My next plan was to create repairable buildings and for the repairable building to function I needed an inventory system. With the inventory system implemented, I could start working on the repairable buildings. This would be the first major system I would implement on my own.
The way I approached it is:
- I need to have 2 states (destroyed, repaired)
- I need to attach an inventory to the building
- I need to monitor the inventory and trigger certain UI updates when the inventory was updated
- I need to switch the building from one state to another once the repair has been completed
It was obviously not as simple as this, but this was the general idea I used to complete this system. It was rough at the start, but as I became more comfortable with everything it became easier to implement "cool" stuff, like for example when the building was being repaired, instead of the just updating the UI, I teleported the player to the outside of the building (with a screen fade) and made some construction props visible, so it would really look like the building was being repaired visually. Again, it might sound stupid, but achieving these kinds of things are very liberating and it gives you hope and drive to continue. I also created a basic UI just to see that everything was indeed functioning as expected.
While working on different parts over the next few months, there was a thought I kept wrestling with - I knew I wanted it to be a multiplayer experience, but should I implement multiplayer for the beta launch or not? Everything I worked on so far was not created with multiplayer in mind.