Posted March 08, 2024 by Grey Alien Games
#Devlog #Design #Regency Solitaire II
It's been a while since our last dev diary and we have certainly been busy! Apart from the level end screen and goals dialog most of the work this time was behind the scenes coding and testing, so there are fewer screenshots.
Here's a roundup of what we have been working on:
Goals
Level end dialog
There was a fair bit of work involved to finish the level end dialog, including things like:
Here's the final level end dialog:
Music
Music is so important to the Regency atmosphere!
We have plugged in temporary new level end music, and made the correct music play on the credits screen.
We then had a marvellous time listening to and adding back in all of the Regency Solitaire music, assigning appropriate music to each chapter. We usually pick a few tracks per chapter, so that players get a change when a new hand of cards is dealt.
We listened to each piece of music with the story, which triggers at the start and end of each chapter. This was to make sure it was in harmony with the mood of that part of the story.
(This also involved summarising the key story elements in a few words - Gossip! Romance! Intrigue! Bad manners! Resolution!) We also decided to sneak in a few tracks from another game of ours, for various story/world-building reasons...
Having done this, we checked that going from the game screen to options to credits and back triggers the correct music both ways.
It was also important to finalise the music volume in default.ini by testing that the sound effects can be heard clearly over it, and it's not too loud (or quiet).
We then emailed our musician an update as we are getting closer to coding the intro movie, which needs special music, and also so he can make the final mix of the new title screen and level end music.
Disabling old code/assets
Regency Solitaire II has now taken on its final form, as in the code base serves this game as other systems from previous titles are stripped out. For example Jake:
It feels good now that the game only has its own assets! Also, it's a lot smaller in terms of disk space.
Testing/Misc Code
Levels
Helen generated moar levels. We are now at the stage where we can pick these per chapter (which will be for a bunch of reasons, to do with aesthetics of the background as well as difficulty and features we need to incorporate, such as hidden story items, and tutorial elements.)
This is actually a fun process but takes a long time as we have over 200 levels to refine. We actually have more than we need but that's so we can throw away the worst ones, thus ensuring good quality.
Text
There has been some more story text editing, which meant diving into Regency lexicons and slang, and writing the game end text as mentioned above.
As this game is a 'Collector's Edition,' it has an extra story that unlocks once the main game is complete. This meant making some decisions about how to wrap up the Collector's Edition story and imagine what the characters did next...
Final countdown...?
It feels as though we have made great progress and it's coming together! There are still a few vital components that we need to work on and test. But the end (of development) is in sight. Then comes marketing...
We are really excited for this game! It looks and sounds great, and feels lovely to play.