Website Update & Future Plans

Hey all, J here! So it’s been a while since I last posted on the site and I totally missed the March Monthly Update. This post will kind of count as both the March & April update as I’ve been sorting stuff out behind the scenes. The biggest of which you can see currently. The website has had a complete overhaul with a new theme, new plugins, new graphics & a new layout showcasing all the work I currently have public in a releasable state.

Changes To Carter Games

This nicely leads me on to a change to the meaning of the name Carter Games. Originally, I planned to turn it into its own studio. However, after giving it some though I’ve decided to instead turn it into an alias/publisher that I release my public works to. Given that all the work on here is currently my own anyways there its really any harm in doing so. So, I have been around and updated all the description of the brand where I used We or Studio and corrected them to follow this new narrative. This doesn’t really affect anything currently in the pipeline but leaves me free to make a studio under a different name in the future should I wish to do so.

Current Work

Some may have missed the news regarding Project Tilly which is the game I was working on since the start of the year. So here’s the update I posted everywhere else. Project Tilly is on hold until further notice, this is somewhat due to a little burnout on the project and partly due to a lack of personal ability to complete the project. I did over scope a little, even in the MVP, so I’ll be leaving the project on the backburner until I have the motivation to work on it again or some new ideas for it. Its sad news to those who were interested in it, but I really want to get a new game published this year so I’m focusing on an older project which is already halfway there. This being C.W.I.S, though I’ll likely rename the game for release. I had a working prototype around winter 2020 and I feel like it’s a title that I have some ideas for and could complete in 3-6 months with my current skills. That includes the art side as well.

The Future

Other than that, I have been working on a few GDD’s (Game Design Documents) for some possible future titles. None of these are set in stone yet as they still need fleshing out a lot before I decide which one to move forward on. So. there will be more in this in the coming months. In the meantime, I will be making further improvements to this site & publishing minor updates to existing products. I will be back with another update at the end of May if not sooner with more info on where I go in the future.

That is all for now

~ J

Monthly Update | Feb 2022

Welcome back to the monthly update, where you can find a summary of all the last months activities. So, here’s what happened this month

Project Tilly

More progress has been made on Project Tilly this month, being my main focus at the moment. As always you can see the latest from this project either on the upcoming channel in our discord server (hidden under the games role), or here: https://carter-games.itch.io/project-tilly/devlog

The main progress this month was on the computer system in the game. getting the laptop to function like a day to day laptop would. So far this has gone well, but there is still a fair bit to do before it is ready. On top of this have been several bug fixes and backend changes along with some improvements to the multi-scene system.

Asset Store Product Source Code

During this month a little side project was going on. As all our asset store products are free it made sense to allow the source code to be public on Github. This has now been done and will be updated when I push changes to the store versions code. This will likely be the most up to date version of each asset as there is no review time and I may even release experimental assets or smaller bits of code on there as well, so it’s worth following if you are not already: https://github.com/CarterGames

Audio Manager 3.x.x?

So looking at the source for 2.x.x recently I’ve found some areas that could be improved and some features that I would like to add. Due to this I feel a 3.x.x version coming. Now currently I’m only working on this in the around an hour I get before work on the weekdays and only on the weekdays so its taking some time to develop. I’ve also had to cut a feature I wanted due to not knowing a way of making it work, that being method chaining when calling to play a clip. The update will add more of a static approach to the backend for ease of use for beginners, less setup to make it easier to get going and automatic audio file scanning 2.0 which will update when you add or remove files from your project. A little sneak peak of the asset settings so far below:

Closing

That’s about all for this months update, obviously being the shortest month less got done. But lots to come, see you next month!

Monthly Update | Jan 2022

Here is the first monthly update for 2022. This will be a monthly update news post going over the main highlights of what I have been working on in the past month.

Website Updates

Recently I’ve updated the website with a new section for packages, these are smaller assets/tools that are not on the unity asset store. These are normally experimental or niece systems that are not 100% complete yet but are public if anyone wants to use them.

I’ve also added a section in our products on the home page for Project Tilly, which has been the main focus for the month.

Project Tilly

Project Tilly is our first major game project prototype. The game follows a week in the life of Isabelle, a student living alone in a small studio flat. Experience her struggle as she tries to go from day to day, suffering from several mental health issues such as anxiety, loneliness & depression. The project is planned for a end of Q2 demo build, where I will gauge if the project is going to go anywhere & either move on to another project or continue with it to the next build.

Current progress is good, though a little messy. I the next moth I will be focusing on this project more and trying to get a playable build ready with some minor story elements & main mechanics in.

You can see our weekly updates either on the upcoming channel in our discord server (hidden under the games role), or here: https://carter-games.itch.io/project-tilly/devlog

Audio Manager

I’ve made a minor patch to the Audio Manager, which updates the debug log’s to provide more information about the problems they report. As of writing it is still pending and will be a silent update, so we will post when the update is live to ley you know as and when this happens.

Discord Server Changes

At the end of year year, I made some changes to the discord server. These changes mean new members to the server don’t see the whole server and need to react with an emoji in the server info rules channel to gain access to other parts of the server. I made this change partly to help the new user experience and partly to reduce the amount of incorrect channel usage. So far this has worked well, with roles for asset support, games & community along with an option notification role that gets mentioned with all announcement posts.

That’s all for this post, we’ll be back in the first week of March with the February update!

Year In Review 2021

Year In Review 2021

Just like last year, we’re back with another review over the last years progress, what’s new, some stats and what we are planning for the future. While this year has been quieter than last year for new releases, there has still been some excellent progress this year.

The Stats

The stats this year are a massive increase since last year. What needs to be remembered is that all download are organic, meaing we’ve not paid for any adverts and anything, making every user count. So to make gains over the last year is always good. Google Play did rather well mostly due to a few spikes throughout the year on Detective Notes causing an increase in the overall downloads. We also had a good year on the asset store with a new asset and several updates the further improved the existing ones. The only area lacking currently is the games side, but this is going to be worked on next year.

2022

Next year the aim is to work on the games side of things way more while still supporting the existing products on the side. This has already begun with Project Tilly. Now that isn’t the name of the game, its just a placeholder while I think of a name I like for the game. The game will follow a week in the life of Isabelle, a student living alone in a small studio flat. Experience her struggle as she tries to go from day to day, suffering from several mental helath issues such as anxiety, loneliness & depression. The plan is to release new builds throughout the games development to gather feedbacka dn get the bugs out as we make it. We have an early build with a whiteboxed enviroment of the flat level avalible now. Download it and see more about the game on its Itch.io page here: https://carter-games.itch.io/project-tilly

Now this isn’t the only project we have going, we have other ideas that may or may not be worked on in the future. Above are just 2 of the many idea’s that we’ve had recently. These also have project names as it saves coming up with names for them when we don’t have definite plans for them.

Want to keep up to date with everything going on next year? Here are our socials to follow. We hope you’ve had a good year, despite the pandemic and all. Lets hope 2022 is a great year!

Progress Update

Progress Update

So, I’ve been quite for a few weeks, that’s because I’ve been busy on the last bits for the year. Here is a quick update on what has been going on and where everything is.

Patches & Updates

I’ve had a few, sadly bad reviews on our deer old Audio Manager. It is due a major update that is on the list for Q1 next year along with a new game prototype. I have the basic for the new version already, its just getting all the edge cases, polishing and testing the asset to ensure it works fully as intended before release. The update is a bit change, though should be easy to follow for our existing users. More on this in the new year.

On the flipside I’ve pushed a small patch to our latest asset Build Versions which automates the build number changes when changing the build increment time option. I have even more for this asset next year, with a possible custom build button with custom auto build file naming saving you even more work!

Leaderboard Manager

So I’ve been working on the new Leaderboard Manager! The new version is a total re-write of the asset to make it more flexible as the current version is rather rigid with only 1 leaderboard supported and no TestMeshPro support. The new version allows for as many leaderboards as you like! so you can have 1 per level if you want. There are more options to display the board, improved backend and more customisation options as well. I’ll be sharing more on this in the coming weeks as I finalize the version of the asset.

Game Prototype?

Yea, I’m planning to make a new game idea in Q1 next year, it’ll be a prototype to start with and if I still like it and people like it too then I will be working to make a full title out of it. More next year!

End of year stats

Like last year, there will be an end of year review where I summarise the stats for all our store fronts this year and compare our progress form last year as well as our goals for the new year!

That’s all for now, speak to y’all soon!