Wicklog Two - Postmortem, Better Brains, and Beautiful Bodies

Decided that a bi-weekly update schedule’d be better to avoid spamming the email lists, which is why I skipped sending out an update last week (but I did publish a postmortem on the campaign - it took a quite unusual path!):

So what’s been happening in the last two weeks? Looking back, a surprising amount given how slow things feel on any particular day.

First off, I’ve been redesigning the creatures to make them feel more organic and less robot-like. Here’s the concept art:

And once I tweaked the drag physics (edges that are facing other parts aren’t included in the drag calculation, and thanks to Benjamin Morrison springs are now damped) and added non-rectangular pieces, I was pleased to discover that it was a *lot* easier to make things swim & steer!

So pretty. I spent way too long just cruising around as this lil guy.

I've expanded the scripting language implementation from last update to maps + neurons, though it's not quite done yet. It’s a lot more work than it sounds, since I have to code each function in triplicate. Wish there was an easier way. :/Speaking of neurons, I spend last week visiting Gabriel Barello (a computational neuroscientist math friend) in Eugene and he hammered out the solution (several, actually) for simulating actual electrical currents flowing through a neuron in real time:

This is just fantastic. It’s so so much more accurate than the janky version I had before, is prettier, and allows for a lot more nuance.

Finally, I’m almost done with my application to Stugan which, if accepted, will let me work on CL in Sweden for the summer. This would be a rad opportunity -- not only is it a great focused work environment, but meeting + working alongside other devs is important if I want to keep growing this weird game/science independent career of mine.