A Turret's Life is a first person arcade shooter/tower defence game for PC and VR where you are the tower defending an area against the endless onslaught of attacking robots and crafting overpowered dream guns that can be traded as crypto-backed items.

Updates

Crafting Serialization & Bugfixing: I am just doing some final tests and touch-ups on the saving and loading process of the crafting stage.

Life Balance: I think I am going to try to continue to add some personal elements into the blogs when I can like last time, unless there are complaints haha...

Progress

Crafting Serialization & Bugfixing

In blog #4, I mentioned briefly how a file format called json was going to be used to store the player's Turrets, well this week I finally added that process. The way it works is that all of the relevant data of the game object gets converted into a primitive text datatype, called a string. All of the positions, rotations, scale, stats, which module is connected to which turret etc are all stored in this file. This is called “serialization”. Converting the game objects to a string allows for them to be transferred and saved in various platforms and then reloaded back into the game. The reloading process is called “deserialization”, and the game reads the string back and re-creates the items based on that.

Here is a quick item for testing the system, and as you can see there is already quite a lot of data being saved (quite messy really).

Overall, the serialization is mostly finished for now; I am just doing some tests and finding and fixing any bugs I come across. The next step in the crafting is getting the different modules to actually communicate with one another such as if they have been properly connected or not. I have thought of a few ideas for this already, and am leaning along the lines of a central module that can only have one placed at a time, then all of the other modules must indirectly connect to it. For instance, for the turrets it would be the turret base, and for the ammo it would be the cartridge.

Life Balance

My struggle of finding energy for A Turret's Life after work continues; what's more, is that over the years I have developed a bad habit of binge snacking when I am in a low energy state (I think it's a traditional programmer's diet lol ). No doubt working on the project alongside work has exacerbated the issue. It is starting to catch up to me and is making me sick, and in turn it causes me to actually sleep more poorly and become less effective for the project!

So, in an effort to improve my health and consequently ability to work on the game, I have decided to make a conscious effort to improve my eating habits by cutting out sugar and of course stopping the snacking and eating filling meals instead. I am hopeful of its success by substituting the junk food with healthier and tastier alternatives. It's impossible to cut something out of your life without filling it with something better; otherwise your willpower will eventually fail and you'll be back at the start... Also, sometimes being absolute in something instead of moderation can strengthen your resolve. At least this is what I have experienced.

What sort of bad stress coping habits do you guys have to break? What solutions have you come across? Please let me know haha

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Website: https://www.aturretslife.com/

Telegram: https://t.me/aturretslife