Friday Rambles and Game Dev Update 2024-06-28

Another Friday another Rambles.

The Steam Summer Sale started yesterday. I made a new sales pic. I didn't have time to draw a new picture so I just changed the words.

Above: It's got better vibes than the last one i think

So far the sale is going well. Nothing like a big ol seasonal Steam sale to motivate people to buy games (like mine).

I added Playstation controller support. If I knew it was this easy to pair my ps4 controller to my windows computer, I would have done it for launch. oops! I also would have played way more djmax respect!

Above: But it won't be in the live build till the new chapter update. too bad.

Above: New controller button glyphs in the menus. I was only able to test with a ps4 controller, but I'm going to assume it also works for ps5

As for the script writing, I've got enough momentum going that I'm being about as productive as I was during peak dev time for the original. Not counting the month's worth of crunch I put myself through, of course. I've been kinda agonizing over how well the new story will go over with existing fans, but i'm too tired to care anymore and now I'm basically just making this for myself, which worked out well enough last time. of course that means it goes a little off the rails. again. (But I imagine a lot of EM fans wouldn't have it any other way :))

That being said, there's still structure to the plot, and I spent a lot of time focusing on making sure the story makes sense and improving the pacing and gameplay. i wrote thousands more words and moved around a lot of existing ones. i think i'm at a much better place than last week, and it's looking a lot closer to what i imagine the final version will be like. I finished the todo list quest log, and I've played through the chapter from start to finish (well, at least up to the ending portion which I haven't started yet). The next week will be spent adding substance to the framework, because it's mostly plot stubs currently, and drawing new sprites.

I added an entire new minigame segment. it makes me laugh. and of course it has a narrative reason for existing. i want it to be a pleasant surprise for the few of you who read this, so I'm going to not post any screenshots. i coded it in a day. i love these stupid "game within a game" type things. i also made music for it myself, so that's a hint about the sort of thing we're dealing with here.

I'm hoping that it'll be done by the end of July, but it might go over a bit, depending on how long it takes to make the endings and tie everything together. I'm a bit worried about how long it'll take to localize. There are too many words. But while that's going on, I'll be adding other bonus features like a standalone lumber lass and CG/sprite gallery and stuff like that so it's not like i'll just be sitting around doing nothing, i guess.

Next week I'll be drawing comix for the Skye "timewarp" plushie campaign, which is gonna launch on the 8th I think. I might make it meta and just reuse the comics from 3 years ago. Probably won't be able to use the same numbers though, but I'll be ecstatic if we can even sell even half what we did the first time around.

Anyway it's good to be back and making progress on things. Good way to wrap up Q2. Thanks for your support, as always. See you next week.