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...
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Hello and welcome back to our second DD, which will be released every Thursday (Japan Time) from now on. Toady, we're going to be look a little bit more in depth about the general concept for our new series, NEON DARK.
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...
Hey everyone! As I'm sure you've noticed, yesterday there was no Dev Diary. I assure you that I haven't been taken by Eldritch forces to be used in a ritual sacrifice. The truth is far darker...
This week is master's thesis submission week, which means that I am crazy busy! As all you know, Adesaw University is inspired by my graduate school in Tokyo, which I will sadly be leaving at the end of the summer. Needless to say, I didn't have time to write a dev diary, so things will be postponed until next week. But fear not! I'm still trying to get some idea development in during my free time. Next week we'll have a little more of an in-depth dev diary about the stats/classes involved in the next Adesaw game. BONUS: The name of the next game will also be revealed! 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 everyone and welcome to another dev diary! This week is another very exciting posting, as we'll be unveiling the next series being developed at Doc Fishopolis Operations: NEON DARK
The New Series When I first started programming and had an idea to make an android game, there were two genres I was interested in working with. The first was a horror-based interactive fiction story, which is the genre that introduced me to the world of text-based games. I was engrossed by the narrative in Anchorhead, and loved the simplicity and convenience of Horror in the Darkness for android. This is ultimately the direction I went in, and Horror at Adesaw: Prologue was introduced. The other genre I decided to temporarily shelve was science fiction. I have always loved the futuristic grime found in the worlds of Blade Runner, Alien, or the Fallout series. I also had a deep interest in exploring the philosophic questions at the essence of sci-fi: the impact accelerating technological advances will have on humanity, the divide between machine and humanity, or the outcomes of a world wracked by massive social upheaval. I wanted to make a game that would explore these themes, but as a beginning designer it was too big a task. Now that I've got the experience under my belt, I'm ready to take the leap and two weeks ago began developing a new game based on these ideas. It will also be text-based, but I'll be experimenting with some new flair such as images and a soundtrack. It won't be an interactive world in the same way Prologue, but there will be a lot of similarities. It's still very much in the planning stage, so I won't say much beyond that. 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. Hello to all! Hope you all are gearing up for the weekend and looking forward to some relaxation.
We have some sad news here today regarding Horror at Adesaw: Prologue. With the release of 1.3, the save game problem has resurfaced AGAIN. At this point, I'm not sure what is causing this problem and how to fix it permanently. Quite simply, the save/load function is broken, and it makes it impossible to play the game over more than one session. With this in mind, I have made the decision to temporarily pull Horror at Adesaw: Prologue from the Google Play store. In the state the game is in now, it will only hurt us for people to download the game, get frustrated that their files aren't saving, then uninstall it forever. The best solution for everyone is to take Prologue off the market until it's in a proper state to be played! **PLEASE NOTE** If you already downloaded Prologue, you won't lose the game. You will continue to receive updates. If you are interested, please let me know if you have any comments, ideas, bug reports, etc. But fear not, I won't be going away. I'm pretty committed to get this damn thing to work, and to continue the series. I've been loving the process, and this is a great lesson for me. It's taught me a lot about what can go wrong with game development, and how to avoid these problems in the future. Remember this is my first time coding and releasing a game, so let's consider this mere teething problems! While Prologue is offline, I'll still be active. I'll be on twitter as usual, and I'll keep posting weekly dev diaries. Next week I'll go into a little more detail about what is wrong with the save feature, why it exists, and what I'm doing to fix it. Sorry for the confusion and disappointment, but Prologue will relaunch by the end of the year and it will be glorious! Hello all and welcome to our first dev diary! We’re going to try to make this a weekly occurrence every Thursday (Japan time), although I reserve the right to tweak that a bit.
So far, Horror at Adesaw is in an on-again-off-again relationship with downloads. It seems like we get a decent number around the weekend and then during the week things are pretty dry, which makes sense. Regardless, we’re getting downloads and at least a few of you are playing the game, which brings joy to my little heart. The only thing I wish we could get are more reviews on the app store! So please, if you’ve been enjoying the game and want to support a humble indie game developer, please rate us. Right now, not much has been done in the way of concrete game development (sorry). As a very cash-strapped grad student that needs to submit a master’s thesis next month, time has a been a rare commodity. But fear not! I’ve been thinking of Adesaw a lot, and am working through some ideas on the next chapters general plot and timeline. I’ll give more details about this in the coming weeks, so stay tuned. Also, I have some plans related to promoting and updating "Prologue", so you should see the fruits of that labor sometime in June. **RANDOM MUSING** I’ve been playing through “The Red Strings Club” over the last couple of weeks, and it’s definitely worth the price tag. The storyline has been really engaging, and I really love the dilemmas it presents about technology, choice, and the thin line that separates 'natural' humanity from 'artificial' humanity. Also, the art style is beautiful! I hope one day I can draw pixel art in the way the creators can, but it'll be a long road. If you have the cash to spare, check it out and pick it up on steam. |
About the DocDoc Fishopolis Operations is a one man Android dev team. Archives
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