TL;DR
- The Gambit is out! Almost…
- Minor progress with the Alchemist’s Castle remake
- Web games are fun!
- Bumper Tanks strikes back
- I had a good night’s sleep for the first time in years!
Yes, I know I’m late for this post. But there is a reason besides my laziness! I was hoping to see The Gambit released on the Addicting Games. It’s not, but I was assured it will be released “after the holidays.” Hopefully, it will be available next week but I don’t know that for sure. I will announce it on Mastodon once it’s live.
Previously on Devlog…
Last month I set four goals. I had partial success with the two of them. And the other two… Well… I totally forgot about them… Perhaps I need to set a reminder this time.
The good news is I’m done with The Gambit and there is some progress with the remake. I did experiment with a few different solutions including Unity’s physics and shapecasting. Spoiler: both of them suck!
My major problem with Unity’s 2D physics is the instability. They have a hard time staying stacked and are overlapping, and bouncing when the player jumps on top. Perhaps this system can work for chaotic gameplay, but it doesn’t feel right in a pixel-perfect platformer. Before you ask, no, changing settings doesn’t help. Check out Unity’s showcase demo if you don’t believe me.
My second solution was going back to roots, and using raycasts, like I did in the original. To be more precise I tried using shapecasts instead of raycasts. While it almost worked the performance was even worse than the original. I didn’t find it worth to optimize it further.
Finally, I decided to go to basics and implement my own collisions with blackjack and hookers AABB and integers. Collisions are precise, stable, and performant. And I haven’t even start to think about space partitioning for optimization! There are a couple of small issues I would like to solve. For example, when pushing a box forms a gap between the player and the box. Relatively minor thing, but it’s quite annoying. I don’t want to see it in a “perfect” remake!
Fun and web games
Out of curiosity, I decided to play some web games. If I’m to license my games I probably should see the competition after all. I was surprised both in a good and a bad way.
My first surprise was to see some very low-quality games. I wouldn’t bother to put them on my website even if they were game jam games. Then I was surprised to see some very high-quality ones! I hated the fact I didn’t think about them first! Like, check the Six-sided Streets, for example, it’s brilliant!
In between the two surprises, I thought that Super Drift Racer could work as a great web game. So I added a progression involving a bunch of cars and attached a story to each of them. If everything goes according to plan it will be published on Addicting Games.
I bumped into a tank issue…
A couple of months ago Arvis Games decided to take Bumper Tanks out of my hands. I was very happy since I had no intention of adding proper online multiplayer functionality. Unfortunately, they asked for my help due to a deadline. While I don’t enjoy working on the game anymore I do want it to succeed. And I believe it can. It’s really fun to play. So I will be working on it for the next few weeks. Meaning I won’t have time for the Alchemist’s Castle remake or a new web game… That is unfortunate because, for the first time in years, I’m feeling creative and energized! It could be because I got a good night’s sleep!
Are you drinking coffee? Yuck!
Is a sentence I never thought I would say. But I quit coffee and here we are! And the next day after I went cold turkey, I had a good night’s sleep. Which is weird because I thought I was sleeping well. Yes, I was a bit stiff and tired in the mornings, yes, I had trouble waking up. But who doesn’t right? Me without coffee apparently!
It’s been almost a month since my last cup. I still can’t get over how good it feels to wake up energized and happy! The best part is, I didn’t have any withdrawal symptoms. Horror stories about constant headaches were a part of the reason I never attempted to quit before. I’m very happy I did now and my only regret is not trying it before!
TODO
So let’s talk future. Even though I feel energized and rested, Bumper Tanks do suck my soul… I don’t expect to do much this month. I think I can write the documentation and a blog post about my new UI solution for Unity, though. And hopefully, I will wrap up the Bumper Tanks chapter in my life. Everything else will be a nice bonus.
- Wrap-up Bumper Tanks
- Write UI Manager documentation
- Write a UI Manager blog post
See you in a few weeks!