A little detour off the island

A quick devlog, and it's not only about the game this time! Building Islands of the Blessed means spending a lot of time in Unreal's Blueprint graphs — and in code. Somewhere along the way we did the most developer thing there is: we started tinkering with a little tool to make all that nicer and faster, and it grew. We figured we'd talk about it a bit, even if we're going to stay a little mysterious about the details for now.

Why a tool

As we've mentioned before: we mostly prototype the game's systems in Blueprint, check they're solid and well thought out, then clean up and move as much as we can to C++. And it's that first stretch — sketching the logic, rearranging it, getting it out of your head and into a graph — that made us want something a little faster, and a little more “assisted”, than hunting for answers in the API and all over the internet.

So we started building it. No grand plan for now, just answering our own need, one BP at a time.

What it is (for now)

All we can tell you today is this: it's a web app where you can build your Unreal Blueprint graphs, move them around, and send them to the editor to test them, and so on. The picture up top is the most honest description we can give without spoiling the fun: nodes, wires, a dark grid, the usual — plus a few extra features.

There's more to it, and there's a story in how it works that we'll tell properly another time. For now we're happy to leave it a little mysterious.

Where it's going

The tool is quietly becoming its own little corner of the studio: a workshop next door to the game. When it's ready to be revealed properly, this is where you'll hear about it first.

And that's the detour! Back to the island next time.