Finally. After over two long months of chipping away, hair pulling, brain melting, question asking, poll running and even a demo feature catchup, finally, update 1.2 is ready for open bet-
W-what? The exported game doesn't detect controllers???
...
GOD F-
🚀 Sunday Devlog 25: Ready For Launch
Yo! Welcome to the last dev log that'll be discussing 1.2. After a very long and overstretched journey, 1.2 and all the goodies it comes with will be coming to the game on Steam... as soon as a bug with game exporting is fixed :P. Let's talk about what's happened this week!
Full Controller Gameplay
Every single issue and edge-case I've found so far has been patched up, allowing the game to fully support controller inputs! Here are some short gifs of me, with nothing but a controller:
-Navigating between levels
-Adjusting the game options
-Playing the game
To be honest, the game doesn't feel as fluid on a controller compared to a mouse, but you can get the hang of it after a while. To me, it feels a lot like how it felt to try the game's hard levels for the first time. It is difficult, but doable.
The main objective for this feature was kind of two-fold - implementing controller support, but also support for the Steam deck, which has been steadily increasing in popularity. Multiple people on the Encabulated Games team own Steam decks, so it was always something I was curious about implementing support for.
New Startup Screen
The startup screen gets you into the game a lot quicker, and looks a lot nicer. As opposed to two scenes before the main menu, there is now only one. Also, for some reason, it fills me with a feeling when I see the "Encabulated Games" logo surrounded in animated orange, fully filling my computer screen. Maybe I just like the colors, lol.
Other Smaller Things
While the adaptive music for all of the different albums is still underway, I decided to at least implement the adaptive music for the hyper-internet map. Transitioning the two themes was a breeze, and it sounds nice in-game. Thanks BoxLion for the music!
The controller menu is also now done - I touched it up a bit with a header and a button to disable joysticks incase you intend to move the parser across the screen with a touchpad or some other way.
Splitting The Update?
Unfortunately, maintenance on the engine is away for the next week, so if it's for sure an exporter issue, 1.2 with the controller support won't be able to release.
However, 1.2 still comes with a new galaxy map, better key assignments & customization, bug fixes and other fun doodads. Since the Steam Autumn Sale is rapidly approaching, and we do plan on putting the game on sale, the update might be "half-released" without the controller support instead. Then, once the exported game works with controllers, we can do an open beta for it.
All that aside, thank you for reading through these devlogs as the game's journey continues. My final projects for my college classes are coming up soon, so work on 1.3 will likely begin next week at the earliest. If you are American, enjoy your Thanksgiving. Thanks for reading :).
-Encabulated Games