Another month went by and let’s start talking about what happened and what is happening… I’m kind of in a hurry (It’s 2:17am right now and I have to be on the airport 8am, so…) and I will try to be faster and funnier, but I always say that!
Upside Down
Last update I talked more about my Internship and what I was doing, after a lot of tools and systems programming, I finally was able to port the game to iOS, yay! Right? Well, no. Setting the game on iTunes Connect was kind of a pain but I eventually managed to do it and launch to Beta, I was able to test it on an iPhone and on an iPad, yay! Right?
Well, no. For some reason the In App Purchase prices wasn’t showing and I just couldn’t figure out why. After researching I found out the answer was on my face all along. On iTunes Connect there was a big message like “YOU NEED TO UPDATE YOUR CONTRACT! OR ELSE YOU CAN’T SELL GAMES OR HAVE IN APP PURCHASES” – this made me feel dumb.
So, after updating all the dependencies, creating an achievements system and going through all the trouble of resizing screenshots, I have to… wait… until bureaucracy happen. Oh well.
So we had a talk there basically about what we (the interns) would like to focus on and do, we decided to focus on our project related to University (Freshman’s Quest) and think something else after GDC. And after a little bit of thought, I realized what I would like to focus on and I’ll try work on at least one of them on the internship. I would like to focus on (i) Learning Entity Component System (ECS), (ii) Definitively get into music composition for games (I just bought a MIDI Controller that comes with Ableton Live, yay! Right? Well, yes!) and (iii) just make games.
Freshman’s Quest
So last month I announced (finally!) this project I’ve been working on for some time, this month development just kept going, what I have to do right now is mainly assist designers and artists on getting their work done, as a big part of the programming is done (I did the character controller, menus and dialogue system).
(Spoiler Alert) As I’m going to GDC, we talked with our partners at GILP and they recommended us to at least have a build or something to talk about our game, so we put up a weird build for Android devices, put it on a tablet they had and connected an Xbox One controller to the tablet. That’s how are going to showcase our game at GDC.
But showcasing this game is not my main purpose there, I will just ask someone to play if the opportunity come as I’m talking with them. My purpose there is mainly getting my feet wet and maybe meeting people that I can contact for a job after my Masters (this might be another spoiler)
I will just leave up with a gif from this game on Twitter!
Mobile Roguelike
I actually managed to put a lot of work on this game, but I don’t know if it’s enough for me to talk more about it here because I mainly have to work on the progression and room design here. You can play an early build here.
Here’s a quick bullet list of some things that I added:
- Refactored the Level Generation System into its own thing.
- A lot of code reorganization and optimization
- Create a Hazard, which is a tile that deals damage when active.
- Divided all my Actors into DynamicActors and StaticActors (more code reorganization, but this time on the Turn Based System).
- Create a nice Camera Shake effect (I should create a post on my tech blog about this one)
- Added music and SFX (that I got from Crypt of the Necrodancer)
- Added User Interface and the options to Start and Pause the Game.
- Added Particle instantiation on the dynamic actors and items.
- The Level Generation System now, when generating prefabs, can have chances or each possible prefab to generate on a tile, having tiles that will spawn more often on the same color.
- Added Falling Ground (disappears after activated) and Ice Ground (force the actor the repeat the last turn’s movement).
- Finally created the Mobile Input (and it feels good!)
- Added feedback texts (text pops up for damage and rewards).
Woof. That’s a lot of stuff, but none of it really matters without a good progression and room design, so I’m planning to work on that for this next month and put on a Beta release on Play Store.
Next month I will also have to worry with art, aesthetics and music.
The Customizable Dungeon Generator
I said that one of my goals was to create an asset this year and I said that I made the level generation system on Mobile Roguelike its own thing, right? So, yeah, ‘its own thing’ means that it works like an asset on my project.
I published the Customizable Dungeon Generator about a week ago and I had astonishing 0 sells! The worst thing is that I have no idea on how to promote it and whether the approach to assets is just publishing and waiting for the store to do its job.
I linked the asset store page with google analytics, I had a total of 60 active users (29 from Japan) and an average Session Duration of … (dramatic pause) 3 seconds!
I know that this asset solves a very specific problem but I think it’s a valuable and well done solution, I have to research on how to go about promoting and improving it!
GDC
So… I’m going to GDC this year, and that’s nice. The studio where I’m an intern consists of 4 people and they have a partnership with the Brazilian Government where they get 8 tickets, I asked and they accepted to give one to me and the other intern!
“The one who asks, eventually gets to Rome.” – Badly translated Portuguese proverb saying that people who “has mouth” (i.e. is not afraid of asking/speaking) gets to Rome, I have no idea why this proverb exists around Rome. But the idea suits here.
Not having to pay those $350 makes it easier as sharing rooms makes the trip more accessible.
I want to be there mainly to talk to people, see how it’s like, maybe talk to developers that I enjoyed their games?! I heart the creators of Celeste are going to be there, that would cool. Vlambeer, Thomas Brush, Butterscotch Shenanigans, all of those I’m interested in exchanging words. And also all the industry people, like people from Blizzard and Naughty Dog maybe where I can ask for a job as a joke that is not really a joke. People from Unity, Nintendo, etc…
I just realized I’m paying to go to another country to talk to people. That’s… weird? and interesting. Anyway, there it is!
I typed a lot again and won’t have time to proofread and correct everything, so sorry if anything is rushed or with some mistakes! Se y’all next month where I will talk about how GDC was and about the Masters thing, which should change how this blog goes.
Thanks for reading!
gueepo 