New construction system done (mostly)

In the last dev update I discussed the new part alignment search system I was working on.  At that point there were a couple of things left to do: implement a bounding volume hierarchy for part bounds, and implement the part collider intersection tests.  The second of these two is now done, which means the game is now functional again.  I decided to do the BVH as an optimisation step later, as the game works fine without it (albeit with reduced performance in certain cases), and I wanted to get a new demo release out ASAP!

UI improvements

I have also implemented some new features that are in the latest demo.  In the construction menu (to access, highlight a construction and hold shift + hold / press Q), there are some additional buttons to activate / deactivate all of the construction’s part behaviours.  So you no longer have to hunt through all the parts in a construction and activate each behaviour individually.

In the builder tool UI, there’s now a new “world” tab.  This contains a list of constructions currently in the world and provides the ability to pick a construction and then remotely: select it, activate / deactivate all of its behaviours, toggle it frozen / unfrozen, clone it, save it, or delete it.  So if you ever lose a construction because it rolled away down a hill, at least you can always get it back now!

There are also a few other improvements and tweaks, such as a help window summarising the game controls (accessed by holding / pressing F1).

Next up

I’m now at a point where it’s time to revisit the Unity 5 upgrade again (can’t put it off any longer!), so I’ll be looking at that next.  I’m not entirely sure how this is gonna go, but I just hope I can find a way around the remaining physics issues.

Beyond that, there are a ton of things I really want to get to, the main ones being: improving the environment / map (having flat area to build on), making the construction controls better, and implementing a challenge / tutorial system.