.....well that sucked!
I mean, I guess it wasn't ALL bad. There were certainly some high points towards the beginning of the year. In an overall summary though, it's hard to pretend 2020 wasn't just a huge flaming dumpster-truck careening down the street with no regard for whom it runs over.
With all that said, what actually got done this year? I want to touch on the positives and negatives of 2020, and speak on what's happening with Cloak and Dasher coming into the new year.
The Good
Early Access Release
In the past I've touched on how rough of an Early Access Release Cloak and Dasher was, but it'd be a foolish mistake to pretend that this wasn't an accomplishment in its own right. This was a huge deal. Until this, I'd never actually shipped a game to the public, and I couldn't be prouder that the game was released in a fairly bug-free and very polished state!
Community Feedback
Beyond just the release, the game has gotten some really solid feedback from people early on. This translated into some very quick patches and modifications to the game that I believe have created a substantially better product than where it started. I couldn't be more grateful for the feedback!
PAX
I never miss an opportunity to mention PAX East 2020. It's hard to believe sometimes that this happened this year, I mean, that feels like a decade ago at this point! That said, this was the highest point in my gamedev career. I met so many wonderful people, and saw so many wonderful things through PAX East and the Indie Megabooth. Until then, I'd never felt like a legitimate gamedev, but more like I was just a hobbyist. This showed me that there is a path to my dreams, and I will stop at nothing to ensure my successful walk on that path, no matter how long it takes.
(Unreleased) New Features!
I know you all hear this a lot, but I am so excited for the next patch of Cloak and Dasher. You aren't going to believe the new features coming down the pipe. The game structure has been completely overhauled for the better. This next patch is going to have so much stuff!
- Complete Rework of Adventure Mode
- Better Leaderboards
- New Unlockable Hard Levels (over 50 made so far, around 80 total planned)
- Achievements (In-Game and Steam based!)
- Unlockable Hats
- Retooled Marathon Mode
- An uncountable number of QoL changes and optimizations!
I know this patch has taken a long time, and I'm so thankful for your patience and support. I promise, it will be worth the wait!
The Bad
Real Life
It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. The world has changed, and it hasn't been for the better. To those who have lost something special this year, my heart truly goes out to you. So many have been substantially more impacted than others this year, and in retrospect, my level of impact hasn't been that severe. However, I don't believe it's healthy to one's own mental being to consider your losses as "insubstantial" just because they're not as heavy as another's. Mentally, this year has taken a toll on me. In previous years, I'd say I spent about 40% of my conscious life in my apartment. That number is now closer to 95%. For the past 9 or so months, day in and day out, my scenery has been largely unchanged. The only reason I go out is for food and supplies, otherwise, I'm here, always.
As someone who's largely an introvert, I actually thought this would be kind of cool. Working from home? No more commute? No requirement to be social outside of meetings? Where do I sign up! This was a trap. I truly never realized just how much my life had grown outside of my standard introverted bubble. Beyond that even, I'd never realized just how much my life needed a change of scenery. Spending month after month in the same place with next to no variation is dangerous. Your whole life becomes a blur, days become weeks become years.
Game Updates
I somehow believed that being at home all the time would up my productivity on the game, but in actuality, it couldn't have been more opposite. I had this grand vision of booting up my computer at lunch time and squeezing in at least a half hour a workday working on the game. Wow, I don't know how I thought that was going to work out. In actuality, my motivation to do anything was completely shot. Lunch time would roll around and I'd usually just get some food and take a nap. Then, my workday would complete, time to work on the game, right? Nope, just close the laptop and take a nap.
I think I've been depressed for a while. Depression is insidious like that, it creeps up on you steadily, and you don't see it coming until well after it's gotten hold of you. I've had some bouts with depression before, but it's still so hard to detect.
I've been very fortunate, I have some really good friends whom have stuck with some online gaming schedules with me. It's done wonders for keeping me social and happy, and I really recommend anyone else feeling isolated these days finds a gaming group to meet with. While it hasn't done much to help the game updates, it's done wonders for keeping my out of full blown depression. Shoutout to Doug, Nick, Andrew, Tom, the Pirate Plat crew, and the whole HeHa squad, I love you all.
Cloak and Dasher Updates
Progress
Alot of progress has been made towards the next update. Let me break down where we're at for the next update.
Next Update Progress
- Overall: 80%
- Programming: 85%
- Levels: 72%
- Art: 95%
- Audio: 99%
Let's Get Technical
This next update has brought many technical challenges along with it. As such, it's taken a while to get right. I want to ensure that all the changes I make will create a resilient engine and allow for future updates to go smoother.
Achievements and Unlockables
This is a neat one. Two major feature in the new update is the need for Unlockables and Achievements. I wanted an Unlockable system that would recognize when a player does something and in exchange unlock something (a level, a hat, an achievement, etc...). In the past, my game's saving system was not very smart. It was only tracking if a level/chapter was beaten, and what their best time was. In order to achieve (ha, puns) a system that could unlock various things for various reasons, I needed to track ALOT more things.
To do this, I created two concepts called "SessionData" and "SaveFile". As I'm sure you assume, "SaveFile" is data that is serialized into the game's save file. Everything from beaten level/chapter times, to stats on which achievements are beaten and more.
SessionData, on the other hand is much more interesting. This is abstract temporary data that can be attached to just about anything in game, and modified as needed. The important thing about this data is that it can be pulled into the Achievement System quite easily to allow for interesting achievements! As an example, I wanted to create an achievement for completing a certain level in the game without being spotted by any Patrooligans. In order to achieve this, I created a SessionData object called "PatrooliganSessionData" which is attached to every Patrooligan. Included in this data is a count of every time that specific Patrooligan has spotted the player. Now, in my achievement system, every time a Level is completed, I simply have to gather each instance of "PatrooliganSessionData" that exists in that level and check to see if any of their "spotted" variables are greater than 0. If none are are, we did it!
But let's go deeper. What if we want to create an achievement for completing an entire chapter in Marathon Mode without defeating any enemies. In the old system, this would be tricky. The easiest way would have been to create a specific variable for the mode that tracked if any enemies were killed, and if so, set it as true. Instead, I modified MarathonMode to track all SessionData on every completed level in a Marathon Run. This means, at the end of a Marathon run, I can simply check all "EnemySessionData" and see if any enemies have been marked as "Destroyed" in the data. If not, then we unlock the achievement! This system is so versatile, it's crazy how much I can do. You can expect a lot of interesting and varied achievements which will greatly increase replay value as you prove your mastery over the game.
Hard Levels
Another major part of this update is the Hard Mode levels. I had to completely redesign the Adventure Mode and Marathon Mode UI to accommodate this, which was no small feat. I've talked about this a lot, but on a technical level, this involved recreating UI elements. The UI for Cloak and Dasher is actually very unique. I've written most of it from scratch, attempting to shoehorn in the standard Unity UI methods along the way. The reason for this madness is because the standard Unity UI system is HORRIBLE at accommodating controllers. At its designed for Mouse and Touch Screens at its core, with extremely limited power for tracking keyboard and controller inputs. For Cloak and Dasher, a game that is largely expected to be played on controller, this is completely unacceptable.
I have worked very hard every step of the way to make Cloak and Dasher able to accommodate Mouse, Keyboard, AND Controller at the same time, even in tandem if needed. It's made working with the UI a great challenge, but in the end, I think this has given the game a very strong foundation for portability, which will help a lot when I finally do a Switch release in the future.
Anyway, back to Hard Levels. I had to design a system that could easily Link levels so they'd have a Normal and Hard variant. This was a trickier thing to figure out than I first thought it would be. In the end, I decided to go with a model where Chapters contained a set of Structures, and those Structures each contained a "Normal" and "Hard" level. In some ways, this is not ideal, as it means anytime a level is referenced outside of the Chapter, it doesn't have a direct link to it's "hard"/"normal" counterpart. Luckily though, that hasn't proven to be a direct need yet, so all is well on that front. In the future, the Structure may be replaced with a ScriptableObject which links the levels together, but I haven't seen a direct need for that... yet...
Leaderboards
One of the most important changes that has been requested by nearly everyone is for better leaderboards. Thanks to some help from an SQL expert friend of mine, I was able to create MUCH more diverse Leaderboards. Now instead of only being able to see the highest scorers on each level, you can see: The Top 5, The nearest 5 scores around your score, The Top 5 Among Your Friends. In addition, all of these scores now show the ranking of each score you see, so you'll know exactly where you place in the leaderboards!
Portability
Everything I've done for this game has had Portability in the back of my mind. So much so that I've actually proven Cloak and Dasher can be played on Android!
A friend of mine recently got me a very cool Controller for Christmas called the Razor Keshi, and with it, I was able to prove that Cloak and Dasher does work on Android. I never bothered to implement a virtual controller for the game, so without a real controller, you can't move the character, but it's super neat seeing the game fully playable on Android considering I've not made any specific efforts to make it work on the platform. This is where the UI stuff I mention above has payed off nicely, as well as optimization efforts I've made since day 1. I'm not making any promises here for an Android release, but it's super cool to see this in action, and it bodes really well for a Switch release!
Closing Thoughts
2020's almost over, and I think that's something we can all be thankful for. For many, it's a year we all just want to forget, and I think I'm firmly in that bandwagon. But even despite all the terrible things, some real good came out of this year. Cloak and Dasher may have progressed slower than I'd like, and my mental state may not be in the best place, but there have been snippets of good all around. In darkness like this, the bright spots really do shine, and those are what I hold onto the most. Take care of yourselves everyone, and here's hoping for a much brighter 2021.
-Kevin