Hitting Pause for a Little Variable TLC

Hey everyone, quick status check: we were deep in wiring up Flowcharts, Variables, and Blocks so you’d get “save anywhere” wizardry. It almost felt like we had superpowers… until the Variables layer roasted us aliiive!

What Went Wonky

Turns out the old Fungus Variables straight-up refused to cooperate with our shiny new save/load code.

We were gonna... but then we remembered that they were MonoBehaviours. For what they are, they were eating through CPU cycles like they were at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Harsh, especially coming from you! We were planning on slimming the vars down at some point anyway. With this new conflict kicking us in the face, we figured it'd be better to do it now than later.

The New Game Plan

We’re hitting pause on Save System work to rebuild the Variables layer from the ground up. Meet Muscariables:

• Tiny, efficient variable components with zero MonoBehaviour fluff
• Crystal-clear public vs. global interfaces and metadata binding
• More flexible and less Flowchart-exclusive

No, this is a devlog. Also, Muscariables are named after the Amanita Muscaria mushroom. You know, one of the key ingredients in making you?

Why This Detour Rocks

Detours can be a pain, but this one’s packed with perks:

• Big speedups (especially for large projects!)
• Future-proof design: add new data types with little to no hassle
• MonoBehaviour-free variables you can use anywhere with (relatively) little extra munching. Saving, UI, world logic, you name it!

You bet! We want our toolkit to be super easy to use for coders and non-coders alike. It's gonna be on the menu for a loooong time.

What’s On Deck

Save System work is on hold, but there’s plenty to geek out over. For example:

1. Variable Serialization Deep Dive – JSON magic, two-way conversion
2. Save/Load Pipeline Overview – step-by-step flow from disk to runtime
3. Extension Guide – plug in your own state, even if Amanita doesn’t support it natively

Once Muscariables pass our torture tests, we’ll vault right back to the Save System and pick up where we left off. Thanks for sticking around, guys! Hope you're looking forward to the next update!