Official Devblog #7 - Faction System

Devblog #7
Deep Dive (Faction System)
Written in cooperation with TomSL
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This devblog will cover the deeper aspects of development, and what kind of work goes into it, this devblog might help you better understand what kind of work we’re doing here on the development side.

It’s probably important first to state what LUA is, in layman’s terms. There are different types of programming languages, LUA is a scripting language, and not really a programming language, while it’s mid-level, you can’t really do anything spectacular in LUA, outside of what’s applied in the environment. Garry’s Mod in particular, processes the language in ‘real-time’, and this allows developers to interface with the Source Engine and the game itself more efficiently and… is relatively secure..

In comparison, to make a Half-Life 2 mod, you have to sit through a long compile time for each change, compiling basically being translating the code into a ‘computer readable format’.

But enough about the fundamentals, let’s get into the good stuff, what makes up a part of the gamemode?

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This is an example of a simple, unfinished interface that was created to be modular, however, it’s on it’s rough edges and is currently in a drafting phase, but at this phase, it’s important to note that this is 163 lines of code long, and this is only one file.

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This isn’t an easy feat, and it takes an incredible amount of time to get right, and this is only the front end user interface, it doesn’t even take into account the amount of back end stuff to get this working right, which won’t be shown today. But it’s important to see the hard work that goes into creating this stuff. The team works hard to create the best content for you, but it takes a lot of time to get just right.

LUA isn’t a complex language, and it’s usage is very versatile. League of Legends, Diablo IV, and Overwatch all employ the language because it’s an easy language to script with, it’s relatively fast and lightweight, and if implemented properly, doesn’t need to be recompiled every time you make a change, like with the very back end internal stuff, which most likely uses C# or C++, two other different languages entirely.

We wish that it was as easy as pressing some buttons and making it go, but thousands of lines of code and weeks of work and polish go into creating the smoothest and most immersive experience possible. Hopefully that demonstration helps you understand why some things might take so long to create.
In the past few days, we have progressed to this new skeleton from the old one, giving it a new structure, and a base to go off of:

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There are more tabs to it listing members of the faction/group. As of now, we only have a proof of concept from the members tab, but we will incorporate roles, lore, group logs, and leader info into the rest of it, and we will also refine and polish the UI into more of a modern look with better spacing and alignment.

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As you can see, this is just test text for the groups, but this is the general proof of concept. This latest bit of progress from the first image took about only two hours of work. When our devs have more free time we will move forward much faster.

In the end the member tab would look like this post polish. You may edit the role titles of your factions as well.
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Bonus screenshot
Additionally we've also updated the hp/armor/stamina visuals as shown in the top left corner!

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[Bruuuuh]

Bruh

 

[DanteeZe]

bruh

 

[Pyureh]

Bruh

 

[Mc-Crabs]

This some mighty fine work, and you guys never cease to impress.

keep up with it!

 

[Bo Baker]

Bruh

bruh

Bruh

Bruhh

This some mighty fine work, and you guys never cease to impress.

keep up with it!

Thank you, I give credit to TomSL for the creation of the Faction system however, I just made the Devblog. He is the dude.

 

[ICraaZZyM4N]

Good work, very very noice.