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[augfuturetg]

​Dev Log 8/6/21

Working on implementing items has actually been quite a task. I ended up doing a couple other things while implementing the items into battles because it was such am overwhelming task. For example, I got all of the armor upgrades in and added the dialogue for the Mage, Thunder to give the player hints on where to find the armor trainers. Anyway, the items turned out to be really intense because, although at first it was only busy work, I ended up needing some complex conditionals to check for all of the status ailments for stronger potions/curing items. Which means I needed to add in an entirely new switch and weave that into different parts of the game which checks to see if the player has no ailments and if they have even one ailment then they are no longer healthy. This is necessary for when the player uses a restorative when there is nothing to be cured.

Also, I've found a bug caused solely by the game's engine that doesn't seem to have a reasonable work-around yet. I might have to leave it in the game when all is said and done but I spent like two days trying to figure out how to fix it.

[augfuturetg]

​Dev Log 8/7/21


It seems that I have all of the battle mechanics firmly in place now. At this point I'll mostly be testing. The testing won't be for polish yet, it is to catch bugs, make sure everything is working smoothly, to see what kinds of design decisions I can change, how much can I reasonably add, what should I remove, etc etc. Other than testing the only thing I think I really, really absolutely NEED to do is to add more sound effects and hopefully expand on the music.

The second most important thing I think I need to do at this point is make sure the game is as accessible as it can be and that it's not too much of a puzzle for normal game mechanics to be figured out and utilized. How and when to explain certain parts of the game and if those parts really need explanation, etc.

[augfuturetg]

​This is what I checked off of my list today:


X - Do a forced loss battle at the event outside of the first time at the Inn and take the numbers out of the dialogue question selections.

X - The Health Clinic doesn't actually have it's function yet.

X - Put cooldowns when the player leaves an area not when they arrive so that the status indicator changes at the proper time.

X - Remove Hoverboard from the start for proper testing.

X - try to come up with more original healing tech than liquid pods and glass bed pods.

X -Sometimes when choosing from sub options (such as travel options) going to ether the player menu or the hoverboard menu and then back to the main world screen can cause player choice buttons to overlap somehow.
​

​As I get closer to the end I can feel the pressure rising, the depth of this water deepening. This is a marathon so treat it like one. I also had to fix some text errors and display errors when transitioning to and from battle scenes. I'm working on making effects for hovering over buttons, making them highlighted and glow and stuff. I like to remind myself that I have no real programming experience, my only real skills are writing and designing so for doing all of this by myself I am doing a wonderful job. Helps to have a no script engine to work with.

[augfuturetg]

Dev Log 8/12/21

I did it! After tons of trial and error I finally found a way to make buttons have visual effects when hovered over and the button still does it's function and it seems bug free! It took like 3 days of constant trial and error T_T Why is it that the littlest things end up being so complex? I wish I could post a vid here to show it!https://streamable.com/u084uy

I had to layer a hotspot over a hotspot. It doesn't seem like a big deal but it's important that the player gets feedback from the button to know that it's working for them.

[augfuturetg]

DEVLOG 9/14/21

Okay so... I've made good progress on the game even though I have been so busy. I added advertisements (not real ones) and made them seem kind of like a bug. I'm worried that some players might think that it's an actual bug and not intended so I need to work on making that more apparent.

I've implemented most things into the game. I've added some sound effects. Mostly for button presses. I don't think I'm going to add effects for every little thing because it's only text based.

I would say the game is quite close to completion. It's been a bit of a battle, trying to wrangle everything into place myself. Much respect for solo devs. Never do I want to work alone again haha.

Mostly I only have testing left. A bunch of bugfixes, testing and maybe one or two more interesting features left. Should be done in the next two months.

Already started setting up a steam storepage. That's been a weird experience haha. Going to be fun trying to figure out how to decide what kind of trailer to make for a text rpg. Not sure how much I should invest into advertising, either. Anyway, once this is done, I will have a fully shipped, paid game under my belt. I already have paid writing experience for games. I also have unpaid development experience, like, with a team. So with this game I will have a fully shipped game with both writing and design experience, paid.

I've read a lot of about some of the problems in the industry at many companies and how that's been getting exposed. A little apprehensive, I think I want to try to stick to indie if possible. Hopefully I can find a good team to make something awesome with after this. Might take a little break first, though.

[augfuturetg]

Dev Log 10/31/21

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

My game isn't much of a scary or spooky one but it looks like I will be releasing it officially tomorrow. It will be available on steam at https://store.steampowered.com/app/1740870/Augmented_Future/.

Getting through steam, well, I'm not sure what expected but it was it's own little obstacle. Mostly a lot of waiting and a lot of me being not as familiar with the software side of things as I could be. It made me realize I had no legal stuff outlined and fixed that. Added in the basics.

But yeah. So beware if you're new to publishing a game and think it's like an upload and done well it's not so simple. There is all kinds of legal stuff like if you have a business or not, linking your financial accounts, etc etc. Nothing too bad or unreasonable. The worst part is waiting haha.

Well happy halloween yall i'll update this dev log again after the game's been released for a bit.

ALSO: I forgot to mention, and I really wanted to mention this... After I uploaded the zip file I realized it was larger than I wanted it to be. So I went into the program and started pruning the files as much as I could but no matter what I cut from it, no matter how unimportant it was, it would completely destroy the game. Which means I had to leave it at 1.46 gbs. It should be able to be smaller but?? it literally won't let me take anything out anymore so like... that's how it is I guess. First published solo made game ftw though!

[augfuturetg]

Okay so I'm posting again because, well, I can't release the game on Steam yet. I believe I have met all of the requirements but it keeps pushing the day I can release back by one day. All I can do is wait a little longer and then if it doesn't become releasable I suppose I will have to file a ticket. Once I can release it on steam I will also release it on itch.io.



Yeah so, this earliest release date keeps moving back by one day. The thing is, I'm pretty sure I've met all the requirements for this list so it should be releasable now. Unless I accidentally clicked something to restart the waiting process, or maybe a hacker trolled me?

[augfuturetg]

devlog 11/7/21

Steam still has not cleared me for release. It has been about 3 weeks since I was originally cleared through review for both the storefront and the game itself. I have sent support a message. Probably just a silly glitch or something. We'll see what happens next!

[Alain]

That sounds very frustrating, I hope this resolves soon.

[augfuturetg]

Thank you for the kind words! It has since been resolved~

[augfuturetg]

​Alright the game is up. So I decided on a price equivalent to $5 u.s. dollars after going looking through other text games, narrative games, etc etc. Looking through the different prices, I decided $5 should be a generous price for the game.

Getting the file sizes right and uploaded to both itch and steam was more difficult than I imagined. I talked about this preciously but for some reason any time I tried to trim the game file size it would break whichever version I was working on. So I had no choice but to leave it the way it was. It's not terrible though, under 1 and a half gigs. Just a longer download than I would like to push on people.

I will probably only make one more post about this game after it's been out for a while, just to talk about how post release went for me.