DMVR Devlog October

Hello!

This is the first monthly dev log for DMVR. I have never really done one of these before, but I feel like with how inactive DMVR has seemed it would be a good idea to start doing them so that you guys know what's going on, what to expect etc and to get some insight into any new things we have worked on.

Some of these posts might not have as much content as others. Sometimes the content might be a lot more technical than visual. Ill be aiming to have them out on the first of each month but the date could fluctuate a bit. Some of it might just be yapping about something interesting I solved or discovered while working on a specific part of the game.

Additionally, while this post is just public, future posts will be time locked for the patreon members for a month. Might change this if its unpopular but...You guys gotta get some perks for sticking around :)

This specific post is going to be significantly longer than most since its covering quite a lot of stuff, not just what I did this month.

With that said... lets get started!

DMVR - Rewrite Progress

As you all know, the rewrite has been in the works for a really long time. A combination of me having multiple jobs and generally being pretty demotivated all around has made it very difficult to dedicate much time for quite a while. Recently I started dedicating a single day a week (Wednesday) to one of my other VR projects, which has (strangely) helped get me out of the slump a little bit. You might have caught one of the streams over on https://www.twitch.tv/jxp_dev (previously under the username DMVR2). Because of this, I am going to try to dedicate each Friday to DMVR, assuming that my jobs do not get too busy. If you want to see some development, feel free to swing by!

There is still quite a bit to be done on the rewrite, and I am currently looking out for another programmer to assist with getting it to a testable state for you guys. While waiting for applications to come through, I spent some time to refresh my memory on the rewrite, get it compiling in my automated build farm and upgraded all of our dependencies to match the current latest releases.

My main goal for the rewrite between now and the end of the month is to write a bunch of documentation to try to make onboarding someone to the project a bit easier. Its always a pain trying to get people setup purely from my memory, and due to how complex things are its probably best I actually write it down...

Dead Game

DMVR has been pretty dead for updates for years. A fair few years back I completely locked down the team from adding things to the currently playable version and instead implemented anything new into the rewrite.

While this decision was supposed to speed up iterating on the rewrite, I think in retrospect that this was actually a BAD idea and one that I should not have taken. Not only has the meta for DMVR stagnated due to the banlist being immutable all this time, people had commissioned models to be made which they have been waiting years for. We have problems with people logging in as broken "guest" accounts (which causes them to gain no progress) and randomly the server will start erroring leaving the game unplayable.

This is not what I want for DMVR, I want this game to be the best it can be which was always the intention with starting the rewrite.

That being said, I think its time that I start balancing my focus between updates for the current game and the rewrite. I would like to get a steady stream of new content and improvements to the base game while working towards completing the rewrite.

DMVR 0.18.0

The next version of DMVR will be 0.18.0. I had started working on it to some degree last year. One of the main goals for this update was to rework how a bunch of systems were structured to make it simpler to extend the content within DMVR, along with adding new cards, models, a CDN to speed up updates, a new server, and some website improvements and fixes. (And some secret stuff which I will share closer to or during release.)

Remember, everything below is a work in progress, and has yet to be released!

Previously Implemented

When I started working on this update, I already got some stuff finished which I would like to show off here!

Website - Booster Packs

I spent some time reworking how you purchase booster packs. The current system was too easy to accidentally buy a pack if you refreshed the page, and it was also just not fun to use.

Not only can you now look at all the cards in the pack, you can buy multiple at the same time. It also shows you how many of each card you currently own which should make it a bit nicer to see if a pack is worth buying.

Once you buy the pack, you get shown with a nice screen where you can individually reveal each card (or flip all of them if you are in a rush.) This is a nice optional thing, as the cards are already in your account by this point.

You also now have the ability to bulk buy from multiple packs at a time!

Website - Structure Decks

The structure deck shop has also been reworked. You are now able to view every deck you don't own, and preview their contents before purchasing.

They currently use the internal ID that the game had for each deck. This will change once I finish programming the game server to read the structure decks from the backend instead of the game data. Once this is finished we will be able to add / edit structures without needing to release a whole new version of the game!

Website - Deck Editor

The deck editor has had some improvements implemented. You are now able to rename the deck without breaking its association with its Extra Deck. I have also reworked how we store decks internally, which should let me fix the bug where a deck becomes unuseable after trading a card that was within it, even when you had enough cards to use the deck.

Launcher Updates

Onto the launcher, which has had a couple changes.

You can no longer launch into Guest Mode, you must log in once to load into DMVR.
After that, the next time you run DMVR (for example, if you launch it from within DMVR) the game will automatically sign you into DMVR, avoiding issues where you are a "guest" an unable to unlock anything in game.

I also redid some of the visuals on the launcher to better match the colors of DMVR.

Finally, I reworked how we install and launch the patreon betas (when they return). You can now have both DMVR and a Patreon build installed which should make switching between them a lot nicer (avoid a 7GB download each time)

Next Steps

I will be continuing to work on this throughout October. I will be reviewing any outstanding changes to the ban list and seeing what can be deployed with the update, along with seeing which cards can be back ported from the rewrite to 0.18.

I will also be reworking how the game stores the monster data, to make it significantly easier to implement models. Its one of the pain points for anyone who is tasked with adding one, so it should be worth replicating how we store them in the rewrite.

Hopefully this post has been an okay read, and has given you some insights into where things are. Ill have another one up next month with whatever progress is made. Thanks for everyone who has been supporting this project, and I look forward to releasing the best game we can!

-- Jay