The Tanks and Thanks

Need a safe place to keep the baby geru. Tanks make sense to me. I have geckos in tanks, right? I have gone back and forth on this one, mostly because it's a good chunk of work and the geru will eventually outgrow the tanks. They are in essence mini apartments as far as the code goes, so most of the work is really done, I can just copy and paste a lot of it, more or less. Though I would need a tank inventory and it probably will be more complex than I envision... but I think I should do it.

Feeling pretty gross today. Stomach churning, fever, fatigue. I think it was the cereal bars. Doesn't help I still haven't gotten a proper night of sleep. The insomnia is really bad the past few weeks. Really hard to think this morning but I am sure I will shake it off. Got an early weekend that starts after today so hopefully I will manage some rest.

Well, a tank would load into a scene inside a viewport inside a UI container of some description. I can use normal furniture and just set the interact to open the tank UI? Hmm, how would I differentiate the tanks on the server side, though? I would need to add a field to the furniture or two, even. is_tank and tank_id probably...

When I constructed my scaffolding models I made a tank_furniture table, I guess I should just use that. I essentially made a tank, tank_furniture and tank_furniture_placement table to mimic the apartments... however they will have the same problems the apartment models did and require some reworking.

I did realize something while considering this, I should add a field for server-side scripts to the DB. Then if the furniture is placed in the apartment load the scripts on the server. Stuff like stat boosts, or maybe a TV can keep pets engaged so their fun lowers slower... or something?

Anyway, I guess I should rewrite the tank models in the tank app. The apartment models are getting crowded. Shouldn't be too hard, I think.

Played guitar for a bit, feeling a little better. I will focus on trying to build a good scaffold for myself when I come back Monday so I can finish the tanks by the end of next week(hopefully).

I have a scaffold of the Geru model and the few bits of equipment they can have (Hat, Main Hand and Off Hand) just the basics. There's a lot I will have to add to the Geru models but I just added the things I need for tanks to be able to reference them.

With that I have (hopefully) a scaffold to start from.

I need to figure out how I will handle placing them in the apartment though.

I could just add a boolean (in use) and an X and Y? Load them in the furniture inventory? But putting them back into the inventory is more complex since they would potentially hold a Geru and a bunch of decor.

Also figured out an idea for how the baby Geru work and added it to my brainstorm notes. Very much a "Just add water!" approach.

There we go.

Next week if I am good I will finish the Tanks, then I can make the Slime Server... that'll probably take the majority of next month. Once I have the basics of the Slime Server done I can move on to adding the beginning of the multiplayer aspects, the Computer furniture item and the BBS Server. These will basically be the how players communicate to start out.

Later on when I add the hub server I will have to write a chat UI and all that so players can talk and hang out in real time in areas around town, go into shops, etc... That preceeds the (hypothetically) final server, the Adventure Server. That's when players can team up and go on adventures with their pets, battling monsters, dungeon crawling, etc.

I have a lot of ideas about how the adventure systems will work and I am not sure if I want to do a turn-based system and have it be wizardry-style dungeon crawling or just keep to the EO-like thing or do more of a Granado Espada MCC type of thing. But that's a ways off, I got plenty to keep me busy until I get to that point and I am sure I will have a clearer vision of it once I have spent time working on the hub server.

Before I can do all that I need to finish these tanks, player equipment, Geru generation, care, the mighty Timer-Chan (Tick) and a whole lot more.

So, now that I have an idea how the Tanks work and it's about time to cook lunch I think I will maybe take a half day and start my Thanksgiving weekend. Maybe play Everquest or FFXI or something, relax, try and let go of all the stress of life and hopefully get some solid sleep.

I didn't even realize a holiday was coming until yesterday, actually. I very much live in my head and am only occasionally aware of the passage of time. I don't look at news because it's depressing and has no bearing on my life to know about all the terrible things in the world. I also don't tend to engage with social media. I found both of these things really dampened my productivity and just made me miserable. This is as social as I get these days.

Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving to those who observe it.