Tag: Indie Game Dev Studio

C.W.I.S Devlog #7 | State of the game

by Jonathanin Devlogs, Game DevelopmentLeave a Comment on C.W.I.S Devlog #7 | State of the game

So it’s been a little while since my last post and I’ve been meaning to make an update post for a few weeks now, so here it is. In my last post I went over some of the menu work and missile launcher improvements, since then I’ve been working out what is left to-do and trying to work out what I’d need to change in order to get build out, a thing that has been a goal for quite a few month’s at this point. Sadly, life has meant I’ve been rather busy in the evenings and weekends so I’ve struggled to get the time to work on the project, at least as much as I would’ve liked. Due to how near we are to 2023 and the fact that I have lost the motivation for this project that I once had, I’ll be moving on next year to new things once the first public build is done. I am committing to atleast release the arcade game mode that I planned to and to fixing any bugs that get reported for this project, but I don’t plan to continue it onwards unless it suddenly kicks off.

Some of the last three months I have been working on some of the assets, updating audio manager to 2.6.0 and releasing a much needed update to multi scene in the 0.2.1/2 updates. This took up a fair chunk of the time I would’ve had for C.W.I.S. But I have got some significant stuff done since the last update so here are the main changes:

Game settings system

One of the systems I wanted to get right from the grt go was the settings, as I wanted to be able to use it inother projects inthe future with, little to no changes needed. Atleast that was the plan, it took a bit longer than I planned as all things seem to with setting the resolution & full screen state. I did manage to figure out the resolution problem eventually but the full screen mode still proves to be an issue as of writing, I have left this bug for now to focus on the more pressing gameplay bits that I need to get working soon.

A view of the game settings screen for the video settings in the game so far.

Game save system

The old system I was using was the same slightly modified setup I used in Project Tilly. This in turn being a modified version of the public save manager asset. While this will work just fine it is really hard to debug issues with it. The new setup takes a totally new and modular approach, giving me an inspector view of the save state when needed as well as the option to add or remove values without having to reset the entire save. It works by saving the data in objects instead of the actual type & loading & saving the state from scriptable objects instead of data in code. This will likely become the framework for the next version of the save manager next year once I work out the kinks a little more, but for C.W.I.S it’ll work just fine.

The game settings in the new save setup.

Upgrades layout

The upgrades layout has changed a lot over the lifetime of the project. The new view aims to minimise the on screen space it takes up and make the systema little easier to follow. The new setup has a panel like layout with some of the upgrade types mixed together to lock some upgrades behind others of a different type. All the upgrades do now have icons that somewhat match their purpose as well. This ui is final at this point minus the weird bug when purchasing upgrades that causes the system to reset the display of purchased upgrades to appear not purchased and some of the upgrade implementations not quite working as intended. All of which will be addressed in the coming weeks.

New mechanic (system damage)

A recent development has been the turret damage mechanic. The idea being that turrets that are in sections that get hit by a missile have a change of damaging a nearby system, temporarily knocking it out of action. Damaged turret will not function fully or at all in some cases but will self repair if not hit again. If hit while damaged there is a chance the system is totally destroyed. In the event that a system is destroyed the user can still select it but none of the options will function for the rest of the game. The outline of the system will change colour and there is a UI indicator to signal the change of state to the user.

The UI showing the radar being damaged & repaired.

Radar knockout and lookouts

A new system that works into this setup is the radar lookouts. As having the radar system go down completely would be a little unfair on the user, I’ve added a close range warning system that acts like lookouts on the ship. When a missile is close by there is now some additional UI that appears to give the user some warning when a missile is close to impact. This system will work when the radar is working or not to help with aiming the C.W.I.S when at close range.

Minor bits

Some other minor bits include:

  • Some backend changes to remove the multilayer code I had as it was adding complexity I didn’t need.
  • Some clean up of some of the code to make it easier to manage and work with.
  • Added an upgrade button to the comms array to allow the user to reduce the cooldown for supply drops.

Release date

As I’ve hinted to in this develog I am aiming to release the build before the end of the year. But understand that this may overrun in the Jan 2023. If I don’t manage to get something out by the end of Jan 2023 then I will be leaving it there as I have other projects that do need my attention that are live products. So that is the plan, but I will be pushing for the release as I would like to get a new build out if possible xD

Monthly Update | Feb 2022

by Jonathanin Archive, UpdateLeave a Comment on 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

by Jonathanin Archive, UpdateLeave a Comment on 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

by Jonathanin Archive, UpdateLeave a Comment on 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!

End of November Update

by Jonathanin Archive, News, UpdateLeave a Comment on End of November Update

End of November Update

Its been a few weeks since the last update, but we do have a bit of news to share so here goes.

Build Versions

Build versions, our latest asset, is finally out on the Unity Asset Store after a really long review time, which was around 45 days give or take. The first few days of the asset being live have been great though xD, We’ve had record page views & asset claims which has made it worth the wait. I recently filmed a short overview video for the asset which I’m still working on the captions for as I write this. You can see the video on the store listing or on our YouTube channel. I plan film more of these for our other assets soon so each one has at-least 1 video explaining how to use it xD

Drop Tables

What happened with Drop Tables? yea, I’m still undecided on what the use case this asset is for and how it should be setup to allow it to work with multiple games. Because of this, I’m postponing the asset for now until I get the time to sort this fully xD

Audio Manager Version 3

We’ve notice a few issues with Audio Manager 2.5.4, which we are working on a patch for presently. However we also have a major overhaul coming soon! Its Version 3 baby! Backend wise some of the stuff is getting moved around and the way the asset is used is changed from inspector based to scriptable object based. Mostly this means the asset will be more flexible and hopefully more performant with less laggy inspectors, improved auto scanning, manual scanning options & more! This may or may not come out this year, we’ll see how it goes.

Leaderboard Manager

The backend for the new leaderboard manager changes are ready, we just need to test it & do all the front end stuff xD This is on track, though I’d expect it to be coming out early 2022 as most of the development time will be during and after Christmas and the asset store review team will probably be off until new year by then xD

Games in 2022

We really want to make a game xD With the asset changes currently planned, we should have all of our assets at a decent point where supporting and updating them shouldn’t take too much of our time. So our main goal for next year is to release or make significant progress on a game title. We don’t know what yet, but its our main goal for next year!