HM3 Journal: The code of many colors

I've spent the last two days trying to get the various tabs working in HeroMachine 3, and it's been more aggravating than I thought it would be. The structure is a little bit different, and chasing down all the changes in hundreds of lines of code can be quite taxing. But I think I have the basics working in terms of loading up sets of items. As a bonus, I can even color things! I only have one set of Zombie heads and one set of Zombie body parts active at the moment (I don't want to do too much until I know exactly how it needs to be set up to work) but here's a taste of things so far:

As you can see, a lot of functionality has been condensed into the larger tab structure. The ability to choose your current slot type and the set of items for that slot will remain present at all times, so no matter what you're doing you can change your targeted item. In the minis, the Rotate and Scale functions were always present to the left of the ad, but for HM3 they're being moved to the new "Transform" tab. I'll probably also have a set of "Move" controls there too, so if (as someone mentioned earlier) you have trouble dragging the actual item where you want it to go, you can use arrows to move them remotely, as it were.

I tell you, what's really struck me this week as I've been bearing down and really grinding out the code is just how fricking complicated this thing is. After you code something and it's all working, you kind of forget about it completely. It just is. But then when you have to go back and tweak and expand it, you realize how the gradual accumulation of complexity can turn bits that were very simple looked at one-at-a-time insanely difficult in aggregate.

Anyway, work is proceeding. I had optimistically thought at one point earlier this week that by Monday I'd be drawing items full time but that's starting to look like a fever-dream.