Small improvements
This will be quite the long post, so I hope you have fun reading it!
This month I took a little break from Abstráctomon after I finished the first dungeon "Atoneel Tunnel" (which I had to remake 3 times because GameMaker crashed on me) and focused on improving the main parts of Error Ware 2.
Memory loss
I went through all the big assets (sprites, background images, sounds) that were still loaded into the project and made them load from the harddrive instead (I also reduced colors on some backgrounds were you wouldn't notice). Overall this reduced the project file's size by 12 MB, which may not sounds like alot but the effects in the game are really noticable.
Not having large backgrounds and sprites loaded into memory at all times improved the framerate and load times quite a bit!
Typo
Then I went on to improve the onscreen keyboard that appears when you are able to enter your name.
Before, it was using a regular Windows font to display the letters, but that could be an issue if the user doesn't have the font installed on their machine. Now it's using sprites in the colorful Error Ware 2 style instead. The buttons also didn't scale up from the center but from the upper-left corner, so I fixed that, too.
Variety
I added some shadows for menu buttons here and there, and then went ahead and added some more variety to existing micro games...
...and even made two new ones in the process.
This week, I'm working on an idea I had to make the "Party Mode" even more hilarious and challenging: The "Crazy Mode".
Even if you've mastered all the micro games you can now ramp up the difficulty! The Crazy Mode will add random effects to the games to confuse you like turning the game upside down, make you having to lose the game (remember this from the first Error Ware?) or mess with the time limit or... I came up with about 20 effects so far!
You can always comment and ask questions about the game. These small improvements really feel good to make.
As a little bonus, here are the latest screenshots from Abstráctomon, because why not :)
