IDG Updates (Patreon)

I feel like sharing these messages is a good way to keep myself motivated, accountable, and in touch with those following.

Tonight I spent some time fixing a few bugs in IDG.  I noticed the transforms were no longer working for the Sawbuck and the Chopping Block.  Tinkered with them both and have them working properly now.  Unfortunately, that cost me most of the night I had intended to be developing new features.

I'm going to be working with the current version to prepare it for a general release. This process has already started with removing my custom boards and the currently functional (but otherwise unused) saw horse.

I'm going to implement the felling axe and grub axe before the first public release.  Going to be taking time to consider the balance between these and the splitting maul.

I've concluded that I'm going to remove the vanilla metal axe.  In its place will be put the felling axe.  This axe is capable of felling trees at a rate superior to the other options, but is a poor option for cutting logs into slabs, firewood, and sticks.

The splitting maul will be the opposite.  It will be superior at cutting logs into slabs, firewood, and sticks as mentioned previously. However, it will consequentially be terrible at felling trees.

The Grub Axe is going to have both the hewing (adze) and chopping options available.  However, it will be slower than felling axe at felling trees. It will be slower at splitting than the splitting maul, and slower than the adze at hewing tasks.  It will be a good utility axe if you don't know what the day contains, but will be a poor option for any dedicated task (such as chopping firewood for a charcoal pit, creating a substantial amount of sticks, or peeling a significant amount of bark).

The challenge I'm going to face, gameplay wise, is how to disincentivize the grub axe as your sole tool for wood related tasks without making it useless.

Once these three axes are made, balanced, and some other details managed it will be time to release the first alpha/dev version of the mod.  I'm aiming for sometime next week, but that may be overly ambitious.