Dev Diary Week 2 - BattleTech Design Software

Over the last week production has been slow due to all sorts of things (vendor, cars, parties, etc) but I have cleaned up most of my equipment data, and have now gone through and inputted quite a bit of the stuff from IO Beta, though just the 2 big sets of tables I found 40 errors on them, and some inconsistencies with formation/combat unit/etc sizes.  However, its a beta, so I won't be critical of it.

This isn't the kind of work that lets me show you much, but it does need to be done.  I have to make sure I have full support for 4 availability ratings, not 3, as well as a lot more information on years and factions equipment is available and what its production state is.  A couple changes that if I hard-coded things, would have been a serious pain to fix.

So over the next week I plan on finishing up the data import from IO Beta (about 12-16 hours I think).  At that point I'll tweak my data once more (another 8 hours) and be ready to jump back into the code.

The main portion of the code I'll be working on first is ensuring I can design out units down to the equipment level.  This means tonnage, speeds, engine/gyro/cockpit/etc types, and even armor type.  All of these should fall pretty fast once I start coding on them, so that is good.  This could take from a few days to a few weeks, depending on how much I finish before moving onto the next item.  For example, I may not worry about calculating cost or BV right now (isn't there a new BV anyway?) so may just skip those.  

Equipment critical allocation is a big step.  This only applies to mechs/industrialmechs, and is the process of placing criticals in particular locations.  I know people like dragging stuff around, and moving slots to particular numbers, but all 6 or 12 locations have the *exact* same chance to hit, so the actual # is 100% irrelevant.  So, I was thinking when I get to that part just skipping the allocation completely.  Actuators would go first, then equipment that can take a critical, and finally things like armor/structure that are "reroll on hit".  I know this may upset some folks, but it really shouldn't.  I may do something later to let you rearrange them, but for right now that interface is pretty time consuming for me to write, and it'll be skipped the first time around I think.  If you think location matters, read the rules again, when you roll 1 dice for upper/lower, and another for 1-6, and you get a reroll or something that has already been hit, you reroll BOTH dice, not just one.  I know numerous people who have made that mistake (and that WOULD affect locations of stuff, dramatically).  

Anyway, just a quick update to know things are progressing.  If I had to guess right now, which is a wild guess, I'd say I have about 2-4 months before having something you can do designs with.  There are a LOT of variables in there, but mostly it just comes down to hours I have available (most of which are spent on this).