Dev Blog: 09/22/2021 - Broom progress!

Hey everyone, hope you're doing well! I'm sorry this post is late, I had trouble finding time to sit and write.

📌 Broom

So for those of you who don't keep up with the Discord posts: I finally got the broom animations working!

Ack, I could cry! I started working on it again on September 11th and even though I fixed the animations on my end, they still weren't working in-game! I was immediately stressing out because I was following Pancake's advice and if this didn't work, what else would?

But Pancake took another look for me and realized something was off with the animations, like something had broke the rig. After re-converting them for me and adding the correct broom rig (which I had forgotten to import, can't believe I missed that), it was working perfectly! I'm so happy this is finally working, but it just reminds me that every time I create, no matter how big, there's always something that goes horribly wrong, lol. I wish that was an exaggeration.

Anyhow, now that this fixed I'm hoping to release it by the end of the month or early next month. I'm going to be busy this weekend (away from the computer) which is why I say possibly early next month, but my goal is end of the month.

So far what I have left to do is:

• Dust and sound effects to add to the animations
• (What I'm working on now) The other interactions, buffs, and loots (the dust/vacuum system is HUGE and there's a lot of files to track down). I already did the interactions on the broom for sweeping, but there's duplicates for other situations and BG clones to make.
• A tiny bit of scripting to add a custom broom tag and setup blocks for users with/without the BtD kit.
• Add the modern brooms I found from other packs. Thankfully Panda already separated the meshes, as I mentioned last time.
• More swatches for the medieval broom and other texture adjustments
• A slotting and purchase system so brooms can hang on a board against the wall/be purchased from it
• Geostates for laying on the floor, hanging on the wall, etc. 

The most time consuming part will be the mesh/object related stuff towards the bottom of this list, unless something fights me tuning wise.

I mentioned "slotting and purchase system", my goal is to allow players to purchase brooms of any type from the board while also allowing them to slot the brooms as a way to hold them. It's not really necessary, but I thought people would like it as an alternative to just grabbing them from build mode. Future plans after this first release also include being able to make wooden brooms with the woodworking table, convert for kids, and possibly a chance to break, and a few other small things I'm considering. 

Anyway, that's mostly it, now to just finish up! Of course if anything isn't working out I'll probably cut it for the next version, at this point I just really want it released, lol.

📌  Misc

I heard back from Artrui and I can release the Ruin Stairs Seats! I will be working on the post soon. Also the Eco Living NAP Blocker will be receiving an update soon to fix the LE from the drama node blocker. Hopefully this next version will work better for blocking it.

Oh and I'm aware of Tmexi's new CAW! I can't remember if I posted about it before (I swear I did but no idea which post), but Pancake and I had stopped focusing on CAW tools a long while ago when we learned he was doing CAW, and only focused on research and trying to get our own worlds finished. I still plan to finish the worlds we started as well, but it won't be a for bit. The world editing and creating tutorial series I'm making will come relatively soon though as I'm sure a lot of people are not only curious but want to investigate for themselves.

I don't have anything else to report other than that! I'll hopefully have the broom up for you soon and working on finishing Arranged Marriages V1 for late October/early November, with hopefully another smaller mod thrown in (I'm hoping the Medieval Dances)! And of course hopefully another dev blog before then.