Well, for a variety of reasons (which I won’t go into here), this summer has been nuts. But it’s getting back to normal, and in the interests of getting back into a routine with my pet projects, I’m gonna try posting regular, weekly updates here.

So here’s my first Tinselfly update!

What I did last week

I made some custom editors for wiring.

Since I haven’t mentioned this on the blog before: everything you see on your spaceship should be powered. And when you put your engineering glasses on, you should see wiring everywhere. If you’re going to be running around solving wiring puzzles, I want all the wiring to be functional and logical. So I’ve already got it so the game knows that, say, when you flick a light switch, the power line coming out of the switch loses power, and since it’s connected to some lights, each of those lights turns off.

To save myself time, many devices will be powered wirelessly; there won’t be power outlets. But every light, every automatic door, every large device, should be powered, with visible lines running to them, and lines running through things like lightswitches and motion sensors.

Adding all that wiring will be a lot of work, so to save myself time I’ve made a custom editor. I can drop these sort of wiring canvases into the scene and plot lines on the canvases reasonably quickly now.

Goals for this week

I could fuss over my editor more, but it’s functional now and I’d like to move on.

I’d like to get my mess completely wired, including the bathrooms, entrance and bar area. That, by itself, shouldn’t take very long. I’m most of the way there already.

The more time consuming part will be designing and modeling new light fixtures for the bathroom and bar. And I’m careful to use the word design here: lately, I’ve been feeling more like a curator, faithfully reproducing antiques I’m finding images of online . But while my ship has a 1920s sort of aesthetic, this isn’t the 1920s. This  isn’t our world at all, not even an alternate history. I need to get back to designing things with styles that recall the 1920s, while still being having their own identity.

I also need to design and model a toilet and other bathroom fixtures.

Lastly, I’d like to finish updating my mess with Substance Designer/Painter textures.