Devlog - January 2022 (Patreon)

Sorry that this might be a really long post, but basically this is my first doing this Devlog thing and I am basically trying to cover the entire month. By February I plan on posting a Devlog Biweekly so future Devlogs should be like half/less the length of this post.

So this first month of the year, along with the first month of making these big changes on my support sites to make me more active and offer better rewards for my supporters has been good, but rocky in places.

First, let's start with the development of Wrapturous Adventure. Being the start of the new year was really hoping to get the development really moving, but some stuff got in the way (I'll get to in a bit) that made me lose a couple of days that might have been used in developing the game. Development has been done to the game but for the most part, it mostly changes the coding so communications between systems would be much more manageable/easy.

So the best way I can explain this is basically in my game I have different systems communicate with each other, the example I can assign a Button to communicate with a Door which of course means when the button has been pressed the door will open. This system was simple in a way, it was sending a message to a system and the message contain 1 of the 2 options Activate & Deactivate. Now when it comes to more simple systems this works pretty well, but since the game has a good level of puzzle elements this system has problems that lead me to create workaround systems. While these systems help solve the issues they can make some things more complicated than they needed to be. So I realized I really need to change this, so with some time I was created a new system that expanded the options from 2 (Activate & Deactivate) to 7 (Activated, Deactivate, Toggle, Rotate, etc) and if I need to add more options they can be done in ease. Of course, this also required me to rewrite some of the codings from my systems so they would be working through the new setup. Overall while this took some time to re-code and I do need to look at other systems that I might still need to re-code, this will help me in developing the level of the game and remove the need to code workaround systems.

Now back to what led to the delays to do some other codings was based on a few factors some for good, some bad.

Starting with the goods, one was of course heavily focused on trying to improve my support websites. Even though I have been using these sites for some time now, I am not very skilled when it comes to figuring out what can drive supporters and be able to create stuff that would give people added reasons to support me. Plus I am not the most social person, and I trying to change that. So far the changes have seemed to be working decently, but we'll see if the beginning of February is really gonna show if the changes are working.

Another good thing that cause some delays is that I ended up getting the budget I needed to upgrade to a desktop PC (been using a 6-year-old Gaming Laptop). To make sure I get a good PC that fits the specs I need, I had to spend a good few days looking at sites that offered Pre-Built systems (with the options to upgrade/change parts) and order one. I have heard about some nightmare stories when it comes to ordering a Pre-Built PC but gotta just hope for the best and hope I get the PC soon.

Now onto the bad thing that delays things, this one can arguably be good cause it leads to a breakthrough and that is the usual creator's block. While the idea is clear in the game, the thing that holds me back is making sure the game's actual design works and avoids repetition and frustrations. For a long time now I have really focused on Metroidvania level design and trying to figure out how I'll make it work. However, I looking through all possibilities. I  realize that that level design might not be the best for this type of game and so I am gonna be focusing on a more Linear structure which might be the best way to go for this type of game.

Anyway, I think that is all for this first Devlog. I am thinking that instead of just randomly posting little news pieces, I'll be making these Biweekly Devlogs that cover a lot of what's happening.