Two Months of Bug Fixes

Whoa, I could swear I posted more recently. Any way, all my games except Dishpig! on Android (and Windows Store) should have an update rolled/rolling out. Before getting to work on my next project I thought I would spend two months on two tasks that I really wanted in for it. (on a side note, I am working through the issues so the android build of Dishpig! will hopefully be ready to go soon).

The first of those tasks I wanted to take another pass at improving shadows. I say another because this is probably the third or fourth time I have gone back to route out what exactly is the reason shadow maps in A Woodsman are such poor quality. This time I decided to tear everything apart. I built desktop program that would like me debug everything single step in the pipeline and log it, bit by bit, layer by layer in the hopes that I could find something to help me understand better.

The results were fairly good. I found a few chunks of stuff I didn’t need to be doing, and I did manage to improve the data going in. This allowed me to reduce the shadow bias value by about 60% in the end (?). I also managed to bring in variable biasing which let me reduce the bias a little more. I spent a bit too  much time figuring out why I couldn’t push that even further to realise something I did in A Woodsman actually ‘clipped’ the most extreme value. I may eventually go back and fix that. I also resolved a few peripheral issues such as shadows showing in unexplored areas and reduced artefacts on some angled surfaces. And I put in the next step towards better shader handling into the engine which allowed me to reduce 5 shader pairs (vert + frag) to just one. It isn’t yet ideal, but it is a step in the right direction.

The second thing I did was to use some of knowledge I gained putting in full Unicode support in the app I am working on my contract to bring in better support into my engine. That basically means wrapping will work better. It also improves my support for other languages. And I was able to add in support for both LTR AND RTL. Also ‘composition scripts’ (I always forget the right term; Arabic, Devanagari and Thai are examples). Also it should resolve a subtle positioning issue I had in A Woodsman. And the way I render text should be more efficient as a necessity for some support. Now I need to find someone who can translate A Woodsman to Anishinaabemowin and I’ll be set.

Oh ya, I also fixed up a few bugs I missed before in A Woodsman!

What’s next? The new game!! I have ideas. My plan was to start talking about it soon. Maybe one I get the first earliest build? I have also been tempted to take advantage of the text rendering improvements and bring Chip’s Bricks over to the new engine. We’ll see though. I am still on contract so my time is quite limited.

Launch!

And Dishpig! is (mostly) live.

I am holding back the Windows Store build for a few days to make a couple of adjustments (I also don’t know how long their review process takes). But we should now start showing up on Google Play, Apple App Store, and Itch.io!

I am admittedly a bit anxious since I had several last minute issues on Android to do with the ad system so I will probably be watching things closely and trying to get things fixed as quickly as possible if there are serious issue (although time will be tight the next two days).

Delays and much feedback

So as is apparent, Dishpig! Is still not live. My last round of playtesting was very productive. By which I mean I ended up with a lot of stuff to fix (two bugs basically took more than a week to deal with) and various bits that still need improvement. Folks are seeming to like it more and more though so that is good. I am holding off on setting further launch dates until I am feeling a little better about the state again, but hopefully sometime in June it will go live. If you are interested in playing, tests are still on going (I am VERY interested if you have an iPhone 6+ too; not sure if later + devices have an issue it has). Just go here.

Loose Ends

Was out for a bit so sorry about the missed updates, there is a new dev log on itch.io! Probably the most exciting bit is I have a rough launch date. Aiming for the end of the month; and barring anything intervening probably on May 17th.

Beta 2

Beta 2 is on its way out with a whole bunch of improvements in messaging and a variety of fixes. There will definitely be another beta build coming hopefully in the next week or two since I didn’t get through my whole list. If you are interested in giving Dishpig! a whirl you can try here for Android devices directly. Or go over to the in-development page and fill out the form. Or even sign up for the beta testing mailing list.

Beta

And we are now in beta. I should add links. As always, Android is easy, iOS has a bit of extra work if you would like to beta test. A lot of the work this week has been visual improvements. Although I did add a new option for people on mobile builds to wash with a vertical swipe when playing one handed. It doesn’t fix all the problems, but improves one-handed play. If you want more details, there are in the devlog.

One More Alpha

I’ll be brief this week so I can get back to preparing the beta. Needed on more alpha after a major threading change, rebalancing and a new item. Only a few things left to switch to beta, so I feel confident it will be coming next week. To read more, go here for a similarly titled entry…

Oh ya, I have also started keeping an eye out for odd game programming jobs and such. If you need something done, let me know. I’ll be putting up more info ‘soon’.

Almost to Beta

Missed last week unfortunately so there are two updates here and here on itch.io.

I have mostly been wrapping things up on Dishpig!. Pushed out two more alpha builds with minor gameplay changes. I feel confident that those are the last so I will hopefully be in beta next week with a launch not too far behind. As I noted in this weeks devlog I only have a handful of things left to be ready for launch; none of it should be terribly bug (although another round of visual improvements will definitely take at least a week).

Enough UI

Probably keep this short. Head over to the devlog for more detail. Basically I managed to wrap up the UI changes (for now) and am trying to iron out more gameplay stuff. Based on the most recent opportunity for playtesting it seems the game has got something going on. No one seemed to put it down right away, despite distractions. Also apparently the messaging has improved. Still a few kinks to work out; partially thanks to the new UI.

This week I am trying out a few more gameplay changes and trying to iron out the last things I need to start beta testing. The first chunk (getting the data into a better state) is now done. Next up is some sort of tutorial to at least give you direction the basics. There isn’t a lot, but it will save me explaining it (hopefully).

UI and more UI

Work continues on the revamp. There isn’t a lot to add to the dev log on itch.io.

With regards to the gameplay changes, it has been an interesting discussion. There seems to be several competing factors. I want to keep short play sessions (which I have), yet I need a reason for players to advance in the game. The most logical way is the make it easier to go further in the game. This leads to longer play sessions though…
Another curiosity is with the way things are currently set up it seems very difficult to advance very far into game. So I have a desire to fix that so you actually can improve (both through understanding the game, and changing the game state). But… yet again, leads to longer play sessions…
Even better, some of the ideas I have had (interleaving new tables and bigger orders) may help the difficulty but again… makes the game longer…
As an aside, it is curious talking about these issues without having a playable game since I seem to think in how it behaves and thus lead to the above vague descriptions. I should really write down more of my notes some where saw that I can clean them up for posts… maybe things will make more sense if my explanations have a chance to gel.