Quick update this month! Another update will follow in a few days to share details about a special eventPaper Sky is participating in. Let’s dive in:
Slight delay for the new demo
As mentioned in last month’s update, I had some personal matters related to my dog that slowed development a bit. Because of this, the new demo originally planned for today will be slightly delayed. I may still be able to release it early to beta players for the upcoming event mentioned below.
The core movement mechanics have evolved significantly, and even a short 5 minutes demo of the new content would be extremely valuable for the final stretch of development. Player feedback will help refine the mechanics and level design before I bring in professional paid testers later on. (this was an aspect I regretted not doing for my previous game)
Refactoring leveling mechanics
A good amount of time went into refactoring systems to make them more scalable long-term. One challenge I ran into is that progression systems that modify procedural values like speed changes or adding movement abilities such as double jump, can quickly become difficult to maintain without careful structure.
Since I see myself more as a technical artist than a programmer, this required a fairly extensive refactor of that part of the codebase. The good news is that it’s now fully completed and built around a cleaner interface, which should make future iteration and balancing much easier without the requirement of having to cross-reference old code or even opening any code tool.
Dog update
My dog was scheduled for surgery last week, but a small eye injury shortly beforehand created some uncertainty about the timing. Thankfully everything went smoothly in the end, and she’s now recovering well.