Developer Diary 20 (Patreon)

Last week I began working on revamping the UI, a necessary step for implementing other important features like the energy system and the correct automatic time tracking.

I want to try to describe my process as I go from one release build to the next. Each release is like a room, nicely dressed up, with each piece of furniture and accessory carefully placed and cleaned up. After each release, I dive in to implement new assets, mechanics, etc. This often means I have to start changing the location of the furniture, changing how it looks or removing it all together. Sometimes I even have to tear the wallpaper off, or change the plumbing. The in-between process is very messy and unclean. Stuff is lying all over the place and there’s probably a few holes in the wall as well.

During this time, it’s very scary to work on my game, because I know I have to somehow clean up the mess I made and make it all look better than it did before. Sometimes I work really hard on something that isn’t even all that noticeable for you! It can be very frustrating and demanding work.

Until yesterday, I felt like I had made a mess of everything. No matter what I wanted to work on, it felt like I didn’t know what I needed to do to fix it. It all went hand in hand. The energy system, the new UI, …

Luckily, today, I was able to wrap my head around one crucial problem and was able to clean up a lot of the room. I am not out of the hard part yet (by far), but at least now it feels like I’m going in the right direction again.

It’s hard to say when the next build will come. I am working on a lot of features at the same time, and right now many things don’t have a solution. Hopefully now though, things will speed up a bit as I will focus more of my time on the game again. I can already tell you the next release will also work on mobile, although the aspect ratio will certainly cause issues.

Next up, I will be working on adding some jobs to the game, in preparation of implementing the buying system. Next week I will share more about that!

Thank you for your continued interest and I will see you next week :)

~Albatross