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[IBwWG]

Got a number of things done on Dolphin Patterns tonight.  I think it's already more playable.  DD Mathilda was very encouraging this morning, when she told me that actually Dolphin Patterns was one of her favourites--so maybe it wasn't so boring after all!  Also hopefully she still likes it after I spice it up! 

Anyway, countdown to Beta 11, at which point hopefully Dolphin Patterns will more or less be how it will be in the end:

https://github.com/IBwWG/mathildagame-bugs/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+milestone%3A%22Beta+11%22

Meanwhile a fun animation that was actually done a long time ago but I hadn't released online, what happens when you get a pattern correct.... https://twitter.com/wastheWordGame/status/746789949312212992

[IBwWG]

A lot of rework lately due to some latent technical issues (you can read more on the HaxeFlixel devlog).  Resulting quality should be a lot higher, I hope, but I'll need a full playthrough to see what unintended repercussions there are from this in the other minigames, because it was a fundamental change to the way sprite ordering is done in general, affecting every screen of the game.    That combined with another bug, and I'll be quite lucky if nothing else needs changing.

Meanwhile, Dolphin Patterns is looking better than ever!  I've finished the feature additions and polish I had in mind, and managed to work in some funny ideas with some help from Mathilda.  Does anybody remember the postlevel screen in Earthworm Jim?  It's not quite as animated in #mathildagame, but I think it's just as fun.    (It's a Yipeee! button )

Anyway, there are still some other non-Dolphin-Patterns-specific things to do for beta 11: https://github.com/IBwWG/mathildagame-bugs/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+milestone%3A%22Beta+11%22

...but hopefully those shouldn't take long. 

[IBwWG]

Last night I rewrote a bit of the map screen, which was one of the earlier things I wrote, before I had learned a few tricks in Haxe.  I was becoming a bit of a maintenance headache, so I'm glad I did, because now it's much more reliable.  Also from a UI perspective it's better.  Before, when there was something newly unlocked after a minigame:

1) go to the map
2) fade in the next piece of the trail
3) go to the book, narrate
4) go to the map again
5) fade in the next location icon, if applicable (icons are re-used on your return journey)

Now:

1) go to the book, narrate
2) go to the map
3) fade in both the trail, and, if applicable, the next location icon

A subtle change but it made things way simpler and much more solid.  Hopefully I can look forward to no future playthroughs having the map break on me. 

Meanwhile, I found a bunch of bugs during the playthrough check:

https://github.com/IBwWG/mathildagame-bugs/issues/61

And also, Michael sent me some updated audio!  I'll have to get that edited in, as well as recording a bit of my own.

And Ashton sent me some new trial music!  If you've been checking out our itch.io page you may have noticed it's there as a 100 EUR option.  That's just because we wanted it to be private until the music is more polished, so we can try out the music in-place...however, we're open to it being less private for a fee. 

[IBwWG]

It's out!  Beta 11 (focus on Dolphin Patterns but many other fixes) is done and ready for download!

I removed the PWYW minimum!  So please download it and give it a whirl! 

https://ibwwg.itch.io/mathildagame

[IBwWG]

Today's work was sorting out the relative nightmare of offsets that let my animations be somewhat slightly better than the most inefficient thing ever (given the absence of a proper animation engine for what CoaTools outputs in the HaxeFlixel universe at the moment).  However, it was fruitful:



Whether it was more fruitful than biting the bullet and implementing my own real skeletal animation engine, which in the end may have taken just as long as all my workarounds, is up for debate.  But at least you can play Aikido as Willy now!

(Aikido practitioners will note that the above move is not actually an Aikido move.  Indeed, the game includes one "wild attack" for Uke, so that Tori's general evasion, Taisabaki, and the accompanying animations are more silly and therefore more fun for both player and animator.  )

Anyway, this should soon go out as another beta, since it unlocks long-bugged animations and actually lets you play through the entire game now.  (Before you had to either cheat or simply not play as Willy for that stage--since it's the four-choice stage, and you only pick one from each pair on the way through, you could just play Aikido as Mathilda before.)

[IBwWG]

(Although, these animations were not all final.  The Katatedori Shihonage one needs to be "actually" done--Mathilda's birthday was coming up fast and I just threw an animation together, so it doesn't look anything like katatedori shihonage.  The Taisabaki wild attack is more or less how it's meant to be though.)

Anyway, beta 12 is now on itch.io, so you can download it now and give it a play through!

[IBwWG]

Managed to build the game for Linux last night, with very few changes!  Which means there's probably a bug or two at runtime.    If you have Linux please give it a go and let us know!

https://ibwwg.itch.io/mathildagame

It comes in two flavours.  You probably want the normal one unless you have a very old video card like our netbook does, in which case you probably want the "opengl 1.4 compatible", software-only one.

[IBwWG]

So I am still away, but trying to work as I can.  It's been more difficult than I thought.

So there are very few code changes, but if you are on Windows and want to try the latest game (free!) please head to the itch.io page to download 0.2.3 ("beta 13" but this is the last version where I'm going to call them like this.)  The latest version includes in-progress music (although it already sounds amazing) from Ashton, as well as music "stings" which add a really nice effect to The Lost Piece of Atlantis as you slide the pieces around.  (That's a bit ahead of time--The Lost Piece is slated to be one of the last games to get a final coat of polish before leaving beta.)

In other news, the 32-bit Linux version does not seem to work on 64-bit Linuxes, although you're welcome to try.  I will have to correct that, but it will be a few weeks before I get the opportunity to do so.

[IBwWG]

OK, after getting back, I thought I would participate in a game jam for the first time ever.  Now that that's over, I am back on track with #mathildagame.

Today I got the game compiling again after some issues with haxelib, and sorted out a few general bugs.  Just now I started working on the swimming games' (Catch Up and Collect Fairy Dust) feature additions ( https://github.com/IBwWG/mathildagame-bugs/issues/62 ).

Meanwhile Ashton Mills sent me more stings and new music ideas, so those are in the latest build.  Pay attention to the map screen and Collect Fairy Dust for these.

Speaking of the latest build, #mathildagame on itch.io now has a "bleeding edge" download (Windows only--my Linux build chain is not very automated yet), so you can play the latest builds that are not yet tested as much as a point release build.  I intend to upload a build at the end of each day.  Remember, currently you can play any of the game's available beta versions for free on itch.io and if you want to support the development of the game, it's PWYW.

Also, I got my first automated crash dump from someone other than me!  It's pretty neat to see crashdumper in action like that.  Unfortunately, the crash was in HaxeFlixel's own sound library, so it's a bit beyond my expertise to fix at the moment.  It was interesting to see at what point in the game it was, though.  I suppose, too, that only one such report for 69 downloads isn't too bad   BTW I should note that I only knew the crashdump was someone other than me because the system specs didn't match either of the machines here.  They don't send any personally identifiable information beyond that--you can check the game's data folder for yourself to see what is sent, and if you don't like it, there's an option on the main menu.  But I encourage you to leave it, because it's really helpful for development to have an automatic stack trace, screenshot, and sequence of actions to reproduce the problem.

[IBwWG]

In today's news, I finished (more or less...is anything ever really finished?) the swimming games: "Catch Up" and "Collect Fairy Dust".  I was able to beat them with all the available stat-ups on the hardest difficulty, and not able to beat it without all of them.  So I think we're close to balance--the easiest difficulty is easy enough, and the toughest one is too hard to beat without help, the help requiring you to beat the game and spend some of your earned books on stat-ups.  That was the idea.

So, please find available for your testing/feedback/enjoyment, version 0.2.4 for free on itch.io:

0.2.4 (Beta)
============

- Pressing F3 during any minigame now shows the ending sequence for that game, too, to make it easier to test music hooks and voiceovers
- New music stings from Ashton for the map and Catch Up
- Background stickers (anything big) now operate only on a separate, non-eraseable layer in Painting Your Dreams
- Pressing 0 now mutes the game as is standard on HaxeFlixel games; 0 in Aikido games has been replaced with the up arrow
- Fixed sparkles that were supposed to be multicolour all along
- Linux only: Fixed saving in Painting Your Dreams, and opening folders both there and in the general options
- General bug fixes, plus new features on Catch Up and Collect Fairy Dust (see https://github.com/IBwWG/mathildagame-bugs/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aclosed+milestone%3A0.2.4 )

The aforementioned Linux version is coming next, hopefully.  I'm trying to improve the dev/release pipeline there first a bit.

Next stop, finishing up the trampoline games!

[IBwWG]

32-bit Linux builds of #mathildagame 0.2.4 are now available.  

[IBwWG]

Even better, as of this evening I have a 64-bit install of Linux going, so for anyone who was waiting for that, the download is now available on itch.io! 

[IBwWG]

OK, today's (and Friday's) work was on the Catfish Fairy acrobatics minigame.  I think it's mostly where I want it to be.  I eliminated the annoying "must be done while on the trampoline" announcement, and also having to press the M key altogether--you just automatically attempt to jump through to the other side every jump, because there's no penalty for a failed side switch per se.  (A successful side switch with flips is worth bonus points, as is going through a hoop vertically since it's a lot harder to fit / impossible for the highest hoops.)

Anyway, you can try it out pre-release by downloading the bleeding edge build for Windows on itch.io.

[IBwWG]

I'm a bit sick this week, so it's slower going than I wanted, but I'm pleased to release to you 0.2.5 (Beta) for Windows and Linux:

0.2.5 (Beta)
============

- Catfish Fairy now switches sides automatically when jumping high enough--no more pressing M.
- General bug fixes, plus new features on Acrobatics games (see https://github.com/IBwWG/mathildagame-bugs/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aclosed+milestone%3A0.2.5 )

I think I got the balance down OK on the acrobatics games.  They both have exponential point scales and are Play What You Can, so it can sometimes be hard to tell, but it seemed to me to be easy enough to get Easy Peasy, and to take a bit of playing even with the new statups to achieve Super Tricky status.  Let me know what you think!  Play it free on itch.io: https://ibwwg.itch.io/mathildagame

[IBwWG]

OK, after a couple days in bed, I was back at it with a half-ish day, and finished off Treasure Hunting.  (You can play the results in the "bleeding edge" channel, which also include some misc. changes and a new map sting from Ashton.)

Treasure Hunting now plays with colours and angles, and has a bunch of new graphics.  Now the colours and angles are more disparate on lower difficulties:



...and as you get to harder difficulties, the colours and angles become more similar to each other, and the graphics only come from one group instead of a combination of groups.   

[IBwWG]

Today's adventures were within the apparently-not-yet-completely-studied realm of slider puzzles.

Simple little beasts to make a playable game of, but, it seems, fairly difficult to control the exact difficulty.

Some resources I came across:

https://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~mdr/teaching/modules04/java2/TilesSolvability.html
http://kevingong.com/Math/SixteenPuzzle.html
https://www.sitepoint.com/randomizing-sliding-puzzle-tiles/

Reading these, you'll find a few things:

1) not all puzzles are solvable (that one I had already taken care of, originally)
2) puzzle solve-ability is determined by counting "inversions" and "polarity", which is easy enough
3) you can completely randomize a puzzle, then, if it can't be solved, do a few simple corrections to get one that can be

OK, good enough, if you just want a random, playable puzzle.  But what about making sure it's of a certain difficulty, i.e., having roughly the same minimum number of required moves in order to solve it?  Hmm.  That's where it seems rather brute-force-ish, and after the fact.

Also, inversion counts are not strictly related to difficulty: the hardest 3x2 puzzle has 6 inversions, but in testing, I found a 10-inversion puzzle that took only half the moves to solve.

Anyway, in my opinion, these puzzles, especially larger ones, and with the rotation modification I'm adding, can be tricky enough without needing to be The Trickiest.  I think, therefore, an acceptable compromise here, rather than going for a precise solution, is a modified naive algorithm.  It doesn't seem to produce bad results, so far, and lets me have at least some degree of control over the difficulty. 

[IBwWG]

OK, after a few unexpected bugs at the last minute, 0.2.6 is out the door.  Try it for free at https://ibwwg.itch.io/mathildagame .   

That leaves a few things for me...namely, some more non-minigame-specific polish, and then finally, finishing all the Aikido animations!

[IBwWG]

Since 0.2.6, we've done some bug hunting, music polishing, and...revamping the stat-ups screen!

The question was, how to make the UI friendly but efficient.  The context is, each stat-up point can affect one attribute of one character, but it can affect them in multiple minigames.  So there are three dimensions of information to display.  How should they be able to get to it?

The existing interface was a table, with characters on one axis and abilities on the other.  Mousing over a table cell (which showed how many points you had there out of how many you could potentially have) would tell you what you currently had, and what you'd get if you clicked.  (Clicking would cycle, 0, 1, ..., max, then back to 0, so you can refund points easily--points are gotten uniquely, so there's no grinding/farming in this game.)

The only downside to that was, the tooltips showing all this info were gigantic, and since everything is read out loud by default, this was a bit overwhelming.

So, the new interface, besides sporting some new art, is: you pick a character, then you pick an ability.  You are then presented with a list of everything that that ability can affect at the various levels, with game icons, so you can see what hits what and with how many points.  Then there are +/- buttons instead of cycling, and mousing over them gives you a clear, quick preview of what you're going to be obtaining or giving up when you click.  Meanwhile, each description is in a bite-sized chunk that you can mouse over to have read aloud, at your leisure.  I think it's a pretty big improvement:



(Excuse the screenshot, there's a weird bug in my in-game screenshotter that messes with colours...the blue on the buttons and book indicators is actually red in the game, indicating what you'd lose if you minus a book here.)

Anyway, you know where to find the bleeding edge build, which will have this momentarily.

[IBwWG]

I'm still recovering from a cold, so I think I need some rest, otherwise it will linger for much longer than it needs to; but I thought I should put out a quick update to share what I've been up to, first.

If you've been following the progress on the next milestone, I've been chipping away at various things.  Many of them have resulted in improved visuals!  I tried to get rid of almost anywhere where there was a solid colour fill-in and replace it with something from the book's art.

Also, the introduction has been rearranged, so that instead of playing at the beginning of the game launch, it now plays at the beginning of a run-through, right after you pick a fresh save slot...because there's a new save slot screen!



Anyway, feel free to try out the latest (free/PWYW) bleeding edge build for Windows on itch.io, which contains these improvements, and let me know if you find any bugs.

[IBwWG]

After many little details, old bugs, new bugs, and so on, and a "missing recordings" roundup, we're very close to a 0.9.0 release now--just uploaded the latest "bleeding edge" for Windows if you want to give it a play!  I very much like how the feel of it is shaping up, especially with the small but significant addition of a very nice generic button click sting from Ashton.

I just need to do a few recordings with Mathilda, normalize the sounds and music, and give it a final play-through.  After that, Aikido's the only thing left to finish, so it'll soon be time to get friendly with Blender again!  Hey, that means I'm more or less on schedule, as defined mentally at the beginning of the week.

PS If you were confused by Under the Spell of Shiny Shimmering Sunbeam Sparkles, I've redone the help for it, to hopefully make it as straightforward to grasp the basics of as can be.  (To some extent, it should be challenging--that minigame is a puzzle game, after all.  But there are different degrees of understanding it and any of them--even just moving randomly around on the easiest level--should result in a fun play.  )