Hey y’all~! Happy mid-way point for the year! ^^
Seems I took a break for exactly one month and now I’m back and posting! I’ve dedicated some time to working on a rather massive patch for roll the last month to fix a handful of issues, as well as getting it prepped for publishing on both Google Play Store as well as a special build for Steam! I know a mobile port of a lil’ game like this ain’t such a big deal, but it was actually really fun building for computer again, and if I’m being honest; both the quality and controls are notably smoother on computer! We’re hoping to get both new builds published early August, and I’ll be updating the itch.io page accordingly.
Let’s talk about some updates then shall we!
- Computer Conversion: This required a lot of updates, but luckily the way the game was built made many things rather easy to do. Input systems for computer have been added that allows for keyboard, controller, and two variants of mouse controls! There are also a handful of quick-keys on several menu screens to make life easier. I’ve also added a bunch of visual updates to the computer build; I’ve mentioned before how much optimisation went into the game to have it run well on mobile, but I’ve added specific exceptions to some of these when playing on computer, boosting visual clarity. I also had to do a lot of careful work to include Steam Pipeline into the game as well, and have added achievements!
While working on split platforms, to avoid having to hassle with setting up multiple project repositories, especially with the limited time I have, I found a way to tell the game manager which platform we’re building for, and whether or not to include Steam connection or not! This way, instead of completely reloading the project for each build, or even having to apply an update to multiple platform repositories, I just click a button and the game now knows to build and run as a mobile or computer game~ Very happy with that, and has made updating and testing much easier!
- Difficulty Rebalance: Okay so the game had a difficulty issue. On one hand you’d easily out-run the shadow wall and collect numerous collectible items in a single run, but on the other some items and upgrades required way too much repetitive gameplay! As such I did a lot more fine-tuning to meet in the middle. The shadow now chases much faster, and the special areas where collectibles are discovered now spawn further from the start, however I’ve reduced the amount of work needed to unlock some of the collectibles. I’ve also made very minor updates to the player’s upgrades so a few of the abilities are buffed (though by a near negligible amount). Oh, and weather was updated so that Shadow mode features shorter weather bursts as to not totally ruin a run with wind or rain, while Zen mode features long weather events.
- Bug-Fixes & QoL: Well we found a few bugs after our soft-release, but that was always to be expected unfortunately~ ^^” This ain’t everything but covers some of the glaring issues:
- UI: Turns out the Shop Menu (“Cultivate”) had a handful of broken elements in the last release! Some elements would not correctly load investment values and visuals, while some sub-menus were entirely inaccessible. These have all been fixed, and minor visual updates have been applied. We’ve also fixed some missing visual assets to the Discovery Menu, as well as updates to some of the menu backgrounds to make them clearer.
- World: Minor updates to world areas to fix mostly tiny visual errors such as incorrect layering and a misaligned texture. Have also fixed an issue where the switching walls were not emitting any audio (they were.. but the audio levels were totally off..). Also fixed a bug that was preventing some item spawning events. Some minor updates were also applied to the Tutorial to fix an error when traveling backwards, as well as to fix some missing content.
- Other: An issue with the Focus power-up was fixed where incredibly specific input-angles would actually lock player movement. We’ve fixed an issue where swapping game-modes in the Main Menu would actually have residual world-generation issues from the previous mode. Finally, we added some extra Special Seed content, because we didn’t have time before and we had some now so we figured why not add some more ultra-secrets that no-one will ever find~ ;P
Anyways, I’m going to leave it there for now! Still a little bit of work left for the final builds, but the bulk of this month is just a waiting game till Google and Steam have approved the games. (: I’ll most likely do a small update next month when the games are out, so till then all the best~!
^,,^