29 May 2024Developer post

Learned a lesson

I wnat to summarize my thoughts on something and my thoughts on this experiance: I made a few notable mistakes when I started out that I have learned from now: 1. DR4X is way too ambitious. If I want to finish it, it will take another 4 years at minimum, to be honest (and for som

I wnat to summarize my thoughts on something and my thoughts on this experiance:
I made a few notable mistakes when I started out that I have learned from now:

1. DR4X is way too ambitious. If I want to finish it, it will take another 4 years at minimum, to be honest (and for some reason, I still want to do that, even though it's highly likely I won't finish it).
2. I released into Early Access too early. Everyone says to get your Steam page up ASAP, but no, actually, Early Access isn’t for prototypes or alpha games anymore. It's nearly complete, already compelling games that just need a few bug fixes nowadays—it isn't what it used to be. Feels like a trap.
3. Architecture.I just didn't design it to be extensible enough for it to stay easy to expand later (it's clear now that I still haven't finished Chapter 2 ewven though i think its perfectly doable).
4. The price was way too high for my first Steam game. I have now rectified this.
5. I put too much work into little things no one will ever run into, that kinda stuff only matters once your game has eyes on it. Because people can't see that atention to detail with a couple screenshots and an old trailer. This was clear when i got that refund note about the dog thing the other day that i reacted to.
6. It feels like the only real option for marketing is to have a big YouTube channel. You can see this with many of these indie devs now—they get visibility because they already have a YouTube audience.
7. No one is Tarn Adams; you can't do what he does.
8.I didnt let wishlists build up before releasing into EA

If I were a smart man, I wouldn't just lower the price, i would stop completely and focus on my new game. But I am not a smart man I am a foolish man who still wnats to finish this game for some reason.
So, this entire post is kind a pointless in the end.,

For transparency, here is my current Steam info:

This actually isn't bad for a first Steam game, especially one still in Early Access. But the sales were never really the goal. The goal was to make a good game (which I think I succeeded in) and to tell a story.

A story that only 0.4% of players have actually gotten to the end of, so that part was an epic fail, as you say, heh.

I also have about 400 copies sold on Itch, so in total, about a thousand copies sold.
This means that the game isn't really a flop, at least not for a first game on Steam. Even though I'm kind of doom and gloom about it, it's not like the end of the road or anything. Achieving these numbers as a first-time dev is a solid start, and there's still plenty of room for growth and improvement. So while it may not have reached everyone I hoped it would, it’s far from a total failure.

I also like i said, want to keep working on it even if my mental state is terrible heh i just wanted to share the lessons i have so far learned, so if you are striving to be a game dev, you can learn from me.

Anyway TTYL.

Original post

28 May 2024Developer post

Plans, and changes: DR4X Devlog 5/28/2024

My stressful work project is still ongoing, but after June 3rd, it should be all right and no longer as stressful. This means game development can pick up again! I haven't been idle, though. I have loads of art ready for new achievements that I want to add. I plan to include an a

My stressful work project is still ongoing, but after June 3rd, it should be all right and no longer as stressful. This means game development can pick up again!

I haven't been idle, though. I have loads of art ready for new achievements that I want to add. I plan to include an achievement for every campaign mission victory and unconventional victory to see how far folks get so i know what to iterate on. This is a challenge because pretty much no one is playing dr4x so i cant really see my changes have an effect in real time. Man, its almost like you should tell people this game exists and stuff. ;)

Some Game Dev Wisdom:

I can't afford to hire real playtesters, and I only have about four close friends who are all bored of DR4X at this point and way more interested in the side project. The pains of releasing on Steam too early—I certainly learned my lesson there. Everyone says, "get that Steam page up ASAP," but what they don't tell you is to wait until you have a real game before releasing into Early Access. You're competing with more fleshed-out games at that point. Early access on Steam is no longer for alpha games and proof of concepts; it's pretty much complete games that only need bug fixes.. so releasing what is essentially a prototype on Steam is absolutely not the way to go. If I had released DR4X in its current state, it would have been much better received.

Also, a reminder: I'm going on vacation from June 8th to the 17th, so there will be no development during that week. I apologize for the break, as I really want to get stuff done on this game, but my priorities have shifted in the last few weeks due to the work project and stress, along with some new inspiration that struck me.

So today, I'll make a pretty detailed devlog to hopefully make up for it!

First off the changes:

-I gave up on players finding out how to get the good or bad endings without further tweaks, and so now, nearly every single sign in the game hints at what you need to do to push the story forward, most of that just means hinting at unconventional victories, though some of the unconventional victories aren't required to progress the story and so on those missions it hints on what you need to do to progress the unconventional route, this idea came from outer wilds, i realize that to most people signs are just lore, but in DR4X that is not the case, so now i have made it clear that every SIGN will hint at how to progress the story by making each sign hint at what you need to do.
(Outerwilds has been inspiring me a lot lately Click here to see my side project)

-Made it so the outlines arent quite as thick anymore

Yeah, that’s literally the only stuff I got done. I know it’s kinda sad. But no worries, dev will pick up after my (much-needed) vacation. In the meantime, I’m working on the way less difficult to work on side project, but I should get those achievements in this weekend.

Now for the fun part of the devlog!
The ramble on future plans!
We all love this section right?

Untrustedlife ramble session!(Patent pending)

You all like honesty, right? Here’s some honesty: DR4X is kinda burning me out at this point. The only thing keeping me working on this is that person (you know who you are) who leaves a comment on every devlog about how much they like the game. Kudos to you! I don’t want to say your Steam name, but you know who you are. And also all the positive reception to these recent devlogs!
Honestly its amazing how many people upvote the devlogs so its like "wow, there are people who like dr4x" aint that a thing heh (Or they just like reading my rambles lol)

I've had this problem before, around this same time last year! The vacation will absolutely help in that regard. But I’m wondering if what I should actually do is take the current version of DR4X, rework it a bit, make that into a "free demo," and get feedback that way. Meanwhile, I’ll lock all future content under the paid version. I'm also thinking about permanently reducing the price to 5 bucks until the full release, where I will make it 10 again.

How would people feel about that? The current version has a full game essentially, you can play through and get a good or bad ending to the first chapter of the campaign, so all i would really need to do is tweak those ending popups! And just kinda clean up the game in general for it, so it is more appealing and less messy, then take that version, and work from that cleaned up version for all future updates.

This is a similar plan to how i want to get my side project on steam.
Except in that case i would release it as a free game (the tech demo) than work from that "base" to make a proper game with a beginning and ending and a meaningful story.

So here’s my quest for you guys! Let me know in the thread below what your thoughts are on this plan. If I get a decent amount of comments in favor, I’ll make it happen. If I get no comments or more against it, than out of respect to current owners i'll come up with another plan. However, I should note that I might do the same thing but just cut out the skirmish content or something from the demo in that case.
Let me know!

Future plans

In terms of DR4X development, the plans still haven't changed. Here's what's coming up:
-Those achievements should be in this weekend
-Popups for all the new liminal map artifacts
-More artifacts for "normal" maps
-Make game help you out a bit more
-Full steam ahead on Chapter 2 (which is tied to the new noderooms maps), as that is kinda the only thing that will keep me sane.
-There might also be some tweaking of techs. The techs feel kinda redundant after I've added the tile effects, and they are clunky, so I might work on improving that.
-Improving the UI more
-New trailer with all the new UI etc

New Youtube Channel

I have set up a DR4X only youtube channel. Subscribe if you can and i'll be posting some video devlogs (Maybe!) there aswell as videos of me playing DR4X and other dr4x related shenagins!
https://www.youtube.com/@DR4XTheGame

Bella Update

Bella is doing a lot better, she seems to be mostly back to her old self, all she needed was some benadryl! (Vet said she has terible allergies!)

So thats whats up!
Thanks folks!

Original post

21 May 2024Developer post

An interesting refund note...

Hello folks, today I'd like to talk about something. I recently received this refund note. Now, I know, I know, it's not common practice for devs to point out specific refund notes like this, but I think it's important to convey something here. And I'm not a normal dev. To whoeve

19 May 2024Developer post

Whats been going on? DR4X Changelog! 5/18/2024

Hey folks! I apologize for the lack of communication over the past month. My "real life" job has had me working on a big project for the last several months, and the workload on it has increased significantly in the past month. I volunteered for the project, so it's my own fault,

Hey folks!

I apologize for the lack of communication over the past month. My "real life" job has had me working on a big project for the last several months, and the workload on it has increased significantly in the past month. I volunteered for the project, so it's my own fault, heh.But due to the sheer size of the project (and no, I won't go into details, as I want to keep my real-life software engineering work separate from my own endeavors. You know how it is—sometimes companies prefer not to share any details to prevent the leakage of proprietary information etc.). I just havent been able to work on the game.

TLDR, I've been working from 9 am to 10 pm on this project soem days, which, as you can imagine, leaves little time for game development.

On the personal side of things, my adorable doggo Bella hasn't been as energetic lately. She used to beg me to play every five minutes, but now she only wants to play once a day if that. However, she's been eating well (she eats super fast, heh) and enjoys her daily walks. Her temperature is normal too, so the reduced energy might just be due to the heat. Still, it (and her seeming stuffiness) worried me enough to schedule a vet appointment for Monday. So I've switched to a clinic vet (appointment-based, not walk-in) because the veterinary hospital felt too impersonal. And Bella's odd behavior makes me think they might not have done a thorough job. This means she'll be getting a full physical on Monday, and I'm sure they'll be able to tell me if anything's wrong. I also want to get her up to date on her vaccinations.

Also, i will be going on vacation starting on the 8th and be gone for the week after, so no game dev will happen that week either.

Still, I have managed to get SOME stuff done.

Changes:

-All the planned noderooms liminal portrait art is done, which is a total of 30 images.
One Example:

-Added sound for donut (If ya know you know)

-More names are handled in operator name checker.

-Can no longe name the operator after some more important 'characters'

-if you name something empty string it now gets a special name

-Added new possible win condition/goal to noderooms maps with an interesting twist to it.
--Its for capturing all the "nodes" and has some other things it does heh

I also managed to get some work done on my less intensive side project, NoUtopia (which might get a new name). However, this will remain a side project as long as I'm working on DR4X, heh.
But I have plans....

https://untrustedlife.itch.io/no-utopia-a-postmodern-space-rpg

Oh and i've also gained a crippling starfield addiction after their latest update lol

Original post

27 Apr 2024Developer post

New intro and shorter load times. DR4X Changelog! 4/27/2024

I think i've gone through like 4or 5 different styles of changelog at this point. Heh Anyway. Hi there. Man that last devlog got a lot of upvotes. It is good to be honest I suppose! I want to return to bi-weekly changelogs so here's one today! Some major updates: I added a new, p

20 Apr 2024Developer post

What happens when I die?

In my last devlog i was like "the next couple weeks should calm down so i can work on the game more" or some such thing to that effect. Well I was wrong. Work stayed super ridiculously busy this week, delaying game dev further. *sigh* Sometimes i feel like giving up ya know. Anyw

In my last devlog i was like "the next couple weeks should calm down so i can work on the game more" or some such thing to that effect.
Well I was wrong. Work stayed super ridiculously busy this week, delaying game dev further.
*sigh*
Sometimes i feel like giving up ya know.
Anyway.
Put out a tiny update today,
New batch of art is in, its great woo.

(There are 3 new ones but i won't paste them all it will ruin the fun!)

Changes:

-art woo

-made tile effect descriptions a consistent text size

-buffed rosebud tavern more

-Improved hints for things, ya know none of these weird things about DR4X are unintentional right? They all have meaning they are all pointing to something. Ugh
Added more hints as folks clearly need more guidance towards finding the good and bad endings. There are points where i literally S=G P=X E=Q L=L L=L it out for ya ya know. Like 8 times or something. Heh, maybe not 8 times, Its hard to get people invested in something so cryptic.

*deep breath*

So, I kinda know how the next chapter will go now. I've got outlines for all of them, but getting there is the real hard part. Looks like it’ll involve some noderooms antics as that seems to have gotten some good feedback from folks, but you’ll also need to have gotten the good or bad endings—something only about 0.6% of players have managed so far! This might mean there’s a spot where players are dropping off, or maybe the unconventional victories needed for these endings are just too tricky to figure out. Either way, i’ve got some tweaking to do!

This small update will start to fascillitate that, though it updates the ending you get with new hints. SInce i know many of you have gotten those endings so wont get these popups, heres a hint for those who got a bad ending (AFAIK no one has gotten the good ending yet, I know one person got very close though)

You are playing on a terminal in DR4X, if you know his name, TYPE IT THERE (On the main menu) and something will happen and also do that during the ending sequence (something happens in both places heh).

For those who have only gotten a neutral ending:

The dr4x codex can guide you to all the endings and hints at what you need to do, some of it is encrypted, so get out a pen and paper and if you want to figure out the secrets, actually try to figure it out, figure out the ciphers etc. There are enough hints there that you don't need to figure out the cipher itself and instead can essentially treat them all as alphanumeric subsitution ciphers. And to get the ending you dont even need to figure out the ciphers at all, just read the signs and hints. the ciphers just make it easier

I will be adding hints to the chapter 1 unconventional victories to nodenet, if you know what that is heh good job.

Also, ive decided ill be adding achievements for each mission, unconventional and standard, as it will help me get an idea as to where people are getting stuck. And ill also do the same for a bunch of skirmish goals.

...
I've also decided that Chapter Two will be locked behind achieving either a good or bad ending in the first chapter. If you haven't unlocked either of these, you won’t be able to access this new content. It’s as straightforward as that. Neutral endings will keep it locked. The reason for this is that achieving these endings is a crucial part of the game—perhaps the most important part. Therefore, I simply can't let you proceed to the next chapter without having secured either the good or bad ending to Chapter 1

The truth is, it’s becoming a bit frustrating that no one has figured out the way to do this yet. I know these are challenging, but I genuinely believe you can figure them out and this was meant to be a TUTORIAL campaign. About a thousand of you have downloaded DR4X across all platforms, including Itch.io, so there’s a solid amount of people who could dive in and could help others actually get to the cool stuff. That said, maybe we’re facing a collective hurdle here.

This isn’t just about progressing through a game—it’s about pushing the boundaries of what’s possible within a game. I'm here, rooting for you to break through these barriers. And if i get frusterated enough i might just say fuck it and make a guide myself.

As a small indie dev, it’s already tough enough to get anyone to care about what I make. Let alone to actually put effort in to figuring out the deeper parts of it. I know that if someone managed to record the good or bad endings and the process to get there, way more people might be willing to give the game a shot. And if not, well, I guess I’m kinda doing it for the art. I'm lucky to have a day job that pays well enough that I don’t have to worry about whether a lot of people play my game—it’s just a passion project. I'm lucky in many ways; I own my own home, have an adorable doggo, a literal white picket fence, and a supportive family, although some relatives used to wonder why I was creating roguelikes instead of 'cool 3D games.' . Maybe it’s a passion project with puzzles so difficult nobody will figure them out until after I'm gone or something, but heck, it would be so cool if someone did.

Anyway, skirmish updates are still a thing, my focus isn’t shifting. It’s just that the focus varies based on my motivation and what part of the game I work on at any given moment.

A lot of indie developers gain attention by making YouTube videos, but for me, given the small free time I have, it's really just a choice between working on the game or making YouTube videos. I can't do both without risking burnout and potentially quitting altogether. So I don't like to think about "how can i get popular" its a waste of mind power tbh heh it just makes me depressed.

I used to make videos regularly; they were unscripted. Maybe I can go back to that? But then again, the time I would spend on videos could (As stated earlier) be spent working on this massively ambitious game. I'm 28 now, and I can't do this forever. I don't know how someone like Tarn Adams stays sane. I used to think it's by switching tasks within the overarching project to prevent burnout, and doing 'end of month projects'—that approach worked for a while, but I didn't keep it up. Again, every second spent on something else feels like a wasted second in terms of DR4X development. I feel like I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place.

I want to work on DR4X, and that's pretty much all I want to do. If it means languishing in obscurity until I die, that's okay. I've made something cool—at least, it's cool to me and to some people maybe, unless all those positive reviews are just people being nice, which could be true. It's something I've poured my heart and soul into, 4 years of it. I'm happy with how the project has turned out. I'm proud that people like the noderooms stuff. I'm just happy anyone at all in this shitstain of a world gives my coffee-adled brain the time of day at all.

Did you know? There's a message hidden in the game for someone really special to me, who I met when I was 12 years old. I don't even know if they're still alive or if they will ever see the message. But it's there. And so is DR4X, I guess. I dont think they were the videogame type heh.

I also lost a friend of mine when I was in university. There’s a message for them in the game too. They'll never see it, of course, but it’s there for them, a monument i guess. He was passionate and really good at counter strike, heh.
I guess you could say he was TENACIOUS, at least.

There's also a message in the game dedicated to the late wife of a friend of mine. She passed away a few years ago, and she will of course never see it. Even though he (the friend) helps me on this project by doing 2D art, I'm not sure he'll ever see it either. Wild, right? In fact I think that if he reads this, this will be the first time hes heard that that is a thing.

I'm tearing up just thinking about it, to be honest.

Maybe DR4X is a message to me.

If I died tomorrow, would I just be a nobody? Would the game disappear into the ether? I don't think anyone would even bother archiving it TBH. Or maybe, many years from now, someone will appreciate the art. I would guess not, but...

I have to do it for them. ya know.

Original post

14 Apr 2024Developer post

DR4X Devlog 4/14/2024

Hey folks! My "real life" work has been quite tiring the last few weeks so I haven't gotten much done since the major update. Things should calm down in the next few weeks though! Changes: -Loads of new art, and removed all noderooms placeholder art Some examples: -UI improvement

DR4X

Updates & announcements

DR4X Is Out Of Early Access

Sorry Speedrunners...I fixed a bug.

More tweaks...

Fixed major bug with ending sequence.

"DR4X" Art STream

Learned a lesson

Reduced DR4X Price for foreseeable future.

Plans, and changes: DR4X Devlog 5/28/2024

Some Game Dev Wisdom:

First off the changes:

Untrustedlife ramble session!(Patent pending)

Future plans

New Youtube Channel

Bella Update

DR4X Art Stream and DR4X Complain About AI Art Stream

An interesting refund note...

Whats been going on? DR4X Changelog! 5/18/2024

Changes:

DR4X Art stream.

New intro and shorter load times. DR4X Changelog! 4/27/2024

Changes:

DR4X Art stream.

What happens when I die?

Changes:

DR4X Art stream.

DR4X Devlog 4/14/2024

Changes:

Plans

Bella Update

DR4X Art stream.

DR4X NodeOs Art stream.

Itty Bitty Hotfix

Changes: