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[HuvaaKoodia]

GUI sounds and initial attack sounds for the fox and mage. Tried making those last two myself and they didn't exactly come out well. Jumped to other things instead.

Graphics for two more levels.  Had to change the design of the first one a considerably. It was boring to play, but no more! Implemented an indicator for corruptors who are about to appear. This simple change allows for reacting to changes earlier.

Other than that, some fixes and more music. Finding good stuff. It'll mask the less than stellar sound effects I hope!

Cheers.

[HuvaaKoodia]

Not quite... Good news first! All the levels now have visuals and they've been tested too. The final boss fight still needs an ending prose, but other than that the levels are done.

Contentwise the advanced options are still to do. Luckily those are non-critical features and can be dropped if need be.

Next week: polish and wrap-up. More optimistic now (90% done!). Surely this'll all come together in the end?

Cheers!

[HuvaaKoodia]

Just kidding! Added in one of the campaign options: disable graphics. Took only a moment as the simple level graphics mode was already there for testing purposes.

The real task today was GUI graphics. You can see the border on the dialog panel up there. Used them on every element pretty much. Looks all right.

Small tweaks and fixes here and there. That's the agenda for the whole week more or less. I do have a big list to go through.

Cheers!

[HuvaaKoodia]

Mostly worked on that today. The difference is more noticeable with the mage on the right. One more expression for the pixie too though. Also tweaked things whenever something small came up.

Lastly implemented the corruption effects for the shapeshifter. This is the type of monkey work mentioned in the past. Will have to do the same for the mage tomorrow.

I don't have a name for the project or any of the characters! I'm hoping to come up with something soonish (no panic monster in sight yet!)

Cheers!

[HuvaaKoodia]

That's as far as I got. Spent the better half of the day on monkey work and going through the easy items in the TODO list.

For the controls panel I already have a simple keybindings system, just need to hook it in tomorrow. There are not that many important settings. Should be able to get them all in.

Will have to write the ending prose tomorrow too. I cannot call this 100% before the ending is in!

Cheers!

[HuvaaKoodia]

There aren't a lot of inputs, but might as well have them rebindable. The system is simple, yet effective. Will make a public repo for it after the project.

Many small tweaks too; going through the list. One of the bigger items is a ranking system for the levels. Not a complicated task, but there are only 4 (work) days left so I need to consider each additional feature carefully. Testing needs to be done too. Better not forget!

Cheers.

[HuvaaKoodia]

The logic works and the "special effects" are in. Three different enough endings. Polish is needed of course. I do think I need to sink a couple of hours over the weekend on a few features. That's fine, not burned out just yet.

95% done? Will stream about the current progress and release plan on Sunday at 17:00 UTC (Twitch as usual)

Cheers!

[HuvaaKoodia]

Worked on the settings menu and the level ranking system over the weekend. Took time off too, don't you worry (mom!)

The Beta milestone stream revealed some bugs, so fixed those too. Good progress. Now to finish the darn thing!

Cheers.

[HuvaaKoodia]

It's about time. Added a much needed animation to the beginning of the level. The characters appear from the portal. Very simple, but makes a big difference.

Testing tomorrow. More tweaks, fixes and polish too.

Cheers.

[HuvaaKoodia]

Uneventful last two days. Yesterday's testing revealed many new issues. In fact by the end of the day the TODO list had grown longer than in the morning. Could be demoralizing that, yet I'm unfazed! The finish line is just there!

Hard work whittling down the list. Down to 5 critical tasks, mostly small'ish graphical things. Should not take more than a day, tomorrow that is.

The initial deadline whooshed past. Unlike some, I'm not a fan of the sound it made. Friday is for final testing, setting up the store page and such. Next update at that time. Release hopefully over the weekend.

Cheers!

[Pixelologist]

Half of the links in the thread don't appear for me. I'm seeing a grey circle with a white bar in the middle where content should be.

[HuvaaKoodia]

Half of the links in the thread don't appear for me. I'm seeing a grey circle with a white bar in the middle where content should be.

Yeah, that is really annoying. Image links from both Patreon and Google photos (out of all things!) seem to rot really fast. No idea why (and they are just fine for me in Firefox, but not in Opera or Chrome?). Will need to find a solution; trying Drive next.

Thanks for the report.

[HuvaaKoodia]

Down to last three tasks, all prose related. One is a trademark of mine, an epilogue based on what happened. It is big impact for little effort; gives the campaign a weightier ending and the characters some closure.

Yesterday worked on the actual ending. It was missing some logic and graphics. Loads of graphics really, but I managed it in the end by reusing as many existing assets as possible. Quite happy with it. That might just be relief speaking.

Today got Release and Demo build logic done. Credits menu and asset licences are also in. Completed the last graphical tasks (cursor, icon, GUI stuff), finally done with visuals!

Testing revealed easy-to-fix issues in the save system. It reset some values in the world state when using the restart option. A save system which erases progress isn't quite up to par.

The project itch.io page will not take a lot of time to get together so if all goes to plan I'll get this wrapped up by Sunday. Last bit of overtime for the last bits. This better not carry over to the next project!

The name is still a mystery... That one is coming down to the wire too, unfortunately.

Cheers.

[HuvaaKoodia]

Last prose is in. Testing, tweaks, fixes, all checks out.

So, why no release yet?

The name eludes me!
My usual give it no thought and it'll pop out of nowhere tactic has run dry. Will actually need to sit down and thing about it; what has the world come to?

Cheers.

[HuvaaKoodia]

Spent hours rummaging through books, collecting fancy looking words, mixing them together; trying to find that special name. All for naught! In the end settled on plan B. Came up with "Save the Civies" a few weeks back, yet didn't initially like it: Too simple!? Coming up with nothing but generic trite and pretentious vapidity changed my tune. This one is to the point, easy to remember and, most importantly, fits the project!

Broke my promise of no more graphical assets, I just had to draw a proper title. Turned out ok even if rushed. Had to change the GUI colors to match it and while at it swapped the font too. The old one didn't have proper lower case letters which got on my nerves.

Ran some more tests and found dozens of small issues. Fixed them all meaning more testing is needed. I know I keep pushing the release date, but tomorrow really, really, should be the day!

Cheers!

[Pixelologist]

I thought civies were just a slang term for clothes you wear when you're out of uniform? Those being your civilian clothes. I can't find any other definition for the word. Are you sure you want that in your title?

[HuvaaKoodia]

I thought civies were just a slang term for clothes you wear when you're out of uniform? Those being your civilian clothes. I can't find any other definition for the word. Are you sure you want that in your title?

I hear your concern. Civies is short for civilian clothes in the army/police/(any organisation with uniforms) for sure. Civil points to civil engineering (and being civil), Civic stands for a bunch of companies, Civ is likewise and acronym for many things (the Civilisation series, for one). There doesn't seem to be a solid abbreviation available and I'd rather not go for "Save the civilians"; sounds too formal/war-related to me.

I'm calling the little triangle folk Civie people, so that's a backwards justification.

If people find the name odd or funny at least it sticks with them. We'll see how it goes.

[HuvaaKoodia]

No more promises; This is the day, last moment issues and all!

Play the demo here!

Fixed many small issues and even critical bugs in the last two days. The second boss battle was broken in quiet a few ways. Seems stable now, hopefully it stays that way.

The aforementioned last minute issue came in the guise of Unity WebGL audio. I've had issues with it in the past, but not this one. Audio mixer is not supported by WebGL so I quickly hacked the music volume to be based directly on the AudioSource. Problem is, changing the AudioSource volume does not update the actual volume until it hits 0. Basically smoothly interpolating from one track to the other doesn't work.

Made a test project and, after some experimentation, realized that changing the other properties of the AudioSource forced the volume to update too! In the end I managed to simplify the fix down to setting the pitch of the source to 1.01. That's it, volume updates normally now! Oh why do you do this, Unity? I'll take it, though. The demo works and that's enough.

Phew. What a project! Schedule delayed for over a week with quite a bit of overtime in the end. More on this later, now I need a day off... (Next project starts on Friday; there's no rest for an indie dev! Monday! There seems to be enough time, if the second project goes faster... IF...)

Cheers!

[HuvaaKoodia]

A release showcase, an explanation for the delay and musing on the future projects as well.

Will uncover some project statistics by Sunday.

Cheers!

[HuvaaKoodia]

Some project statistics for those interested in ...statistics. I know you people exist!

Hours

Official work days: 53
(5 days per week for 11.5 weeks)
Official work hours projection: 424
(8 hours a day)
Official "effective" work hours projection: 318
(6 hours a day)

Actual work days: 60
(weekends too)
Actual work hours: 554
(weekend hours, overtime, everything)
Actual "effective" work hours: 428
(actual hours minus lunches, breaks, etc. Slightly estimating here)

Looking at the numbers, there sure was a lot of overtime. In the last two and a half weeks I worked every single day (even if for a few hours). That's too much.

Will tone it down in the upcoming projects (if at all possible).

Code

Significant lines of code (SLOC): 6265
(Calculated using this nifty tool)
Source files: 100
(Only those actually written by me, for this project)
Average SLOC per file: 63

Most SLOC in a file: 474
(MainController.cs, who else! Got a bit bloated in the end.)
Least SLOC in a file: 7
(RandomSize.cs. Changes the scale of an object at Start. Simple enough.)

Prose data file count: 37
(These contain text [dialog, tutorials, epilog] and text selection logic. Skipped by the SLOC count)

Can't say that much about these numbers. Did manage to reuse many systems, which don't count towards the SLOC count here (DLLs) which is fine.

Right. This will be the last post for this project.
Project 2 devlog is already up. Starting Monday.

EDIT (20.05.2018):
Updated the actual work hours. They are even higher than originally reported due to a spreadsheet formatting issue!

EDIT (04.06.2018):
Updated the SLOC count using this tool. They are lower than originally reported!