Friday Rambles and Game Dev Update 2024-10-04

It's the Friday Ramble. Wait, it's only been like 3 days since the last one! Well, we still gotta get back on schedule.

Real Life Stuff:

It turns out I was in Japan for a short enough time that I had not adjusted to the jet-lag, and I'm sleeping just fine. I haven't unpacked everything yet. All the swag and flyers and stuff I got is sitting in a pile that I need to sort through at some point.

Merch Stuff:

I closed my merch store while I was away at Tokyo Game Show, and gave away a lot of stickers there too, so I had to order a bunch of new stickers to restock my inventory. And I also got some big envelopes and corrugated cardboard slabs for safely shipping the TGS clearfile folders. I'm gonna open up the store again once the restocks arrive.

In the meantime I updated the store in test mode with the new items.

Above: Man these look good even I wanna buy one

Gamedev Stuff:

After I posted last time about wishing I had a portable Windows machine for fixing bugs while away from my development rig, I did some research and found that a Windows build is possible on my Apple Silicon Macbook Pro, using UTM and a Windows for ARM VM. It's slow, of course, but I can just run the VM as a normal app, and for emergencies while I'm traveling or whatever it'll do just fine. This also means I could have fixed the annoying (but ultimately harmless) bug that affected the TGS demo, but, oh well. At least I have a process for next time, and I don't have to buy a new Windows laptop!!

Above: Unrelated screenshot of new dialogue

And while I got inspired by talking to some publishers at TGS about a Switch release for EMDND, instead of getting swept away in the moment (callback to last week) I'm also evaluating the practicality of doing a Switch version myself. Gotta do my due diligence first, you know? I'll have more info about whether it seems doable or not next week. If it does work out, I want to do a Switch version launch shortly after the new chapter update. I wonder how difficult it would be to make physical editions, too... Dang I hope whatever console's next is backwards compatible.

As for the new chapter, I played through it a bit and fixed a bunch of bugs and built out more of the new motivation system. I also did some work on the narrative for the new chapter and solved yet another problem I was having with some of the objectives. That was like one of the last remaining issues, so I think that's it? Now it's just a matter of implementing the meat and potatoes. I feel like I've said this before, but I think it's definitely real this time. But to get it all done in time for Winter Sale... Ugh...

Above: More unrelated screenshot of new dialogue (I've mostly been working on phone calls)

The End

Short Rambles this week because it hasn't been long since the last one. But I think next week will be fairly exciting as far as me doing stuff and being productive goes. Finally moving on from TGS demo stuff, and got new merch to sell and new console build to dev. Busy busy!

Thanks for your support, as always! See you next week!