- Early Access Patch #6 | v0.7.13 - 14 July 2024
Fixes - The game now pauses when a menu comes up, stopping gameplay inputs from processing while paused. Features - Varied board sizes. The game now alternates between the standard board and larger board size. - Scoring system. The player now gains points for each win. The score is reset to zero when the player is defeated. - The game can now be reset (albeit in a rough manner). July Roadmap (Revised) Week 1 (Release on July 7th) - (finished) Tutorial - (finished) Fix some bugs Week 2 (Release on July 13th) - (finished) Implement gauntlet system with win streak and varied board sizes - (finished) Fix some bugs - (finished) Refine UX Week 3 (Release on July 20th) - Add 1 new enemy-only card (Hierophant, a ranged grappler) - Improve Smart Draw system and computer opponent decision making - Fix some bugs - Refine UX Week 4 (Release on July 27th) - Add 1 new offense card (The Hanged Man, a…
- Roadmap & Early Access Patch #5 | v0.7.07 - 7 July 2024
Developer Note The patch will be delayed until tomorrow (Sunday, July 7th) because of 4th of July celebrations setting me back. This patch will introduce a tutorial. I got some feedback and I feel that it's more important to get a tutorial in the game than it is to address more bugs (but there are more bugs I'll be working on next week). Fixes Solved #issue/0046; Ending the turn after a victory will disable the end turn button, but it will still be the player's turn. This issue was unintentionally caused by a change in the button code which deleted a return statement. With this, buttons would always function as though it were the player's turn. So the player could end the turn when the match was over. Features Implemented a feature to modify the board size during runtime, which was necessary for creating a tutorial. I thought this would originally take me an entire week, but I was able…
- Early Access Patch #3 | v0.6.28 - 29 June 2024
Developer Note - It wasn't enough to warrant a post, but I made a patch yesterday to fix a couple bugs. - The patch today addresses one big bug. - The patch tomorrow will come later in the day, and the July roadmap will be released soon after. - I tried something new for today, which was documenting my coding process as I worked through the issue. It's probably too verbose for patch notes, so I'll share it elsewhere. Fixes - I fixed #issue/0044, which was a bug that occurs when an enemy telegraphing unit is displaced such that its engagement will target an empty tile. Rather than maintaining its telegraph, the telegraph will disappear. If the player then moves a unit into this empty tile, the telegraph will not reappear but the engagement will still occur at the start of the enemy's next turn. This issue required a substantial rework that took me all day to diagnose, but I'm happy to ha…
- Early Access Patch #1 | v0.6.26 - 27 June 2024
Developer Note I addressed a few bugs and issues, but there are still more to work on. I will have another patch released tomorrow night around the same time as this one, which will be dealing with a few more issues. Patches will continue to be daily until this Saturday, at which point I'll switch to weekly patches (one each Saturday at midday). Fixes SOUND: There were several factors contributing to loud/harsh SFX, two of which being: the audio manager would play multiple sounds at once (sometimes 6 sounds) due to how many listeners were triggering SFX for various actions; and the default volume was too loud for most computers. I have reworked the audio manager to limit how many sounds can play at once, and I've also reduced the number of listeners that trigger SFX to be played. Finally I lowered the default volume and adjusted the volume spectrum to be overall lower than before. FAILE…
- Patch In Progress - 26 June 2024
Based on feedback and playtesting, I've made a list of about 20 issues that need to be addressed as soon as possible. I've already worked through some of them and will continue working on them every night this week after work. My plan is to release a patch every Saturday at midday, but I'm going to release daily patches until this first Saturday (06/29) to get the game to a playable state. That's all for now; I want to keep this short so I can focus on getting today's patch finished. I will get a more formal roadmap posted this weekend. Thank you to everyone who's taken a part in the Early Access release of this game and I'm grateful for anyone who sticks around to see this unfinished game reach its end in August.
- Demo Patch (v0.6.11) - 12 June 2024
Bug Fixes Fixed multiple bugs which broke the game during the undo/redo process. The issues were related to the implementation of visualizing the user's selected unit. The previous implementation was duplicating the unit itself, but the new implementation only duplicates the visual elements, without any of the scripts attached. This is why I shouldn't write hack code, but I'll never stop trying. Your decks should be random now. The first set you play would always have the same deck for you and the opponent because I had set a specific random seed for random number generation. It's useful for testing, but boring for actual play. Feature Rework The Kaiju's grapple engagement attack feels too nonthreatening, so it has been reworked to now telegraph an attack as well as do its standard grapple. New Content I've added the Crow to the game, which is the only unit that can move multiple tiles…
- June Blog - Setbacks & Compromise (Also Next Fest) - 10 June 2024
Big News A demo will be out today for the Steam Next Fest! Development update I won't pretend I was ahead on development, but now I'm far behind after cutting my hand while helping my family move. I'll spare the details and share a sketch of the wound: Luckily I'm left handed, but I've been unable to use my right hand for nearly two weeks now. The demo needs to be reviewed in a few days, finalized in a week, and the game needs to be ready for release in three weeks (I wrote this a few days ago, if you're reading this today, June 10th). The initial idea for this game was already humble, but now it's even more so. There was meant to be deckbuilding, degrees of difficulty, card descriptions, and far more visual flare. Life has brought a lot of set backs over the past few months, but I'm determined to release this game on June 24th, 2024. To do that, I had to be realistic and minimize the g…
- Side Effects of Improvement - 16 May 2024
For the past month I've been dedicating a lot of work to the core mechanics of the game; refining the command system, giving more depth to the prediction system, implementing AI, removing errors, and more. I would love to dive into that code, but honestly I don't have the mental capacity or time to explain it all. Instead I'll talk about art, because I've been working on that too. Crow I've been working on the last few offense units for the game and I'm really happy with the end results. I am a coder first and artist second, so to see my art improve has been very motivating. But it's disconcerting too. With each piece, my quality gets better. The Knight I am getting better because I am deliberating practicing my craft between each new art piece, and the process of making these new pieces gives my mind a lot of new tricks to think on. But as I improve, I look back on my old work. When I…
- Failure and Progress - 18 April 2024
Failure and Progress I've pushed back on writing this update because it means admitting failure with the demo deadline for the Deckbuilder Fest. The goal was to have a demo ready for that. On the Saturday before the event, I realized I needed to humble myself and postpone the demo. I had been crunching all day-- and most of that week-- but the demo was not where I wanted it to be. The biggest issue was the amount of bugs in the game. These bugs were creeping in because I was neglecting to design and test my code prior to implementation. Instead I was racing to get features "finished" through improvisation. I was trying to shortcut progress to reach my goal. After I decided to give up on the demo, I updated the store page with the new content I'd made-- primarily visualization of the game Model and a system for telegraphing actions. With that done, I tried to look at why I had failed to…
- Demo Next Month (March 25th) - 27 February 2024
Demo On March 25th, the Deckbuilder Fest begins and will go on for a week. I'll be participating in this event with an early demo of A Witch's Game. If I can add more I will, but the demo will only have 8 cards. The purpose of entering this fest is to test out the core mechanics, so I'm not too worried about the amount of content on display (even if that may hurt people's perception of the game). Roadmap The game currently has the core mechanics finalized in code, but not in visuals. If you're familiar with the Model View Controller (MVC) paradigm, I've finished the Model and am now working on the View, in regards to the core mechanics. Below is a screenshot of the current in-game View: The marketing material is just smoke and mirrors: the in-game mechanics have been placeholder hexagons up until now. But in the screenshot above, I've implemented the tiles along with visuals depicting t…
