It's real! New RimWorld DLC has been confirmed and it's called Odyssey. A lot of very exciting new changes have been revealed in the blog post so far. Check out my video for full coverage of all the major changes.

New Features

Some of the new features announced are:

• Space ships! – You can now build a moving home and live like a nomad or simply settle more than one colony.
• Birds – We finally have real flighted animals (and pawns) including: peacocks, chickens, geese, quail, wasp drones and more.
• New end game boss – An “unnatural and evil” mind stirs in the depths of space that controls the mechanoids to eradicate humanity. Will you vanquish this new foe or take over it's powers for yourself?
• New biomes – molten worlds with flowing lava, apocalyptic urban hellscapes and derelicts space stations and asteriods; exploration is a huge part of this new update.

• QoL and performance improvements – the free 1.6 update also includes massive performance improvements with multi-threaded lighting and pathing calculations as well as new tools to play RimWorld in the most ergonomic way possible. No need for 10s of third party mods.

This is just a brief intro to some of the changes, check out the video up top for the full scoop!

And just as I was about to start a new colony, BOOM! New (presumably) DLC teaser for RimWorld!!! Even though I haven't played this in over a year, I am super excited for this announcement.

What do we know so far?

Tia Young (the marketing director at Ludeon) just posted a single image titled “Incoming transmission: 06.11.2025”. The image itself looks like another new character (a la previous DLCs) at center stage with a lava planet and a whole bunch of space stations and ships in the background. The character seems to be wearing some sort of space suit and has a pet crow/raven on his shoulder. He's equipped with a rifle, canisters, compass, pouch and two glass containers containing mushrooms and gems.

What does this all mean?

What's most obvious to me is the space focus of this new teaser. Both the picture and the “incoming transmission” message seem to indicate that there will be opportunities to communicate and travel between space stations and maybe even other planets. One other exciting new thing I see here is the crow! Looks like we're finally going to have birds and perhaps other flighted animals in the game. Taking this game system to it's logical extreme, it will be interesting to see if we'll also see new flying units/enemies in the game. How will the devs handle presenting this to the player without making it confusing? And if they figure that out does this also possibly imply a new Z level system with underground caverns? I doubt it, but it's fun to think about.

The rifle looks new to me and for some reason makes me think “rail gun” or some sort of laser weapon. The compass, canisters and pouch seem to imply exploration making me wonder if that will be a large focus of this DLC. Perhaps the mushrooms and gems we see in the glass containers are exotic new materials and/or drugs our colonists can use to make themselves more powerful.

Now it's important to remember that RimWorld was primarily designed as a story generator first and game second. Meaning all of these new additions aren't here just for the “fun” of it – they're here to help us create even more gripping and exciting stories. All we can do now is patiently wait until hopefully June 11th and not November 6th 😂.

tl;dr

1. Isolate
2. Simplify
3. Materialize.

These are the steps you should take to help you implement new features or fix old ones.

Isolate the problem

It’s hard to figure out what exactly is causing the issue and how if you have multiple variables floating around. Try to distill the problem as much as possible so you’re only working with one independent variable.

If you’re having trouble isolating the problem, move to the next step then restart the cycle until the problem is solved.

Simplify the problem

If you know what is causing the problem, it will be easier to figure out the how and why if you simplify it. Get the most simple version of the feature working on it’s own in an isolated environment and then slowly keep adding back everything else that is needed to work with the environment at large. It’s best if you do this one by one; as time consuming as you think that might be, you’ll probably waste more time in the long run trying to figure out what broke and where if you don’t.

If you’re having trouble simplifying the problem, move to the next step then restart the cycle until the problem is solved.

Materialize your thought process

In a nutshell, rubber duck debugging. It works. Sometimes it’s hard to organize all of your thoughts and ideas by only thinking about them in your head. When you materialize your thoughts (ideally though voice and with a colleague) you’re forcing a narrative and inherently giving them structure. This does two things:

1. The new structure lets you more easily reason about the problem and apply new/better thinking to the situation in general.
2. The new structure frees up some of your brain resources which in turn can be reused for thinking about the problem and more often lets you look at it from a new perspective.

With these materialized powers combined, the rubber duck debugger often achieves that satisfying eureka moment where all the pieces fall into place and knows how to progress with the problem.

Doing this with a colleague often has the added benefit of an alternative perspective, however if you work alone or for some reason are unable to verbalize your thoughts, writing them down should work just as well, maybe just a little slower.

That’s it! Have fun coding :)

By the way, this framework can be applied to a lot more than just software development. This is a general process for troubleshooting and could be applied to all sorts of problems you might have. Go try it out!

UPDATE: 1 Apr, 2020

I recently came to the realization that even if you do follow these steps, you might still get stuck (which is what happened to me), so here's some more advice.

Don't get stuck up on the specific implementation

I started learning a new framework and came across two ways of making web requests. One was old and deprecated and the other was new and reactive. Given the fact that this new method wasn't deprecated and I already had an interest of the reactive paradigm I obviously chose the latter.

However, no matter how I tried to isolate, simplify and materialize, I couldn't get it working. Then it hit me. Why don't I just try the older deprecated method instead? Sure enough it worked the first time. So if you come across something similar, don't get hung up the same exact method and explore alternatives. Especially if getting the functionality out the door is a priority.

#softwareDev #troubleshooting #debugging #rubberDuck

tl;dr: The new UI is all based on CSS so changing the look is as simple as changing that file. Make the changes yourself following the instructions below or download and replace the file.

Unlike most people, I was pretty excited and happy to see the new Steam UI changes. The classic UI was functional, but that's pretty much all it had going for it with that 90s Windows user experience. You had your menu bar, list of games and main window for whatever item you selected. Utilitarian.

I haven't given the new UI too much use to really have any solid opinions yet, but I am happy to see a new coat of paint on a platform I put so many hours into. The new UI is fresh, modern looking and finally feels like it fits in the with the Steam store. However, there is one issue that instantly caught my attention and had me searching for answers. The games list is arbitrarily set to a width that is way too short for my liking. This in itself isn't all that terrible, the real mistake they made was in not providing the user with an option to change this width.

After doing a couple cursory searches online, all I could find was other people who experienced the same issue I had, but no answers on how to fix it. I didn't care about this too much, so I gave up and went to bed.

Fast forward a couple weeks I opened up Steam again to get a few more hours into my Stellaris campaign and all I could see was that damn narrow game list again. Sigh. Off to look for answers we go again.

After retracing my steps, I was lucky enough to find that someone else had found a way to fix, albeit not permanently. This works for me, since I only ever restart Steam when I need to update it. Anyway, let's cut to the chase.

The Fix

If you're on Windows, go to: 1. Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamui\css\

Mac OS: 1. Go to /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/Steam/Steam.AppBundle/Steam/Contents/MacOS/steamui

Ubuntu: 1. Go to /home/<username>/.steam/steamui/css/libraryroot.css

2. Open the libraryroot.css file in your favourite file editor. 3. Find the first instance of the following string: .library_LeftListSizableContainer_9sPoV. In the few sample files I've tested, it's always been on or after line 1789. 4. Replace those 8 lines with the following:

.library_LeftListSizableContainer_9sPoV { flex-shrink: 0; display: flex; flex-direction: row; position: relative; min-width: 105px; max-width: 50%; resize: horizontal; overflow: hidden; } .library_LeftListSizableContainer_9sPoV:before { content: ""; bottom: 0; right: 0; cursor: e-resize; position: absolute; z-index: 9; width: 20px; height: 20px; } .library_LeftListSizableContainer_9sPoV:not(:hover) ::-webkit-scrollbar-thumb { background-color: transparent; }

5. Save and go back to your Steam client.

Voila, you should now be able to see a horizontal resize indicator at the bottom of your games list pane. If you feel uncomfortable editing this file I will provide you with a script that edits it for you shortly. Check back soon!

The only caveat with this solution is that it only stays as long as you don't close Steam. As soon as you restart the client, it dumps all changes and restores to default. I'm looking into a more permanent solution and will post an update when I get it working.

How this works

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) [1] is a relatively old web standard that lets you control the styling and looks of your webpage. It seems the new Steam UI is all web based so editing this file lets you change the way Steam looks, feels, animates, etc.

The .library_LeftListSizableContainer_9sPoV identifier controls the way the “left list sizable container” looks, so changing any properties within it, will change the way it works and looks. min-width and max-width control the minimum and maximum width of the pane respectively. [2] resize: horizontal is what actually lets you resize the list of games in the horizontal direction. [3] overflow controls what parts of the list are rendered on screen. Setting it to hidden makes sure that the rest of the list doesn't get rendered where it shouldn't be. [4]

#Steam #bugFix #CSS #SteamUI2019

References

1. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS
2. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/width
3. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/resize
4. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/SVG/Attribute/overflow

I decided to start a new let's play. This one won't be narrated but here's the link to the YouTube channel and video!

Hello world! I decided I wanted to have a creative outlet for myself and what better way of doing that than creating your own blog, right? Now when I say creative outlet, I mean a place where I can show the world what I've made, be it text, audio, video, software, hardware or anything else I may feel like creating.

As to why I stylized doubleWordPlay as camelCase? That's because I'm using 3 specific sources of inspiration for this blog:

1. By using camelCase and the word DOUBLEWORD I am nodding to my technical background as a software engineer (camelCase is a very common method of capitalization when creating variables in programs and DOUBLEWORD is a unit of memory where the size is dependent on the underlying computer architecture. For example on the 8086, a DOUBLEWORD is 32 bits or 4 bytes).

2. By using the word play I am recognizing my inherent competitiveness and my love for all sorts of games. From my first favourite board-game (chess) to last favourite VR game (SUPERHOT), I am fascinated with game design and why we, as animals, play.

3. By using the word wordplay I am acknowledging my deep love of fiction, comedy and writing. I used to hate reading as a kid up until middle school when I actually started to read more and found books I enjoyed (e.g. Harry Potter, His Dark Materials). Reading funny series like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and The Dresden Files definitely helped with that too. Also is it just me or do most programmers enjoy puns?

So with these powers combined, this captain is doubleWordPlay: my creative outlet for writing about tech, games, linguistics, history, philosophy and just writing.

I hope you enjoy your stay. You can check out anytime, but you can never leave.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below.