Idle Research 2 - Developer Standup Blog News - Episode 1 (I-X)

Starting today, I will be reposting 10 days of developer standup blogs that I write on my discord server. These will be delayed but highly detailed posts about what I have been working on for Idle Research 2. You will also see the progression of changes over time, so some things may come and go.

Obviously, there still isn't a demo out... I missed the deadline for the Steam Idler Fest because of a failed Steam review and I decided to completely rework the entry feature. You will see the initial idea in Standup 10.0. Also I have been moving to a new apartment, so the past few weeks have been unproductive.

Anyways, here are the first posts! The earlier ones are a bit rusty

Episode 1 - Posts I-X

1/18/25-1/29/25

Dev Standup 1.0: First

Me from the past few days... Building rule logic implemented (valid/invalid tile highlighting soon), Blocking building counts, QoL, and build confirmations (delete confirmations soon).

The new dialog component will make creating necessary pop ups super simple. Making it absolutely sucked tho lol

When I finish all of the above, I will connect the existing drains feature to the pipeline, then build out Water Purifier feature

Here's the validation

Dev Standup 2.0: Water Drains in Water Pipelines

Today I will be moving the existing water drains to the pipelines feature.

Attached are concepts of the new UI

After this, I will move on to getting pipelines attached to Research as part of the unlockable feature chain, then on to Water Pipeline skill upgrades

Dev Standup 3.0: Building Out the Gameplay for Exploration

Hey everyone! Here is my standup for today:

Yesterday I started to work on hooking up the Water Exploration pipeline block to the Exploration feature. The idea I came up with is that you actually unlock Exploration before you unlock Water Pipelines. You will go explore to a mystery location that will unlock this new feature. You will be able to gather a different set of materials at each location. For Pipeline Fields, I may do some scrap or valuable materials, don't know yet. I also moved Cartography out of Research, to Exploration. Cartography isn't prob wont be a research thing anymore since you unlock locations via exploring (unless I make an investigation/inspection feature).

Today I will get the exploring feature complete and make the cartography map look more like an actual map. The new design for the exploring feature has improved semantics, plus it's simpler. Anyways this morning, I fixed up some bugs I made while reworking Exploration and Cartography. Later today I'm going to move some researches around to make the Exploration => Water Pipelines gameplay smooth.

If I can get this done and dive into more deeper progression for the Exploring and Gathering features, it will be one giant step closer to a demo... I do fear that it will be very short and lackluster. I'm accepting any opinions on this :)

Dev Standup 4.0: Hardening + Save System

Gonna keep this quiet but I've spent all day getting IR2's save system working, which was a very annoying process, especially related to the Water Pipelines. Also spent the day fixing many small bugs (hardening) as Demo date creeps closer and closer

Dev Standup 5.0: Research UI + Gameplay Overhaul

It feels like it's been a while since I posted... time is moving slowly I suppose. I've been focusing on improving UI and fixing bugs. My main tackle is to completely overhaul Research. I