Hi everybody! For this months dev post, I wanted to update you on the biggest amount of progress the game has made. It's not a lot of visual progress; so not a lot of screenshots. I have been really focused on very early alpha tests! This has helped me so much... I now have the game in a stable (Not perfect) situation and it really helps give me focus for the game.
The fishing festival requires you to have a demo, so I hope I can have a small demo that can show the game. I'm hoping this will be a good way to make sure I've actually made something fun that people want to play!
I will keep rolling out the early alpha over time (Currently on my twitch discord, in the future I will create a new discord specifically for the game), currently I'm doing this with my twitch community. I don't recommend for most people to try it at this point - I'm getting all the systems stable but it still lacks content. I'm hoping with a few weeks away from the fishing festival, I can now focus more on content and get some more upgrades/props for the store and fish to catch.
Early Alpha Testing
- This is huge! I have begun rolling out some keys to friends and twitch viewers to begin playing the game
- I had to learn how to get the game uploaded to steam, it was a bit confusing at first but now I'm used to it. It's good early training to get used to when the game is actually live or when I have a lot more people playing the active development
- Getting people to play it now has helped dramatically, I've begun building a proper gameplay loop now and it's a great way to have focus
- Lots of bugs had to be fixed, there was a bunch of issues with the customer AI that I learnt. Tons of UI issues and just making things feel better - I'm not a UI artist so its a challenge for me, my rule is keep the UI as simple and clean as possible
- Reeling the fish has been totally redone, while it was funny to have fish launched at you with full physics, people were loosing fish everywhere and it was super glitchy. It's not fun to get a big catch and then loose it! I made a more stable way of pulling the fish out and it lands right in front of you safely on the ground
- Fish catch rates are redone and super visually easy for me to see % rates and adjust them now. This will be really nice for balancing purposes. I feel like a corpo casino manager who needs to tune the winnings
Day/Night System
- Since the game has stabilized in the early alpha, I've begun moving back onto content. I just got this working this weekend! I now have a timer system that also controls the day/night lighting
- At the end of the day, you get a 'end of day report' which shows you the amount of fish sold for the day, and the amount of profit you've made. I'll keep building this up for other stats over time.
- When your end of day report happens, you spawn back at your shop. I'd like to try and animate your character yawning and blacking out/falling asleep. I'll try to add in a bed mechanic to help fast-forward you to end of day as a future mechanic!
- There is also 'Gross Profit' and 'Total fish sold' for the entire game. There is a stats page on the console near your store where you can track that stuff!
- As posted above, I've also started collecting stats now. We'll keep adding more to this. I'd LOVE to get graph charts working, I think its cool to visually see that, but no promises I'm very new to coding! It would be super cool though, I think as simulator/tycoon gamers we love seeing graph charts and numbers go up/down
- In the future I will keep building this system more. I plan on having some fish only catchable at certain times of day (Morning/Night fish for example). I am also thinking customers won't spawn to your store too early or too late at night either
Music
- This was super unexpected and I kind of thought I'd have to go the route of not having music!
- Kronlid from my community had some software and equipment and very quickly hashed out some music that I felt actually fit in the world! I finally figured out the genre that fits for the game, I believe its called 'bitcrushed' when you have music that feels a bit 'compressed' so that it fits with the weird lowrez/PSX style I'm doing
- When I do a new trailer in the future you'll be able to hear some of it! (I'd like to do a new trailer before the steam fishing fest demo)
- He hasn't posted it on his youtube yet, until he's obviously happy with the music
- Kronlids Music Channel
The next devblog I'll try to post before the steam fishing festival starts! I'm hoping to push myself before the cutoff and try to get in some content I've been really wanting to add to the game! If your interested or want to see the game live or have questions, follow my twitch and ask me live, or my socials and I'll definitely try to respond when I can!