I've just pushed the first of a few updates for this week. None of which should realistically effect anyone playing the game already but they're mainly prep work for anyone who needs to tweak things.
Where we're up to
Rather than just put a menu together and be done with, I've decided to move a lot of stuff into .ini files so that folks who want to tweak a bit more can do. Given how much I'm moving into those files, it's a not difficult work but definitely laborious and a fairly time consuming job so I'm pushing it out in increments as and when I get stuff done. Hopefully by the end of the week, folks should be able to tinker with everything I want to change then over the next few weeks I can put a menu together to throw some presets in there for those who just want to push a button and get on with things.
Also, as someone asked to be able to tweak keyboard controls just so they can actually play it, that's part the reason I pushed it out this way so that they can change that. I'll write a full guide up in the forum once I've got everything put together but in the meantime, there's a couple of tweaks already exposed that might benefit a couple of people. Please note that until I've rolled everything out, each update might run the risk of overwriting any changes to tweaks.ini so I wouldn't fiddle with much more at the moment.
Where are these files kept?
Anyway. If you navigate to Users/[name]/AppData/Local/ on your PC, there should be a folder labelled DRM_SteamTestVer3. Open that up and inside you'll find three files.
keyboard.ini / stuffthegamesaved.ini / tweaks.ini
If you need to change the direction keys, open up keyboard.ini and you'll find:
keyright="D"
keyleft="A"
keyup="W"
keydown="S"
Just change the letter in quotes for the one you want to move in that direction and you're set.
I wouldn't recommend playing with tweaks.ini just yet but if you need to set the game to open in a window on launch search for
windowedmode="0.000000"
and change the first zero to a 1 and save. If you need to change it back, just put a 0 in there.
Also, if you're on of the folks bothered by the big display box between stages, you can switch that off entirely by searching for
boxon=
Set it to 0 to turn the box off. Set it to 1 to turn it back on again.
If you mess anything up whilst fiddling, don't worry - you can just delete any of the .ini files and they'll regenerate when you start the game. Obviously if you remove stuffthegamesaved then you'll lose progress so try not to mess with that one, right? And yes, yes, nothing is encrypted so you can cheat and put your own score in there but why would you be such a daft head to do that? Unless you're trying to impress your mates or something then go right ahead just don't come running to me if they find out you've faked it.
Source Code
When DRM first went on sale with Humble, it was available with a snapshot of the source code. I've ummed and ahhed about how I wanted to distribute it afterwards given that things were complicated slightly by the code being in a separate tier from the game (not something I anticipated going in!).
Should it be DLC, should I charge for it, isn't that cloud nice over there? Were all questions that I mulled over. Should I even put it out there on Steam or elsewhere or...
Well, it's been 4 months now and the bundle is long gone, the source no longer available to anyone who would want to look through it and that's not really what I ever wanted. I don't have time to support the source code or guide folks through it in any way so I didn't want to charge for it. Adding it as DLC seemed like overkill and might give the idea that I can/will support it or offer advice on it. So. If you navigate to your games library, right click on DRM and browse local files, you can find the snapshot there.
It is an incomplete version of the game from a few weeks before launch and has no hooks into the music. You're welcome to use it to learn from or to make a game with. All the assets aside from the music (because I don't own that) are free for you to use in your own games as well. No credit is required if the game you make with it is free, I would appreciate one if you're trying to sell it. I'd also very much like it if you dropped me a line to let me know what you're making/what you've made with it if you do anything. That'd be nice. I'm happy to give what you're working on a kick round as well because I like showing off other folks work, y'know?
If you're worried about whether what you're doing is OK, just drop me a line and I'll happily have a chat to you. Just like I say, please don't ask me questions about how anything works because I'm snowed under!
You'll need a copy of GameMaker Studio to have a gander round it anyway and I look forward to seeing what you make.
Until next time, thanks once again for all the patience and support. It's appreciated. I'm very thankful for how nice everyone has been over the game, even when there's been things that they think could be better with it. You lot are the best.
Cheers!
--Rob
