Working on a major engine change. Things will be extra buggy the next few days

Feel free to report the bugs on the patron-only forums, though.

I’m also going to be sharing some content-plans stuff privately to Patrons, so check your email for that soon.

I’m working on a really big engine level change that is going to break lots of stuff.
Though I had this planned and lots of code already works around its eventual implementation, I still think that’s a lot of stuff that’s going to break.

The change is all about instantiation

In programming, instantiation is the creation of a real instance or particular realization of an abstraction or template such as a class of objects or a computer process.

This is where the word “instance” in MMORPGs comes from. A private copy of an object, in those cases a map and enemies, which shares a lot of memory with their source object but not as such that these instances interfere with one another or the source object(s).

Because my engine is a client-server thing, and LEWD makes use of a lot of multiplayer features, getting instancing right is a big issue, and I’m working on finalizing that now.

Things like the player object and scenarios already do instancing, but not in a fully finished way and in a way that is limiting some things we need for some neat content that’s coming.
And it’s not that an instance is always needed. It’s the combination of referencing both and instance and its source object, and manipulating them separately, that makes certain things possible.

It’s a simple thing, but getting all the intricacies right, getting it working well and intuitively in the dev tools, and making sure it all runs nice and efficiently, is a big deal.

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