Friday Rambles and Game Dev Update 2023-09-22 (Patreon)

A new Friday, a new Rambles!

Last week I was feeling pretty bummed after having abandoned my Game 2 idea. But after I posted my Friday Rambles, I skimmed through all my previous Rambles because I was feeling nostalgic after having done 100 of them. I talked about jogging a lot in my Rambles, but stopped about 4 months ago... So, for old times' sake, I went out for a run that evening, and, like 5 minutes after I started jogging, I realized what I want to do for Game 2. It's amazing what a little blood pumping to your brain will do for you. And I felt really good after that in general. So now I'm trying to jog regularly again, but I had to skip one this week because there's been a bunch of wildfire smoke in the air. C'est la vie.

Above: Graph Button Game not so dead, after all?

But right now I'm busy working on the content update for EMDND. I'm trying to get it done ASAP, so I can get it localized and have it released by Halloween (because there's a Halloween story element), but if I can't get it out by then, I also want to get it out before the Steam Autumn Sale.

Some minor spoilers follow, if you care, stop reading now. Thanks for your support, as always.

Above: Still called "Epilogue" right now, but it's more like a bonus chapter

The story of the bonus chapter takes place on Monday, October 30. The main premise of the story is that Penny comes in to work on Monday, not realizing there's a mandatory company Halloween party that night, and she was required to bring a costume. Uh oh! And then the typical EMDND hijinks ensue.

Above: Yeah, spoilers, Whiskey is in the bonus chapter

I have to make a bunch of new sprites. I'm working on those at super speed, and I think they look good. The writing and scripting is taking way longer, though. Plus I don't really get that much time to work on the game in general, so maybe this isn't going to be done by Halloween. lol. dammit. I can still have a Halloween themed story after Halloween is over, right? Anyway, I'm hoping it'll be about as long as a single day in EMDND.

Above: Penny downloaded the new Lumber Lass update

I spent a couple days updating Lumber Lass. It's not an actual sequel or anything (will save that for Game 2) but more like a 1.1 patch that adds a couple new mechanics.

Above: Fever!

One thing I wished while playing Lumber Lass was that I could keep Log Wild going without having to rely on rng powerup procs. So I added a "Fever" meter that builds up as you chop down trees, and you can activate it to bulldoze a bunch of trees and refresh your Log Wild timer. It gives the player a bit more agency when playing the game.

Above: Log Wild summary

After Log Wild ends, you get a summary of how many logs you collected while in Log Wild state, and then the number blows up and you collect that many logs again as your reward. Wow! Such numbers going up! Anyway this adds an incentive to keep maintaining Log Wild, so you can get a big huge Log Wild Summary number.

Of course, there is still no point to making the number go up. There are no additional Lumber Lass number related achievements. But I must say that the watching number go up with the sheer amount of stuff exploding and blaring is compelling in its own way...

Above: Me, irl

And, in other non-game-dev-related news, 

...

I guess I don't have any? I went to Costco, and bought food and stuff...

Anyway, I'm going to go back to trying to finish the bonus chapter by the end of the month. Good luck to me. I guess you'll know next week if I succeeded (or at least got close).

Thanks for your support, as always!