Day 87
The game's out on Steam! Already, a mere day or 2 from that point, I got my first review on Steam! It's written by some what I think is Russian (no idea how they got through my language barrier, but good on that character), yet the important part is the thumbs up. That's a start, but both Steam and myself are fully aware it's going to take more than 1 review to get put on the map! Though, in addition to that, I even got an email from a "curator" to review it. For those who don't know what a "curator" is, it's essentially a more formal organization for doling out reviews. This is what I want.
I have no idea where this adventure will take me, but all I know is, I have not been this charged up since I toured Comic Con back in 2013! It feels amazing to have that hope of awesomeness! Even if it's an illusion slated to be shattered in a year or 2, I'm enjoying living in the now.
I mean, what the fuck is happening?! I've got a British marketing team and a musician all asking to contribute to my work! I know birthdays are magical times (writing this on June 10), but seriously:
WHAT, THE, FUCK!
I mean that in the most positive, electrifying way possible! I need an extreme, exclamatory expression of excitement!
Though, I need to be clear about this: for this SPECIFIC game, I want to do it ALL BY MYSELF! That's doubly because of the prominent zero-dollar budget! What this means to any would-be talent coming my way, is that I may be open to collaboration in the future, or for separate ventures. Just, not this specific one.
If you insist on lending a hand for a new game or similar, I sure hope you're able and willing to work FOR FREE! If not, then for now, don't waste my time.
So, for Saturday, I don't know if it's a sugar crash or whatnot, but I do feel "kind of bleh". It's the sort of day where all I want to do is laze around and cuddle day and night. Or play my other shooter games all day. Because I'll always have that itch to put bullets into bad guys! >:D
Also more game engine updates, but that is hopefully mild.
About Noon on Saturday, I tried taking a screenshot for the weekly, abridged Dev Diary. While doing so, the game engine felt like it needs to vomit every time it goes through updates. And, there's a reason I wanted to make a very specific dialogue box bigger (mostly for cheat mode).
12:25 PM, after the game engine got done vomiting, it spawned a bug with the dialogue variable check not being reset to 0 with starting a fresh game.
12:40 PM, one headache later, and I've started debugging that dialogue variable. Apparently, returning to menu with F1 does NOT reset it to 0, which is weird considering I don't remember that being a save mechanism. Thankfully, loading again fixes that, so it's not an issue right now.
Then I went for another break after I got the screenshot I wanted.
I need to put the voices on my to-do list, even though I'm yawning at 2PM. Would be the perfect opportunity if I weren't feeling so drained and lazy on this Saturday afternoon.
(Sunday...)
Ah, what a wonderful day for Prayer Day! And of my single-digit following, nobody's going to get that reference. I'll give you a hint: it's from a niche RPG.
Now then, Scarlet's Diary!
12:40 AM, let's see if I can do it for serious this time. (I was also thinking about the Codex book having hotkeys 1 through 4 to jump around the different sections, with 0 going to the table of contents, as a shortcut for all the clicking that'd be needed for flipping through all the pages.)
12:50 PM, speaking of references, nobody's going to get the reference at the end of the Flamethrower's codex entry. "Napalm sticks to kids", look it up. It's from the Vietnam decade, so unless you're a living Boomer or WW2 veteran, chances are it was before your time. All you need to know is, it is dark and it is badass.
Sometime later, I really want to bring my writing powers to bear by focusing on character chemistry. But not this time.
1:15 AM, I got distracted for about a quarter hour. Finished the flamethrower page, then my curiosity about cartoon characters on social media threw off my groove. See, it's hard enough to stay focused when I don't have irritations physically knocking on my lair's door.
1:40 AM, after fire and acid are done, now we're getting to my favorite: COVID! And yes, NOW we're REALLY getting to the LORE of the game!
I don't care what parts of the game you see or skip, but this is absolutely one that I MUST highlight:
2:10 AM, and there's 1 weapon to go (2 if you count the S.S. FUCK YOU!). Oh, and for funsies, the Colonel's special Rail Rifle gets a mention, for lore reasons. Yeah, a good way to summarize this entry is "MORE LORE!"
2:50 AM, made some progress, but it's hard to not get distracted because I'm laughing so hard about COVID and SCHOOL being these epic forces!
3:30 AM, almost done with Colonel's Gun, but the distractions are piling up, and I feel the urge to take a lunch break...assuming COVID itself is not in my house.
4:15 AM, break's over. Let's see if I can get back on track, though I'm not feeling too sharp right now. Let's try and finish this up, just with Colonel's and Violet's guns, then off to implement in the game engine.
4:45 AM, work takes a while mostly because I'm enjoying the groove, and really deep in thought on how I can inject Scarlet's Codex/Diary with LORE! Seriously, those who comb through it at length will find some "fun facts" about the universe and how this alternate timeline ties into the REAL world. (Some of the most enjoyable flavor text, however, is "encrypted" by Scarlet's handwriting, in ancient runes only the educated nobility can successfully transcribe.)
5:10 AM, changing my mind...there's 2 more weapons I want to give special mention: Earnest's "FUCK YOU" missile salvo, and the M117 Swagger dubbed the "Queen of the Rifles".
5:35 AM, OK guess I'll leave Amanda's for later and meet myself halfway. Enough drawing and writing, let's try and add all this new good stuff to the game! That's 8 pages into Scarlet's diary codex drawn. Would've been 9 if I could stomach the Swagger, but as I said, that'll have to wait for another day. I'm already not too far from a full-time shift this Sunday.
And this is where all the "if-then" nesting gets really complicated. There needs to be one for each weapon.
5:55 AM, the thing to remember about this nesting is that the "right clicked" section should decrease while the "left clicked" should increase, and try to keep them organized based on "which page should come right after; if that one is not unlocked, then check for the second-closest, and so on". It's dawn, I see the subtle light out my window, and here I am dragging and dropping code logics.
6AM, that should take care of all the "right page turns", so now we can test if this idea works. Left page won't work right now, but I'm not testing that for now. This is also going to presume that cheats are used and everything's already unlocked.
And yes, everything works, first try. Now for left clicking, it's likely the same just in reverse.
6:05 AM, everything works! Again, first try! Though, for a REAL challenge, I'd have to test a "Fragmented" approach - like what if someone unlocks one companions but not the other? I can't be bothered to do that right now, so to wrap up, I'm going to add codex shortcuts for each of the 3 or 4 sections. I say "3 or 4" because the missing 4th is "Neutral", which would have entries on bystanders like Tom and Heather. But because those characters are not yet incorporated into the Codex/Diary, this whole section is currently "Not Applicable".
It's not yet clear in-game, but the shortcuts go like this:
0 "Table of Contents"
1 "Section 1 Good Guys"
2 "Section 2 Neutral"
3 "Section 3 Bad Guys"
4 "Section 4 Weapons"
6:33 AM, man...I could really feel my brain going "Bleh" and numb near the end of that, but now, it's time to test it. If this looks good, then it's time to get the video ready for you, and along the way of sending out this Dev Diary, I'll have to (hopefully briefly) clear my inbox. Gonna be honest, I somewhat get nervous, because each time I go there, it's a gamble of "nothing at all", "scumbags", or very rarely one of you showing support for me.
Thank goodness, looks like it's all working. Recording time.
Also thankfully, emails today are looking quiet. Could've gone worse, to be honest...could've gone better, also, but absolute silence is (for good AND for bad) par for the course. Maybe because it's the weekend, but whatever the reason, it's comparatively relieving.
Though looking through old-ish emails, Steam had closed my ticket about the game build with saying that German law "may prevent" the display of swastikas. That's fair, though I do not apologize for that because part of my artistic vision is to take the ballsy route of making an antihero out of what mainstream sees as villainous (even if for fair reason). So screw Deutschland, they can censor my game all they want, as my creative freedom and standing by that is far more important to me. Besides, not like I was ever planning on translating this outside of English, anyway!
(Yes, I know, the whole goal of this game is to punch censorship in its metaphysical, nonbinary face. Well, unless I were actual god-tier like the fictional Colonel, I don't see how I can beat a whole culture's wincing towards its own history.)
Point is, as long as I can do my own thing, I really don't fucking care!
Back on track, for final distribution on Steam's end...I noticed there's a consistently single-digit number of people who actually READ the Dev Diaries.
Last time I put it publicly on Youtube, but sometimes, it has stuff in it that may not go on such a highly prudish territory...which is why I take the (SLIGHTLY) more private avenue of cloud storage instead. That's what this link is for. It's this entry's video!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CEtV1_ydwqoMvjimp9tdHu9Z0sujycMr/view?usp=sharing
And now, I return to rest and playing video games...shooting terrorists for fun.
I really need to cuddle with an adult human female. What does it take?!