This week has been tough. I’ve been busy, also been ill, and been totally rewriting a core bit of code in Production Line to fix some obscure bugs. I think the code is way better now, but the proof is in the play-testing. I didn’t want to keep the improvements I *know* I’ve made hidden from people any longer so today I released 1.05 and also this video…

Here is the complete changelist:

[version alpha 1.05]

1) Resource conveyors now have feint shadows.

2) New design and car stock dialogs now prevent autosave from triggering.

3) Powerplant efficiency upgrade now works in a more obvious way.

4) Massive speed-up to the delay between a stockpile needing resources, and them being ordered.

5) Floating values and particles no longer visible when quitting a game.

6) Fixed crash bug when preparing to place a new slot over a conveyor belt loop.

7) Game now paused whilst in R&D screen.

8) Erroneous robot upgrades removed from make windows slot.

9) Changes to floating values rendering makes zoomed out GUI less messy.

10) Fixes for possible causes of crashing when saving really big games.

11) Some crude rebalancing of starting funds for the first two missions.

12) ‘R’ as well as ‘r’ now rotates.

13) Clicking current balance now acts as an on/off toggle on finance window, which is no longer modal.

14) Various minor GUI fixes.

15) ‘Make valve’ is now visible on the slot picker.

16) Save game GUI now much more consistent with the load game GUI.

This code has been hell to get right. Its all to do with the resource items that get delivered around the factory. They can be created new (nothing is actually new() for memory reasons) and imported from an importer (or held in an importers queue), then can be in transit, then can be used up, they can be created by manufacturing slots, or heading to/from a supply stockpile or in an export queue for either of those things. Thats all EASY to manage. The code hell comes from the fact that the player can delete ANYTHING at any time, or change any route which makes some of those items ‘stranded’. You can delete the source of a resource, or some part of its current route, or its destination at any point, and code chaos ensues.

I think its much better now… I really hoper so, its actually stressed me quite a bit.

Ultimately all bugs can be fixed, but its frustrating because a) I have a lot of people playing and want them to be happy and b) I have a long list of ‘cool things’ I want to improve and tweak and add, and I’m not letting myself do any of that stuff until I have little or no bug reports, so its been really frustrating. I’ll be sooo happy if people say I’ve fixed some of the bugs and I can go back to doing some GUI improvements and some play balancing and tech tree fun and games!

The alpha continues to be really, really popular, almost entirely by word of mouth (not much press has come our way), so that’s really encouraging and I’d like to thank everyone who has tweeted, posted in forums, and generally told their friends about the game, it is much appreciated. I’m really hoping next week my video will be all ‘look at all the coool stuff we added!’.