Busy yet Quiet

So I don't have a whole lot to write about this week. It is not so much that I haven't been busy; quite the contrary actually. It's just the nature of changes have been extensive yet small or on uninteresting. I have almost exclusively been working on the UI. Killed all sorts of bugs, got rid of all the debug UI in game, started fixing things up in the metagame areas. Added lots of little flourish in the game so it just a bit nicer. I have been managing to get a fair bit of play testing in, and hopefully I will get more soon. This has helped me found various bugs and issues. Also given me some direction for where to focus changes.

The next week will probably be alot of the same. I do have the two biggest UI changes in as of today (new screens), so HOPEFULLY it won't sap all of my time. I have a few gameplay changes to put in (fairly minor or ancillary) and a list of of new content to bring in. Mostly stuff to help the game be more thoroughly playtested. This should let me get beyond 'is the basic game fun' (studies show it is. several people have trouble putting it down) to 'is the game as a whole fun'.  As I get that more hammered out I can hopefully, finally, move into beta. My hope is in the next two weeks but we'll see.

Addendum: I forgot, there was one other thing I did; switched to c++17. Mostly to get a few little things I like. Oddly enough in doing so I had to ditch an old class in the engine (technically one of the few ones remaining from the earlier one). It used some functionality that was deprecated in c++11 and is now gone. I actually haven't used the class in a very long time, so it isn't a bit deal. But sad to see it go...  There is still older code in there (2009). Another little thing I noticed since I was just curious is just how much of my code base is within the engine. Of the 60000 lines, 50000 is within the engine. heh.