So yesterday was my 30th birthday. 30 years! It feels like I've accomplished very little in that timeframe too. Sighs...

At this point, all the foundation for networking in the engine is done. Feels really good to get this one out of the way. A host can start a server, a client can then connect to it, and then you can start throwing angry messages at each other. There's an API provided allowing anyone creating a game with the engine to easily implement their own network message types, etc. too. I shouldn't, in theory, have to touch anything on the engine-side again for this.

With that out the way, I'm back to looking at getting a model format spec done, which has been taking me far longer than it should. It really sucks because I had an implementation for this before that worked pretty okay, but I've been caught up on whether I'm implementing it as efficiently as I could. The result is zero progress (except for ripping out things I didn't need).

It's extra daft when you consider that I've already implemented a serializer/deserializer for static level geometry. So I've solved some of this before.

I've just now been looking at hooking up models with the scene-graph system properly now at least, so I can make a bit of a start at getting a viewer sorted for me to actually verify everything is working. Plus, it's a good excuse for finally making a little bit of progress with the model viewer/editor.

On another note, this here is just a rough model I whipped up at the end of the day for sketching out an idea and to serve as a reference/template.

I'm just going to say that this is related to a ball I've been rolling since 2020 and may have mentioned back at the start of last year. I'm not going to start beating drums about it just yet (we'll see how things are next year), but I really think I've finally landed on something I really dig and can get excited for, so that ball is starting to roll a little faster.

Finally, just for anyone curious about Tonic Detox - as explained, I'm still wrestling with the engine for now. My plan was to have a rough prototype playable at the start of the year to start gathering feedback on movement, but the scene-graph implementation slowed all that down... Long story short, I don't expect to have anything to show at Rayman Alive this year, assuming there's another one. There's been progress on the story, levels and general design at least, so it's not been a complete waste of a year.

I'm still pretty determined to use my own tech for Detox, but if things continue going too slowly, I'll probably give another engine a look. I've got something in mind.