9 months. :)

Almost finished with pregnancy. Birth off screen support is ready. And it's not only for workers, it's will works the same way for any character in game world too! Now, I need just a little bit more testing of this all.

But now, we need actual content to use new engine abilities. :) I already begin to think about first pregnancy related questline. :) Also, there is common problem for games focused on pregnancy - "9 months". :)

Firstly: yes - process modelled carefully and lasts about 9 month of game time (for human).
Secondary: no - I don't think it's very interesting - wait this much time, if you point of interest is birth or late stages of pregnancy. So, in game we need some possibility of speed up time. Maybe for all world, but preferably only for one character.
Technicaly it's very easy - just one string in the script, so - no problems here.
Though we need some "in game" explanation to this effect. What it will be? I have few variants, but not decided final yet.

If anyone have something interesting in mind, please feel free to write about you ideas in the comments.

Pregnancy support in engine is finished. Also I add texts about it to the characters descriptions.

But I just found a little logic issue, that I not think about before: birth process time handling.
Technicaly it's done, but what to do, if pregnant character is a worker, but not in the walk mode, and player busy with other character? Or what to do, if character out of the base and out of control (in hospital after loss of the fight, for a sample)?

After quick thinking, I came up with this for now:

- If worker at the time of birth in a walking mode, there will be a special event, which begins natural birth chains of events.

- If worker is at base, player will have allert window with message with something like "<Name> waters is broke!" and can have something like 1-2 game hours to end current link and switch attention to the birthing character, to begin that chain of events.

- If worker can't be accessed (hospital, or other cases), or player just not give attention in time, birth will be completely offscreen, and only with note in the character's journal. May be there will be some penalty for player in this case. Not sure, for now.

Today I was able return to the game, just as I hope. Some progress in the pregnancy and postpartum simulation already, it's begins to look right. :) A little more effort and mechanics will be ready. Will remain only to write texts.

Hard week...

This week at my work I have a force majeure, and have to work overtime, so I have very little time to anything else. Almost no progress this week. Sorry. 

Tommorow, I hope, will be last day of this mess, and I can return to the development of the game. :)

Coding, technical stuff...

Scripting some effects, I run into issue. I just not think about it before, but game engine not have one important feature in the script support. No way to address object that contains currently executing script. This is not needed for events, as scripts in them usually just simple procedures, but effects, items, organs, genes?.. They objects, and it's will be good if their scripts can use reference to his host, right?

Those from you, who have experience with object oriented programming, maybe already recognize  what I talk about. Yes - "this" keyword, that exist in all object oriented languages. Unfortunately, MVEL2 scripting language not have native support, or I just can't get it to work. But after some time, I found solution.

Now game engine recognize in scripts two keyword that works right the same way as "this" keyword (tryied to use it itself, but got runtime errors - conflict with native Java code).
From now "its" and "This" (with first capital letter) can be used to get reference to object that contains current script. There small limitation though - you can't access private fields in class, even if know about them (as thechically this will be external call). Only public field and methods accessible.

P.S. In engine already exsisted support for other similar keyword: "self" - reference to the character that contain object with currently executed script. Actively used in organs. Before this point this is been enough...

I written genetic processing code for children long time ago already, right.

But it's just not used before. And as now, with working pregnancy, I begin to actually test it, of couse, some bugs pop up. So, almost all time today I spended to find and fix various werid behavior in genetic processing. :) Like a genetic male grow up breasts, or a female without any organs at all. Complex genetic mechanic is powerfull tool, but it needs some time to be fully tested and debugged.

At least, today, I seems to be fixed most bugs  in it. 

P.S. Pregnancy postpartum effect (belly size) give me some hard times too. Still can't figure out right formula - it's need to be non-linear related to a time from birth, but with what curve?

Just quck note

Published SDK files, for those, who like to do something with game content by themselfes. It's just the same files that I posted on the forums early, so it's definitely not most recent version. Though new version of engine is back-compatible with them. (It's one of my priorities - third-party content not need to be rewritten for new versions).