Architecture Over Hacking

Okay, okay! I was saying it to myself and anybody else for many many times: Bros over.. err. Architecture over Hacking and rushed coding!
Don't code when you are tired or worse, exhausted. Don't code if you don't imagine final result in your mind! Spend as much time as you need for figuring out the architecture then you may code for few minutes (yes, it happens sometimes).

It doesn't mean you always get unworking code, sure not, but.. well.
For example, I have 'map validation routines'. This code is stable, relatively fast, but I sweat every single time I have to look into it. Better keep it untouched, 'Legacy Code' as it is. Except, it is Your legacy code. ^_^

The same thing happened.
If you check our Trello board you can find that I am adding Z levels to global map storage, so game can track your travels to slums, generate them and so on.
At first, I thought: 'ah. easy task, do it on fly '.
You think what?
What?
Chicken butt!
Come on, I have been coding it until understood: I am going veeery wrong way.  I made an attempte to hack a way and add a record with a dynamic array to every game location.
Ugh. bad idea! It was hard to work with even during current work! What about halve of a year later? Huh?
Yeah. Take a deep inhale, delete you crappy code and think about Architecture!
Think first, Constantine!

PS
Current task:
Class that will push new levels into self, give them to game and report errors!
Simple and elegant.
Do it!

Art Report #1 - Scavenger Union

Hey guys!

I've just finished the Scavenger Union design, narrowly evading the Lazy Snail that Konstantin sent for me, so let me share what i've done so far (click on the images to see the bigger version with details).

First of all, welcome to the City:

For the next version we are focusing on only one small district, fully filled with content. But in later versions you'll be able to fully explore the City, the world beyond it and maybe even other surviving Cities.

Here the humans hid during the Catastrophe and survived, sealing themselves from the rest of the world. A lot of time have passed, the resources in the City became extremely sparse and it was decided to finally open the gates and explore the world beyond.

For that purpose, the Scavenger Union was created:

We decided to go with the first option in the bottom row.

Since there was an overpopulation in the City and food supplies were becoming smaller and smaller, the government created a new institution - Scavenger Union, tasked with exploring the world outside, bringing back useful resources, exploring good places for the mushroom farms and slowly filling map of the world.
Once a person decides to join the Union, he is given some small starting items and is sent on a specific mission to the outer world. Because this job is extremely risky (most of the members die horribly on their first mission), but there is a small chance of getting insane rewards and money by finding an Old World Artifact like a functioning machine or even an abandoned Factory, it become very popular among the poorest people of the City, who would otherwise just die of starvation.
The Union uses rank system for their members - the competition between the lower ranks is severe, even to the point where some malicious members can kill their competitors in the Outer World, just so they'll have a higher chance to find the Artifacts and bring them back.
The higher ranks on the contrary, consists of reputable gentlemen who managed to survive a lot of trips Outside and became a veterans. It's very hard to get into their ranks, but once you are in, you'll be given a lot more lucrative jobs and have an access to the Union's Quartermaster who sells unique items for reputation points.

The player begins as a newly joined member of the Union, ready to prove himself to the world and find riches beyond imagination!

Here are some props that i designed for the interior of the Union:

And here is the final design of the 1st floor, where the lowest members of the Union hang out, receive missions from the Manager and discuss their recent adventures while sipping cheap beer (other floors will be available in later versions):

Welcome to the Union! Take a mission, drink some beer for the bravery - and good luck!

Next in the plan is the concepts of the City Street and the Slums (which will be our first dungeon). Hopefully the world that we designed will be interesting to explore and atmospheric enough to be immersed in it :3

Thanks for reading and see you in the next Art Report!


Vadim