Hello everyone! I will keep this short and sweet so I can get back to work. I'll have a more detailed post in the next week or two, but I'd like to tease the opening lines to an upcoming project. Its not much, but it drips of venom:
"Red smeared across the blacktop. Strobing red and blue, oscillating between foreground and background. A silvery light sheathing the world in an otherworldly glow; the full moon glowering above. The night is cold, and long. And there are creatures waiting for the darkness to overtake us all. Welcome to Horror at Adesaw."
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Hey everyone! I told you I wouldn't disappear after regular dev diaries went on hiatus :P It's been a while since I've given some love to Horror at Adesaw: Prologue (HaAP) so I decided to tinker with the code a bit this week.
One of the most frequent criticisms I received about HaAP is that it was too easy to get stuck. This isn't a problem specific to my game -- it's an overall problem for a lot of interactive fiction in general. While some of the fun of this genre is the sense of exploration, it can be frustrating to open and closer a drawer for the 100th time trying to find that hidden item to get to the next stage of the game. To solve this, I introduced a hint system to the game that can be accessed via the menu bar. The process is simple: be stuck, click "Get Hint" in the menu bar, view ad, get hint. Hooray! Currently there are about 13 (very fitting?) hints you can receive that will dynamically display based on your progress in the game. As a warning, IT WON'T HELP YOU UNCOVER EVERY SECRET IN THE GAME. It will, however, guide you through what I generally considered the "natural" progression of the main plot elements necessary to get the full story experience. As interactive fiction game should really be mostly about self-discovery rather than simple hand-holding, I decided to leave out hints on a few subplots to act as easter eggs for the most dedicated players. And that's it! The update should be available on Google Play now. As a final reminder, to use the new hint system you will need to start a new game. Good luck! Hey all and welcome to another Adesaw DD! The weather in Japan is sweltering, so while I'm hiding from the sun there's been plenty of time to work on Initiation. These last few weeks have been very heavy on the programming side, and extremely light on the story-writing so we'll be talking about gameplay mechanics again today. Most of the story writing will be on hold until the foundations of the mechanics are laid -- it's hard to write something when you don't know the format of storytelling your game engine will require! So after the jump we'll be talking about the general daily game loop your character will experience as he walks the hallowed pathways of Adesaw University...
Hello everyone, and welcome to a new dev diary! This week we are going to look at the user interface for Horror at Adesaw: Initiation. Behold! Beautiful color and a plethora of new features! After the jump, let's talk a little bit more about the stylistic choices, and some hints on those new systems...
Hello all and welcome to yet another Dev Diary! This week, we'll mostly be doing a progress report, rather than a description of an upcoming feature. This week, I've been mostly working on Initiation's dialogue and tutorial system! But these systems will also be deployed to NEON DARK, so it's relevant to both games^^ Click read more to find out more...
Hey everybody and welcome to back^^ Thesis submission is done, and that means we'll be back to our regular weekly updates for the foreseeable future. This week I'm very excited to reveal some of the RPG components for our next game, which will be officially called, "Horror at Adesaw: Initiation"! A perfect title to signify your official entrance to Adesaw University and the dark rituals you must uncover to survive. Below the jump, let's read more about stats and classes...
The weekend has arrived in Tokyo! Sorry to make all you in Western hemisphere jealous, but hopefully this will lessen the sting as you're getting ready for school/work this morning: patch 1.4d has officially released on the Google Play store!
1.4d will be the final patch in the 1.4 patch series. While patch 1.4d only makes some minor adjustments (more on that soon), the entire 1.4 patch brings huge improvements to Horror at Adesaw: Prologue. I'm pleased to say that with this release Prologue can be considered a (mostly) complete game, and probably won't be seeing many updates in the near future. The dev team (i.e. me) will now be looking forward to developing the next as-yet-unnamed game in the series. For those interested, read on to get a specific log on what changes were made in 1.4d. Hello all and welcome to another lovely dev diary! This week we've got some exciting new updates regarding the future games (yes, that's plural!) being developed by Doc F. But first, let's start with Prologue.
Prologue Patch and Finalization The 1.4 patch series for prologue is coming to an end. From what I've heard, the save game problem is now a terrible nightmare from the past, still haunting my dreams but causing no actual harm. There's still a few minor bug fixes/QoL improvements to be made, but Horror at Adesaw: Prologue is reaching the end of it's active development stage. It's been an incredible process, and I've learned so much about game development over the last two months it makes my head spin. I'll be taking these lessons in stride to make future work a smoother process both for me, and you. Speaking of the future... Work Begins on the Next Book Prologue was always meant to be a test run for the overall series -- a way to understand the stages of developing an app. In many ways, Prologue is the pilot program for the rest of the series. Hello world! And welcome to dev diary numero dos.
Today's agenda: What in the world is wrong with the save/load feature, and what have I been doing to fix it? I will hopefully answer all your burning questions, and also let you know about imminent re-release of Prologue. The Problem As a new programmer, I foolishly waited until the very final stages of development to implement the save/load feature. This is a big no-no and led to a problem where the game engine didn't know how to properly access a save file, in turn causing a whole host of problems. So, when a save file was loaded, the game was basically looking for data in the wrong place. The Solution A whole lot of coding fixes. The game engine has become a bit monstrous, as I've used the programmer equivalent of massive amounts of duct tape. With that said, I've been testing it myself A LOT (essentially trying my best to 'break' the game) and I can tentatively say there have been huge improvements to stability. The code is really ugly to look at, but it does the job properly now. For the next Adesaw game, it'll all get cleaned up to a more streamlined system. But that's all under the hood shop talk! The important thing to know is this: Prologue now knows how to access the save file. Tomorrow, I'll be releasing an internal beta to players who already have the game installed. I ask that if you update your game, please try it out! And more importantly, send me an email if you run into more problems! If the beta runs smoothly, I hope to put Horror at Adesaw: Prologue back on the Google Play store by the end of the weekend. |
About the DocDoc Fishopolis Operations is a one man Android dev team. Archives
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