Friday Rambles 2023-07-28 (Patreon)

It's the Friday Rambles for 2023-07-28.

I was able to start doing a few hours of work each day starting this week. It's still a super limited time, but hey, now I'm actually feeling a little productive, for once.

I pushed out a hotfix for Endless Monday: Dreams and Deadlines, which fixes a few bugs. The game is so full of spaghetti code it's almost impossible to predict where these stupid little bugs will happen, but still, we haven't really had any super critical game breaking bugs for a while, so at least that's that.

I've learned a lot making EMDND and I'm applying my learnings to the new uhhh "engine"? "framework"? that's powering the next game. I'm just starting from the ground up, taking the salvageable parts from EMDND and basically rewriting everything else. I'm using a library for finite state machines to keep track of state and now my code is so much cleaner and easier to maintain. Previously everything was a mess of if statements and flags and it was a nightmare to add any new functionality to anything at all after a point, which is also why there were so many unexpected bugs for all the edge cases my code didn't account for. And I'm doing less experimentation and learning for super basic stuff (since I already did all that with EMDND) and I already know the basic functionality I need for the game, so I have a better understanding of how to organize my code from the start.

Anyway, I'm not under any delusion that the next game will have super clean and maintainable code, but at least it won't be a huge pain in the butt to add new things and it should be easier to prevent a whole class of bugs like the game softlocking when a player opens the settings menu during a scene transition or whatever.

This is totally not an excuse to put off writing the scenario for the game. Because, uhh, it's all stuff I need to do anyway!

Above: I rewrote all the code for this, and it's using like 90% less lines of code, while also working better in almost every way

It's good to be doing work again, even if it is only a little bit per day.

I'm putting together a list of things I want to add to the next game, as well. I know for sure it'll have Penny's phone with Lumber Lass 2: The Loggening, and another ridiculous Hana/Operations Team sequence. I'm approaching it like a sequel in a movie franchise (like Mission: Impossible or 007) or a game franchise (like Ace Attorney) where you have a continuation of the story with a series of expected set pieces, with a familiar cast of characters plus some new people. Which means it won't deviate TOO much from the previous game's formula, but I'm still planning to also add some new game mechanics to fit whatever the story will be (I have a few ideas that I'm percolating). 

So a direct sequel might limit the audience for the next game, or maybe it'll expand my audience for both games, if it's good enough...

I might also just release a standalone Lumber Lass game (based on Lumber Lass 2: The Loggening), and sell it for 2.99 or whatever, because who cares.

Above: Almost there... Still 100%...??

In the meanwhilst, people are continuing to play, and enjoy, EMDND. ;_;

Only 92 more reviews till the coveted "Overwhelmingly Positive" status! Hopefully we'll get there one day...

Hmm. I think I'll have way more game updates next week. Maybe I'll even have "gameplay footage".

Above: A thing

Okay, that's it for the week. Short one, once again. Thanks for sticking around, and for your support, as always! See you next week!