FROM GLG?

    Nicholas recodes the scroll bar, and he realizes.. he IS that scroll bar (sorry, spoilers)

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  13. Idle Dice says:

    I shall name this shop Vincent’s Famous Pastries: “It takes all sorts of critters to make Farmer Vincent’s fritters!”

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  14. Max911 says:

    I wonder what a pie made from the chicken would taste like… Do wrong geometries have a flavour? And who do you know that is expendable enough to find out?

    { reply }

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