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vitalash
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« Reply #100 on: October 03, 2024, 04:21:07 PM »

There are now a new kind of drop table, where each item can roll. Instead of the normal weighted one.

They are a clearer "1 in X" roll


The dungeon now scales based on how many players are in it.

There are sound effects for spells and the dungeon fights.

There are some unique items. The Iceblade is worse than Pearlblade at base damage, but it spawns 9 ice spells to cause massive area of effect damage.


There's more work I can do but it's also important I start getting this game out there...
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vitalash
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« Reply #101 on: October 04, 2024, 04:07:55 PM »

Marketing was my focus today.
I made a fun YouTube video




I started concepting trailer ideas. I think I was really into wide angle lenses and camera moves today. Who wouldn't be! The only thing is you have to re-paint your backgrounds every frame once you start moving them...

Going to animate a bit tonight.
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vitalash
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« Reply #102 on: October 05, 2024, 04:29:13 PM »

I painted a cute logo with soft colors. I like the victorian style where you can explore it; there's substance. I added a few lil guys doing things that you wouldn't immediately focus on and understand without some exploration.


I painted a background


This is a cube jumping I did last night.


I did more artsy things for exploration.

I didn't do too much. The logo is a good step forward. A trailer only need be about a minute long, and the animated portion only need be like 5 seconds. The tough part is finding direction for it, when I have been so disconnected from the craft of animation for a while...

This idea that 10% of the time you spend on a project accomplishes 90% of your goals... A lot of the early development of this game was very tight in spending 90% of the time accomplishing 90% of the gameplay goals.
I think only 10% being productive is only true in exploratory work or when one is not working hard...
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vitalash
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« Reply #103 on: October 06, 2024, 05:15:35 PM »

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vitalash
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« Reply #104 on: October 07, 2024, 04:59:52 PM »





Made a cool trailer. Today was a productive day; constantly working and bringing ideas. It's viewable on steam too https://store.steampowered.com/app/3147260/World_of_Squares/
The animated portion of the trailer was done with TVPaint/Clip Studio Paint/After Effects/Premiere Pro. The whole trailer was edited with Premiere Pro/Audacity.

I like this soft colors and soft edges look that the new logo has.

Going to work on some steam library assets tonight.
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vitalash
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« Reply #105 on: October 08, 2024, 05:37:11 PM »

The Winterdungeon update is out and World of Squares is now in alpha!



Today was meant to be my marketing day but I spent most of it writing the in-game news viewer.

The news format is like this.


The game pre-processes the format at startup using these structs, allowing it to draw a scrollable area, and center images that are larger, and scale images that are too small or large.
« Last Edit: October 08, 2024, 05:46:40 PM by vitalash » Logged

vitalash
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« Reply #106 on: October 09, 2024, 03:37:56 PM »

Story time: I logged in to town-square because I was going to restart the server to have it reload the website html. I saw another player was online, and decided to teleport to somewhere remote so I would have a place to write the server restart message. Right next to lava in a deep ravine I found. There I started writing as I continued the file transfer for the new package. Colors started flashing as I saw a purple blob moving into the ravine I was in. My player looked like a bunny, and I blended in, but there was no hiding the fox. So I did a heart emote, only it was not a heart emote but rather a blush emote! They're right next to each other! I quickly move to correct it with a heart, but now it looks like a blush+heart which is 1000x worse! They just keep on walking like nothing happened, so I hoped they thought I was a bunny (bunnies do rarely do the blush emote if you brush your mouse cursor across them). They grab a horse from the horse shrine in the ravine, and I watched them gallop off into the distance. Moments after they left my sight they logged off and I was free to do the update. Maybe I scared them with my blush+heart!
Then, I restarted the server.

I looked into advertising today. Need to get approved on a few accounts. I budget $100 for advertising. I bought a few ads for a test run, then I'm going to look at what did best and put the rest of my budget into that.
I looked into Reddit, Twitter, and two YouTube accounts (I believe what your account is recommended affects it? I read that on YouTube last time I ran an ad)

The graphics were upgraded today. Cookies n' cream is the vibe. No more pixels. Pixels and harsh lighting weren't what I wanted; I wanted soft warm shadows and smoothness.


Because I made a game trailer and took 10 good screenshots for the steam page, I feel some angst about it not accurately reflecting the game that I realized I want to convey. Cope is that the pixel look was good for screenshots, but how true is that really? I'd want it to be accurate anyway; I like this (old) new look.

https://worldofsquares.org/
The website has a new background picture to reflect that. In fact you can see here I tuned the camera closer to the player:


I added a terms of service and privacy policy to the website to make Reddit happy to run my ad. I basically want to be nice to consumers but don't want anything *legally* enforced (I don't agree with any law systems in the world) so I kept the TOS contract very in my favor.
Code:
(I'll try to be friendly to users and helpful with customer support, but the terms of service exist to keep disputes out of the legal system)

Terms of Service
(By downloading and playing World of Squares you agree to these terms.)
You may not World of Squares to aid in illegal activities.
You may not World of Squares content without permission (email support). (It's okay if you use World of Squares content for your personal monetized youtube videos.)
Accounts may be terminated at any time for any reason without refund.
Subscriptions may be canceled at any time for any reason without refund.
Services are provided without warrenty.

Privacy Policy

Data you share is never sold to third parties.
Data you share is used to carry out services the app provides.
Basic profile details including username and playtime may become publicly viewable stats in future.
Anyone in-game can see your username by hovering the eye-dropper over you in the add-friends menu.
Your in-game messages will only be viewed by you and the player they were sent to.
« Last Edit: October 09, 2024, 03:56:32 PM by vitalash » Logged

vitalash
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« Reply #107 on: October 10, 2024, 03:41:05 PM »

Yesterday I pushed the warm look to the game.

Today I made a color correction for the next update: shadows tint to blue when you are in a winter region.


I felt sluggish today. I have a good idea for a bird pet that I started programming.
I drew some sprites for the bird. I think they are cute.


It's non-obvious what will make this project succeed. In that uncertainty I usually just work on what I think is cool. I might as well; I'll work as hard as I can, and re-invent myself if it doesn't work.
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vitalash
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« Reply #108 on: October 11, 2024, 04:32:45 PM »

I didn't work on the game today. I suppose today was a weekend for me.

Handmade Hero has been a bit more draining being two hours a day instead of one, but two hours is not bad in the grand scheme of things; probably the issue is mental fatigue.
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vitalash
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« Reply #109 on: October 12, 2024, 04:46:54 PM »

I did light work on the game; I started on the pet bird. You will click your bird, then an item, and then they will fly over and bring the item to you.

When the bird is highly trained, they will be able to bring back more than just items; they'll be able to grab other players, enemies, pet foxes; almost anything except maybe bosses.

I added more fine-grained audio adjustments. In future this will persist after closing the game.


Some thoughts while working a project always come up; but the way we respond to them is another matter. If it's blind optimism for the project, then we keep working and train ourselves to think about what we must. I suppose I'm already imagining what comes after this project, considering that it might not have a niche as I thought it would.
My skills may be better spent elsewhere, if they lead to nothing here. I'm guessing success is largely a matter of how we direct our energy; not merely a matter of being skilled. There exist a few days that contribute to 90% of what makes something cool. That is well-spent energy.

Hm, imagine extrapolating that idea to the potential of a human and spending their ability to learn?
« Last Edit: October 12, 2024, 04:53:33 PM by vitalash » Logged

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« Reply #110 on: October 13, 2024, 04:03:10 PM »

I'll be taking a break from working on this game necessarily every day because I think something good may possibly come of that. Could be a short break.

I'm realizing this game may not have an audience other than me; which would be strange because all of the advice I've ever heard is "Make something you like, and then there's bound to be some people like you;" I'm going to step back from that paradigm and think a bit; it could still be a good paradigm for me when applied well, or possibly not.

Smiley
The game is playable at https://worldofsquares.org/
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vitalash
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« Reply #111 on: January 01, 2025, 04:18:58 PM »

The server is back up.
The server bricked itself, no ssh nor game server working, except that its web server was running. So, in recovery mode I zipped up the whole server package to "ship.zip," renamed it to "assets/site_background.png", then visited the website on my computer. This downloaded an 80 megabyte zip instead of the background image, which let me recover the files and start a new ubuntu system which works.

Next time I make a multiplayer server, I am hopefully NOT going to use linux! Nor windows, nor any of this other bloated stuff. All I need is to run some arbitrary code, and send UDP packets. None of this other junk!

This game doesn't interest people in a state that I thought it should, so I'm working hard on my next projects! Learning what people like and want and need.

I may engage this plan in a month or few, but right now I'm just really busy programming my next projects. All progress will be kept:
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vitalash
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« Reply #112 on: February 09, 2025, 06:38:13 AM »

All new accounts now get free membership Gomez
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/3147260/view/546726403014394863?l=english

And I fixed the game not working on someone's AMD graphics card. (Game development advice: With OpenGL drivers, AMD graphics cards always break, NVIDIA cards always work. So you want to develop on an AMD card to catch the bugs.)
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