Category: Dev Journal

So where are we in development? The good news is, we’re very close to a new release! The bad news (for me) is that we’re in one of the most frustrating parts of the process. I want to make some claim about being done before the end of the year or something like that, but at this point issues keep coming up and I have to pace myself to keep motivated, so I’m not ready to set a deadline like that, just in case.

That’s the short version. To get into the details, let’s start with a quick review of what’s even going on.

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On the long, strange grind of tackling this, arguably the greatest challenge of this entire project and maybe even of my career, it’s easy to lose track of time. When the last update came out, I mentioned that my next big goal was to finally and truly tackle the centerpiece of Project Wild One: an NPC engine capable of, in some basic way, interpreting the actions of others around it and choosing from the many different courses of action available to it in a way that actually makes sense. I’ve been calling it AI, but I know you hear that term used a lot for systems based on machine learning these days, and that has nothing to do with my work here– this is all hand-crafted.

A couple months ago I checked in with supporters about how immensely challenging this process has been, and how things were coming together, but it was still such a monstrous task that I could only barely even estimate how much work remained at the time. Since then, I’ve made several significant breakthroughs, and I’m close to a big turning point. Let’s talk a little about the pieces of this system.

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We’re putting the final pieces together now! It’s been quite a journey, and I’ve accomplished a lot I wasn’t expecting, as well as faced setbacks and challenges I didn’t see coming. Let’s catch up.

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I’m deep in the process of building Project Wild One’s AI overhaul, but that’s required a lot of smaller support projects along the way. I’ve been working on a lot of different parts, and I think it might be about time to shift focus again so I can get a new update put together sooner rather than later. There’s a lot to talk about, so let’s get into the thick of it!

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Mixture of good and bad news with recent development. I’ve been putting this off wanting to be in a better spot, but I’m trying to be better about posting dev logs more often and escaping that weird cycle I had going of only posting at the same two points in the cycle of developing a release. I do have a fair amount to talk about by now, even if I’m not where I’d like to be.

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I’m not going to talk too much about what I’ve been working on in this release, as much as about my actual development process. I’ve been dissatisfied with all these ups and downs I’ve been going through and what a strange mess the cycle above has become. It’s hard on me and I suspect it slows things down in the long run. I always try to rush through this final stage, to get the new version ready absolutely as soon as possible, because I know everyone is waiting. I let the anxiety get to me, and that just leads to burnout and a slower next version.

So on the development side, this update is about breaking that cycle.

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So. Long story short, Covid really messed me up for a while. First it stopped me dead for a few weeks, then it kept me in a fog for an absurdly long time after, and… I’m still not sure I’ve actually completely shaken that off. That added a lot of problems and delays to what was already a pretty complicated process behind the scenes, and that’s put a pretty huge delay total on this update with not a lot to show for it.

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So far, it sounds like folks are enjoying the upgrades v0.03 brought to Project Wild One a lot, and I’m glad for that. It was a beast of an update to get through, and I’ve been picking up the pieces after it since I finally put the seal on and shipped it out. This is something of a transitional period in development, and I’m hoping to make a smaller update with a few easier things in it next.

Let’s talk about where we are with Project Wild One in a broader sense, then we’ll get into a little bit of the specifics of right now.

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