This week has been a fire hose of development.  It started with little to no time to work on my project until Friday came around, then development really hit the fan.

It had been slow going for me and Ref due to work, but Friday happened to be the day that we both had time to work on the project.  For Ref, as always he produced some excellent art, finishing the last boss of the first level! It was an exciting moment form me, and due to scheduling, he released all of the sprites in a torrent of art that came flooding my inbox!

This boss is the final boss and so the player is expected to fight them solo. No other enemies, no time limit, just you and the boss.  I had an original design of all the attacks he needed to have, but with this sudden influx of all the assets, I decided to take the day to redesign the boss, improving his attack patterns to be far more deadly and impressive!

I think it turned out really well and can't wait to show you all how it it looks!

Preparing for Steam

The other big this that happened this weekend is that I finally put a build on Steam! This was a huge win for me because I had silently been dreading the process.  I remember with my last game Frisbros that it took me weeks to figure it out because there were so many little hitches to get everything in place.  This time around though, I spent a good deal of time learning steam terminology and build requirements which really helped me through the process.  Here's a full list of everything that was added.  If anyone is interested, I'm thinking about writing up a separate step-by-step guide of how I did all of the steam preparations because it seems like the internet is light on content on how to get the ball rolling:

• Integrate with steam SDK using SteamWorks.Net api wrapper
• Use https://github.com/needle-mirror/com.unity.platforms to set up multiple build configurations for steam/itch, windows/mac, demo/full release versions of the game
• Design a Wishlist button that redirects users to the steam page to wishlist the game (pro-tip, I used the in-game browser so that users don't have to sign in to click the wishlist button.  Apparently this is enough to drive people away from hitting the button!)
• Design a google doc form for player feedback and added it to the game: https://forms.gle/zSvE2j6BFAsbH2pj8
• Learned about Depots, Builds, Packages and created default/test branches for the main game and demo
• Created a demo page separate for the demo!
• Set up Cloud Save functionality and learned about file path overrides for cross platform saving
• Tested and debugged the mac version of the game on a very old macbook air
• Created environment variables using player variables to dynamically build demo/steamapi connected versions of the game

Like I said, this weekend had been a whirlwind of preparation and development.  And the funny part is I didn't even do the things that I set out to do which was to create screenshots and a trailer! This sounds like a next week problem.

Next Week

Next week will hopefully be a bit more of a planning week for me.  Ref is away on vacation so my biggest goal is to submit write ups for him to have a full list of the remaining demo bosses we will be creating.  This will hopefully give me time to think through their art styles and provide references so he can really cook up something spectacular.  

Outside of art, I've also been talking to a musician who we might welcome aboard to start writing tracks and SFX for me.  If I'm able to get the ball rolling next week that will be a huge win in my opinion.  The game is now in desperate need of an audio make over.

For steam, I want to get all of the odds and ends sorted out the spilled over from this week.  Although I made good progress, I really do need to provide some screen shots and trailers just to get the store pages up.  I think that's starting to become my most important task so that I can start accruing wishlists.

Lastly, in terms of game development, I'm eager to make some headway on the second level.  I really want to tighten up the attack telegraphs for the enemies in that level and balance the enemy manager.  I think that will be a good use of my time since art will be on hold for just a little while.