...and We're Back!

First off, you'll notice my challenge updates just kind of stopped. It's a bummer and I let myself down. I was too ambitious too quickly and set up unrealistic goals... but I'm back! I still like the idea of my dev/fitness challenge and want to bring it back in some way, however this time I'll think things through a little more clearly and using what I learned last time before just diving right in. Now for a quick update on everything!

Things are finally slowing down at work & in my personal life and I can start getting back to a (somewhat) regular development schedule! I'll be posting updates here when I can but by far the better place to follow me is on twitter for the latest quick status update. You can hit me there @_AwkwardLion_   I'll probably be keeping this blog to weekly updates or so, but they will be regular.


With that said, I really got back to things this morning and accomplished quite a bit before the sun even came up (partly in thanks to the new Matt & Kim album that came out today, New Glow, waking me up and keeping me energized)! I continued work on my ongoing project, I'm picking up my game where I left it all but abandoned late in February this year.

My focus now is polishing it up at least a little so I can get people to test it and hone the gameplay. I tried to test the game with friends over the last month with my last iteration, but on multiple occasions I just couldn't explain the concept. It's amazing how you can sit and explain things to people, but they just can't grasp what's in your head if what's on the screen doesn't match it!

This morning I:

1. Cleaned-up some code. 
2. Adjusted the art.
3. Got one of the main features of the game, rule selection (that'll make sense later), working. 

Before I explain, here's a couple of screens as of the end of my development this morning. Not nearly done, but a lot more friendly than a grey background and some random unlabeled squares.

My current title screen. Based on a term my wife likes to use.
Any thoughts on using that as a name? It's growing on me.

Current gameplay screenshot.
The final art will be a little clashy due to the 90's gameshow theme, but not nearly this bad!

Now for some detail on the work I did starting around 5:30 this morning:
1. Clean-up Code
          - Since my last real effort at this, I learned that using 'global' variables is kind of a bad habit in a lot of cases. Most of my game was running off of these and at the time I thought it made things simple, but I read-up on how to use local variables properly and reference in other objects. WORLD OF DIFFERENCE. It's so much easier to call another local variable rather than use globals (obj_whatever.variableName = x). I still have some old global ones sticking around in systems that I don't really need to touch, but a majority of the others were removed and swapped with better functioning local variables that are easier to work with.

2. Art Adjustments
          - Goodbye random boxes, hello bright colors! Still a long way to go, but it took a big step forward in making the game at least manageable for people to understand when I explain it. Previous to the images above, it was just a grey background and randomly colored boxes all over. There's also a little movement to the background and things look a lot better than in the screenshots. Hopefully this will make it a little more friendly for testing. Especially now that buttons are at least labeled and the buttons/selections are working properly.   Which brings me to....

3. Rule Selection
          - A major part of the game and it's totally working! At the beginning of each turn players have a decision. Either select a player to face a consequence that the game randomly selects, OR select a consequence that is randomly assigned to a player (possibly even the player who selected it!). Before I just had a single 'test' button that would cycle through the options, but now players can actually tap on a rule and have it light up while the game selects its victim. Or, they can press the "doom another player" button and the game will cycle through the three randomly chosen consequences. It works VERY well using the local variable scenario I described in 1. This being in place means my basic game loop is done! As I write this it's dawning on me how big of a deal this is. In theory, I just need to add some animation and polish and I'll have something close to the final game! (Although I have a ton of 'extra' features I still want to try and add.)


Anyway, that's it for today. Made some really big strides and am glad that even though I wasn't working on the game directly for the last month, I've still been reading and researching game design & programming in GML. Keeping it top of mind and learning some 'best practices' has really helped.

The next big step will be testing the game and getting feedback to improve it and to see if it's even fun. Who knows, I may have to scrap the entire thing if it turns out that I have a complete stinker on my hands.



Another thing to celebrate is that AwkwardLion mobile apps have passed the 700 downloads mark! Sure, that pretty much may as well be a "0" when you're talking about successful Android download numbers, but as someone who's just doing this with a little bit of free time it's exciting to know that many people have at least checked out the work I've done!