Impetus Games decided to try something a little different to kick-off their new indie studio: a video game Advent Calendar!
Each day, a new game will be given away to one lucky door-opener. And in Christmas Eve, three lucky winners will receive game bundles! I thought it sounded like a cool idea, and was a creative way to celebrate the holidays, so I've given two Steam copies of NEO Scavenger to add to the prize pool.
Today I began reviewing the diseases currently in the game, to see if I could make them a bit less bumpy/surprising. Right now, they tend to hit hard at the beginning of each stage, get better slowly, and then hit hard again next stage. And in some cases, the player can appear perfectly healthy one turn, and die the next. Needless to say, this can be quite a shock, and frustrating.
Happy Thanksgiving to all you Americans! I hope everyone's getting a chance to revisit with family and chill out. Gonna be a pretty low-key night up here in Canada, but I should probably call my folks this weekend.
I finished adding the last bit of the functional parts of endgame content today, and was able to start testing it. Turns out it was completely broken! Well, sort of. It looks like I used the wrong template item to base this new stuff off of, which caused it to be an invalid item for the place where it needed to show up. So basically, it was just missing when I needed it.
I continued yesterday's work on some rare endgame content today. I had to draw some in-game icons for the new stuff, and managed to start hooking them up to stats. I'm about 75% done with the setup of this phase, after which I'll need to start testing it in-game. I'll be looking into whether the content needs power balancing, how hard they are to get, and how often they can be used. Plus, I want them to "feel" right in the world, and not too bizarre/crazy. We'll see.
Hey folks! Hope everyone had a good weekend. Winter is officially here in the mountains, as we've shoveled our driveway three times since Saturday already. Nowhere near what I've heard over in upstate NY, but it's keeping us busy nevertheless!
Surprise! It's actually a bit of a surprise for me, too. To-date, I've mostly been reluctant to open up purchases via cryptocurrency due to concerns about taxation, accounting, conversion rates, and my own lack of technical know-how.
However, there's a new player on the game store market which takes on most of these hairy details, and just pays devs like a regular storefront would, in USD. This makes it much easier for small outfits like me to handle. That new player is CoinPlay.io!
Even though most of my day was occupied by errands, I did manage to get some time to consider my development options and brainstorm. And I think I'm going to move forward on the spoilered idea I've mentioned recently. Between the two possible features, the spoilered one seems like it adds more to the game that players don't already have, and it also helps to reinforce the game lore more.
I'm still mulling over the two proposed features mentioned recently. So far, I'm getting lots of useful feedback, and it's helping me to better understand the impact of either system. Some great pros and cons being presented. I'll respond to those comments in the relevant news post, as the spoiler tag there should keep virgin eyes safe. No need to make this post have a threatening spoiler tag, too.
As mentioned yesterday, I'm looking into which next steps I should take in my remaining time (about 4 weeks). Yesterday, I mentioned a med-evac service as a "second chance" for characters that have reached the mid-late game.
By mid-afternoon today, I was able to finish the typo fixes and text edits, and merged them back into the main game data. It was a Herculean task to find all those, so thanks again, Tactless!
And while I was struggling to get my updated XML import to work (data format typo), I finally yanked out the redundant map data in neogame.xml. There were two copies of MapMiniMichigan in the maps table, and one was ignored. I could never remember which one was which, and I'm sure it caused modders some headaches, too. So that will be gone next build.
Hey Folks! Hope everyone had a good weekend. My adjustable drafting stool arrived Saturday, so I've been testing that out at my standing desk. It is waaay nicer than the hard Ikea barstool I was using as a stand-in. (I'm too bony to sit on hard surfaces for long.) On the other hand, it's just slightly more upright than my old chair, which means I work harder sitting up in it. But it's all for health!
NEO Scavenger is now officially updated to v0.9952b! Since the test builds have been relatively stable, I've just finished updating the default builds to 0.9952b on all sites. The "test" links are no longer necessary, and have been removed for now.
Now that v0.9952b is live, I'm waiting to see if it has any surprise bugs. If things look smooth enough, I'll be promoting it to the default build.
Furthermore, I think v0.9952b may be a candidate for my entry into SXSW and PAX East Indie Megabooth next year. Both deadlines are approaching, and I'm eligible to enter. It certainly couldn't hurt to get some extra exposure if NEO Scavenger's nominated! It'd also be cool to finally show it at a conference.
One of the more significant things that happened here is that I've converted my desk into a standing desk. I've been struggling with neck pains for the past year, and finally saw a physical therapist about it. I was not shocked to learn that I had bad posture, but it was interesting to see how that contributed to strained neck muscles. Basically, my posture was causing my neck to work extra hard, and it rarely got a break to heal.
Without the Trapping skill, starting fires in NEO Scavenger can be hit-or-miss. Being able to start a fire pretty much relies on the RNG bestowing a lighter in some scavenge/combat loot. And when fire is such an important part of survival (sterilizing water and rags, making tannin tea, heat, light, torches, etc.), making it too luck-dependent can be un-fun.
So I've done a bit of researching on other methods of starting fires, and by the looks of it, there are two that might be common enough in Michigan to be worth adding.
The last few days have seen several PR-heavy posts which, while fun, don't really address game development. So what have I actually been up to behind the scenes?
Well, one of the cooler things is a new illustration!
