vrengames

Refactoring Complete

Added 2017-04-20 03:10:30 +0000 UTC

It's that lovely time in between the patron release and the public release where I've got a little bit of time to do some housekeeping. I've got plans to write two new major scenes for v0.6.1 (One for Mom and one for Lily), but first I wanted to take a look at how the code of Lab Rats was structured and neaten it up.

Up until now the code for Lab Rats has been stored in two files. One was the "endings.rpy" file, which held all of the stuff added in v0.5 and v0.6 that had to do with the endings of the game. It's just under 3000 lines of code and dialog. The other was the "script.ryp" file which held literally everything else in the game. Since the start of Lab Rats it's been added onto with one update after another, and had grown to a ridiculously huge 14 000 lines of code and dialog. This made it a touch difficult to navigate around and follow the logic of each event, because there might be a 400 line minor scene shoved in the middle.

I've now gone through and broken the script file up into multiple smaller files. The script now contains only the major game logic and dialog that goes with it and has been reduced down to a much more sane 2500 lines. There are now files for hub scenes, major scenes, minor scenes, image definitions, and intro scenes separately, which make it much easier to search through and find the correct bit of code when I'm bug hunting. While I was at it I changed the naming structure of the labels for each scene so that major scenes start with maj_ , minor scenes start with min_ , and hub scenes start with hub_ so it's clear what they are within the script file.

With that quality of life work done it's time to get back to writing. The goal with the two new major scenes for Mom and Lily is to provide a more directly player triggered major scene, which they currently lack.