We are a indie games studio based in the UK. We work on a variety of projects, from mobile/indie games to assets/tools for developers. The studio is solely run by one developer in his spare time at the moment but plans to expand in the future to a full sized team.
Just a quick update to let you all know that it is likely that the Audio Manager release will be delayed a tad. Currently its got a few major development hoops to get through and I’ve not had a massive amount of free time to work on the asset. I will try to avoid any massive delay, but I cannot grantee that it will be ready by the end of August at this time. At-least, not without cutting major features that were in the old 2.x version. I’ll update you all on any updates to a release window as and when, but its now likely to be in September instead of August.
Today I’ve been back-porting a fix to the asset indexing system, used in Save Manager & Build Versions currently. There was a bug with its initialization causing overriding assets to be generated when you already had them in the project. So you’d lose settings & data. This should now be resolved in 2.0.9 & 1.1.6 respectively which are both out on Git & Itch with the asset store early next week.
So its been about a month since my last update. So its about time I updated y’all on where things are at.
Save Manager
The main progress has been on the save manager, with the code base now being pretty close to being production ready. I’m currently working out some bugs on builds which are been a bit annoying. The editor side of the asset is ready though, with just a few stress tests to do to make sure it works.
I have a few feature changes to the asset, mostly due the amount of work for the amount of use it will get. So the create tab has been removed as the creation of save data is a more modular in this version and should be easy enough to follow without a tool. I may add it again in a future update if its requested or really needed, but for the initial release making data manually will be fine with documentation and videos to aid with that.
Speaking of documentation, I’ve been looking into solutions for that. Annoying there isn’t really any solution I’m 100% happy with, most either are paid which I can’t afford given everything I release is free or doesn’t quite do everything I need it to. I’ve ended up trialling an idea using a website builder & either GitHub pages or similar to host the site on. An example below that I trailed using the Multi Scene docs
I’ve also changed up the path remapping in the asset to be different dependant on the target platform. You can define the path still but using some pre-defined strings rather than selecting the path yourself. There are some caveats such as having the update the path for each platform if you want it to be different etc. But it should work out fine for the first version. You can also press a button to open the directory where the save will be if targeting a standalone platform (PC/Mac/Linux).
I think I’m still good for the April release, but things may crop up that interfere with that, well see.
Audio Manager
The advantage of not doing the Audio Manager before the Save Manager is that I can use what I learn from it in the new version. I’ve recently been testing the early versions for bugs (which there are many) and researching some ideas. This week I was able to make a method chain solution that will change up most of the API I’ve written so far. Currently the setup is similar to 2.x with loads of methods for each use case which gets very hard to maintain. If I went about the chaining solution which I’m planning to now it works, I’d be able to reduce that and make the asset much easier to manage from my end without compromising on features. If you’ve used Linq, String methods or some tween libraries then you’ll know the syntax. An example below of what I’m thinking of doing and what it’ll do:
// Example
AudioManager.Play(Clip.Click01).SetVolume(.5f).SetDelay(.1f);
// What it does:
// Your normal play this clip, clip being the struct system I already have in place.
AudioManager.Play(Clip.Click01)
// Sets the volume of the clip to play at .5f volume (range 0-1)
.SetVolume(.5f)
// Sets the clip to play with a delay of .1f
.SetDelay(.1f);
Now this is still quite a while off as I’ve only just got my head around how to make this work. I also won’t be working on the Audio Manger 3.x until I’ve finished & published Save Manager 2.x. But this will certainly give me a lot to work on. I do still plan to keep a modular method for the more traditional calls should people wish to use that syntax over this setup.
Personal Project
While I’m working on Carter Games stuff, I’m also taking on a personal project at the same time to give me some variety. Mostly to avoid burnout on one project which I’ve had in the past. In this case I’m making a passion/portfolio project where I attempt to replicate the Person 5 Royal (P5R) combat system & to an extent the look as well. I played the game over the Christmas break and really enjoyed it. So decided to make a project out of it.
The end goal is to at-least have a small custom boss battle which a full party of 4 vs something. With the user being able to use a mini velvet room system to make a persona with the skills available to then use in the fight. I don’t plan on replicating the AI or anything for the players party so it will be direct commands for all party members. The party members will also be custom and not related to the actual P5R ones. At the end of the day I’d like to make a mini-experience out of it, but it will always just be for portfolio, I obviously cannot release it commercially due to copyright etc.
Below is a little video below of how that’s going so far on the UI side, but its still very early days:
If you want to see more on the project then you can see the full project page on my portfolio here:
Its a long project so I’m posting update posts which you can view on that page. The up side of doing a project like this is that I learn even more doing it. I’ve now got a custom UI shape system as well as a basic Google sheets downloader working as well will come in handy in future projects.
That’s about it for this update, I’ll see you in the next one.
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!
Our Save Manager has been updated. This has been a long time coming as the asset had some clear design issues. We’ve address most of these in this update and made some positive changes to hopefully make the asset even easier to use.
The Changes
New Editor Tool Layout. The editor tool has been updated with a lot of improvements in the layout and functionality. The layout has been simplified to two tabs instead of three. The editor auto loads the infomation from the save data class. The editor also lays out the information in a more concise manor to make it easier to edit values on the fly.
New Operators We’ve improved the back-end a fair bit to accomide operators. Previously you had to use our Save variats for vectors and colours in your own code to use the manager fully. Now, you can just use the standard vectors and colours and the asset does the rest for you.
New Save Types Supported We’ve added more support to the asset. We now support the following types on top of what we previously supported; – Double – Byte – Quaternion – Sprite (In a specific setup)
We’ve also added support for more collection types to accomidate for their use, so you can more save Queues & Stacks of a saveable type as well as Lists and Arrays.
Updated Docs We’ve been thoguh and totally re-written our documation to better explain the asset out of the box as well as porting it to Notion so ease of editing. We’ve prodiced a .pdf of the page as the offline documation which is much more readable than the old text file.
