January Update

The Vanguards have been privy to our work schedule but we wanted to let everyone in on what we've been doing the past month.

We continue to move forward on the Server and Client fronts with a focus on eliminating technical debts on the the client side and establishing production quality server-side codes.

Server Side

1. QA: We've completed database and dbscript updates, merged feature branches to main, refactored code and made additional unit testing.

2. Collectibles: bug fixing & covering edge cases for Collectibles (including logic for Collectible Packages). Like, what would happen if a Package, or a related Achievement that has already been unlocked by multiple players is modified by a game admin.
   Server-Side Collectibles is in WIP (Work in Progress).

3. Cloud Platform: Made some additional bugfixing and implemented missing features for edge-cases in user management.

Client Side

• GameMap: changed GameMap's viewport logic based on latest feature demands. Optimized map logic workload and memory footprint. Added a cheap (fast & not demanding) post-update correction method for potential tile updating issues in camera related edge cases (these solved a couple feature requests while made the map more performant). Continued to fill the gap between our 1.0 engine requirements and existing technical features. Spent time on completely re-structuring, unifing - and also simplifing - Map Traversability & Border Check codebase, Free-looking mode, and all the relevant code sections and settings of the original implementation. We found some weird and annoying bugs for a while, and though none were a gamestopper, they also took time to find and fix.  

• Inputs: Worked on and completed a unified (and in terms of performance, a tablet-efficient) input system for touch, mouse & key events since Unity isn't shipped with any, nor there is any free or paid asset that would cover all three sources and would be also optimized for handhelds. We now have a component that we can put on UI regions and it can recognize and route touch, mouse and key inputs to game actions, with all the rules specified on a binding layout (in Unity Editor) for hassle-free setups. There is potential for later optimizations, especially for gestures, like finding the perfect speed variables for panning at different map distances, but for now, it's good to go. 

• Unity & IDE Update: Due to unforeseen difficulties, we had to reinstall both Unity and the IDE (Visual Studio), so then decided to also install the newest versions of both and smoke tested Feudums against the changes. So far it seems, it didn't break anything.  Also had to reinstall everything that is necessary for building to Android and updated minimal required Android version to 5.0 (so there will be less legacy Android code attached to the build). Really hope that it'll also boost build-speed a bit.

On the artistic front, Sándor has finished most of his to-do list including the illustrations to go with game events (plagues, wars, famine, etc).  They are excellent!