DEVLOG 6/25/21

Today I rolled my game back by two days of work, luckily these logs can tell me some of what I can do to speed up my devving time the second time around.

Battle system seems to be glitch free at the moment, woo!

I got some events cleared up, I got the beta for the final bosses implemented. It feels like I did a lot even if I don't have much to say about it. It was some busy work but had to be done regardless. Had to redo some stuff but that was quick and easy.

I managed to get the final story event working and loading, transferring everything correctly so far. As of right now the game is probably gold again. Still got a lot of flesh out, though.

>Rolled version back.

>Fixed battle system from there.

>Some fixing up of stuff.

>Redid did river color.

>Game is gold again?

DEV LOG 6/26/21

Convinced myself not to take the day off. I told myself, oh, I will just work on some of the easy, mindless stuff. You know, change the decimal variables to round up so that the engine doesn't accidentally return decimals in game. Well, 2 hours later I'm done with that and I'm like, "Interesting, this combat situation returns 50 less damage than it should." So an hour later I've fixed that and I'm now adding all of the cooldown conditionals because I noticed that skills aren't being locked for their cooldowns and I had overlooked this part when putting all of the stuff together. Well, over 4 hours have gone by and I've basically worked a shift at a part time job, nearing 5 hours, and my usual stopping time comes around. Look at that, I said I will just do one little thing and ended up working the full usual time.

Although, two days ago was supposed to be my day to relax and let the chips out, so today I did take it a little easier on myself than usual. I worked the full time but allowed myself to write other things down for other stuff, chat with some people, etc but overall I still put in a good amount of time and effort between when I started and when I stopped. Tomorrow I should really take the day off, though.

>Fixed decimal returns

>Fixed some text issues

>Fixed some variable issues

>Fixed some damage issues

>Fixed some cooldown issues

dev log 6/28/21

>Fixed more battle system issues

>Fixed an issue where one location was not loading enemies but was still giving out victory rewards

>Added some more music in

>Got the final boss battles implemented

>Finished implementing the new cooldown times

>Implemented cooldown text to let players know something is in cooldown

>Had an issue where disabling skills that are cooling down from being chosen wasn't working by looping the label jump back to the start of the skill selection

>Etc

Dev Log 6/29/21

Felt like I was getting dulled by the monotony of working on the same general parts of the game over and over again soooo I decided to jump ahead and make the new introduction today. I got most of it already implemented. I also added in a tutorial, which I'm still working on, but it's brief and is mostly just a watered down battle without time pressure to let the player get familiar with the controls. 

>Switched some music

>Implemented new introduction

>Started making a tutorial system

>Other stuff

DevLog 6/30/21

>Implemented new, more exciting introduction.

>New introduction is functional and working but needs polish.

>Fixed some more battle issues. These never seem to end! Yay! 

>Added one more song at the tavern, feels nice to have multiple tracks to switch between to keep things fresh.

>Starting to work on balancing the combat better, starting to fine tune the chances of effects of attacking different body parts to make better effects more risky to try and less powerful effects more reliable to count on.

>Introducing a plain and simple side quest chain to add a little more excitement to the grind for leveling up between main story events.

>Got one chain in the new side quest implemented. 

>Mostly implemented contact with the tutorial guy whom players can contact through their interface's communication application at any time to ask for basic advice about the game.

Dev Log 7/1/21

Sometimes it becomes really apparent that, when making your own project like this, there is no frame work or quest guide to move you along. You figure everything out yourself, you organize all the work yourself, you set your own task list yourself. It can be easy to feel somewhat lost in the sauce, even with a smaller scope project. If you finish one task you can sometimes find yourself floating in the soup of the game's development screens, trying to pick out the pieces of work that you need to do next from the heavy broth of the code and the tools. You know you need to fix a couple glitches and improve some of the balance but there is so much to sift through that even when you have a seed of understanding of what to do next, even when you have a task list outlining what's next on the agenda, it can still feel like swimming in an ocean searching for a small island to anchor your mind to.

However I feel like this experience gives me a lot of strength as a developer and that going forward it gives me a foot up on any competition, because I know what it's like to have been lost in the ocean of development and I know what it's like and how to navigate through something that seems to stretch on forever in all directions. I feel like I'm becoming someone that others can rely on and turn to if they feel lost in the cycle of creation.

That being said, I actually got more done than usual today. Today was considerably productive.

>Implemented a side quest chain.

>Communication with the Priest implemented.

>Always working on bugs. Always.

Dev Log 7.5.21.

Realized part of the early main quest chain was to get signed up for an apartment at the inn. The point of this was to create a sense of actually living in an augmented future sci fi fantasy world. However, the scope of this game, working on it myself, simply will not allow for me to add a day/night cycle. Therefore there is no real reason to have an apartment that the players pay for. The Inn still exists and it's not really an Inn, it just takes that aesthetic because the future augmented world is sort of a low key roleplay mixed in to real life. People go to Javelin Mountainside to feel like they are living in a different time zone, enhanced by the augmented reality system, while still living a normal futuristic life. So although it's called an "inn" it's actually an apartment complex. 

Without a time function in the game, which would take a solid effort to implement, I won't really be able to have players have to  worry about paying for the apartment every amount of days. Therefore, I will just remove that altogether. However, while writing this, I realized I could still keep the apartment accessible to the player as a place to fully heal both health and energy for free. Usually free healing spots do exist in rpgs so it still makes sense to have. However there was going to be a big debt system that played an important purpose in construing a certain fable for the futuristic world. However, the I under-calculated the amount of work that the game was going to take working on by myself and the game still has plenty of valuable information contained within it so I am not too worried about losing one or two of the points I was hoping to make. 

Tasks finished

> Make sure to change music from story event 5 to the Health Clinic.

> Come up with new name for clinic (came up with health clinic).

> Try making the money and debt trackers more glowy and neonish like the hoverboard, but do it in a way that doesn't make it seem like a button and or make the hoverboard look more like a button.

> Add shadow effects to most of the U.I. text to make it seem like they are actually popping out of the screen to some degree.

> Add a separate event roulette for entering and exiting buildings.

> Changed the time pressure on enemy ranks. Rank 1 enemies give the player ample time (4 seconds) to make decisions while rank 3 and 4 enemies expect players to know what they're doing, only giving them (2 seconds) to make a decision. Previously, it was all set to 3 seconds, which is what rank 2 enemies are set as.

Dev Log 7 - 9 - 21

>Implemented Health and Energy U.I. displays.

>Opening variables from the battle system and now that all of that stuff is working, I am testing getting certain variables to work fluidly outside of battle and to still be used in battle.

>Rearranged the user interface to make space for the status effect displays. Moved the money and debt tracker lower down because your health is more important than money.

>Added Status Effect Displays to the User interface for the three current overworld statuses that the player can be afflicted with.

>Implemented the status effects' actual effects to work outside of combat.

>Added some Hoverboard travel events.

>Removed the skeletal, unmade remains of the tavern kitchen from the project. If reasonable, will re add and flesh out kitchen at the end of the project. 

>Fixed some button placement and sizes.

>Added more of a uniform structure to some of the text, will finish next time.

Dev Log 7 - 11 - 21

Grinded out a lot of work today. This specific task (getting ALL of the dialogue into better, more professional and presentable shape) feels somewhat overwhelming. I am not at a point in it where I can declare it any kind of a progress update towards the completed game even though a lot of time and effort has went in to it.

Also I need to change this one name Ranulf which is really kind of not stylish especially when compared to other NPC's like Requiem or Bandwidth...

Dev Log 7/12/21

>Implemented apartment with sleep function and levitation bed

>Deleted some unnecessary stuff

>Implemented skill review section

Dev Log 7.13.21.

> Changed the weapon shop. Changed from buying 3 levels of each weapon to simply being able to buy the weapons. It was not fully implemented before but with the change, I added all the weapons to be purchase-able and fully implemented it. Now all I have to do is figure out the prices.

> Changed the armor shop. Same as the weapon shop.

> Added trainers for the 3 armor types. Mostly implemented. Only need to add the dialogue for the upgrades.

> Fixed poisoned food event buttons.

>Started working on the Cleric's basic identity at the clinic.

Dev Log 7.14.21

>Armor and defense now properly implemented into the game.

>All armor can now be properly swapped out from player menu.

        >All variables now properly  adjusted with the swapping of armor.

>All weapon chips can now be properly swapped out from player menu.   

        >All variables now properly  adjusted with the swapping of weapon chips.

>All lethal weapons can now be properly swapped out from player menu.   

        >All variables now properly  adjusted with the swapping of lethal weapons.

Dev Log 7.15.21.

>Renamed Ranulf to Thunder so now it's [Mage Thunder] the Priest instead of [Mage Ranulf] the Priest. Had to go change his name in all instances of it's appearance.

>Fixed some buttons and some label transitions.

>Fixed some text.

>Added in rez packs known as "Juice Packs" with three levels of energy healing.

>Implemented the buying system for them.

>Split the resurrection cleric's interaction choices into "implant stuff" and "socialization."

>Fixed up the spell buying system which was set to buy spells for free during testing and figuring out economy balance.

Dev Log 7.17.21

I have been editing combat today. While going through the battle algorithms and changing the chances of certain attacks to land their effects I find myself wishing I could expedite the process with some kind of common event or prefabs but no matter how much I think about it, it seems like there are too many independent factors at play. There is no common denominator to place the multiple, very similar functions into one prefab to call on for every attack sequence. Which means I have to meticulously edit every single individual line of combat which is time consuming and annoying. Perhaps a real programmer would have been able to find a common denominator that I did not?

> Adjusted combat balance, changed chances for arm and leg focused attacks to activate special effects.

> Busy work, editing buttons to make them easier for the mind to separate and process.

Dev Log 7.18.21

>For some reason Travel Event buttons were off place. Fixed.

>Did the same for Hoverboard Travel Events.

> All merc functions are now in the game.

> Half of today's session was about finding a way to stop the skip button from freezing the text display if used too quickly upon the loading of a scene. I did not find a solution after experimenting with multiple things the engine doesn't have a way to prevent that apparently.

Still working on this. Mostly implementing some items and getting them implemented for use in battle as well. However there is some family stuff, work and some medical stuff all happening at once. Since this is not my source of income, I have to slow down on this while I do other things. I still work on it a little bit every day, just not as much as before, for now.

Dev Log 7/27/21

> Trying to test out the implemented items to make sure they all work correctly. That's right, I'm doing all my own testing. And I only cry a little bit about it.

> Refresh variables weren't working, think I fixed it though.

>Took all the numbers back out of the buttons because it just looked dumb.

>Some busy work - still need to test the items because some of the else if conditionals definitely need to be fixed but I'm really, really hoping they don't.

Dev Log 8/6/21

Working on implementing items has actually been quite a task. I ended up doing a couple other things while implementing the items into battles because it was such am overwhelming task. For example, I got all of the armor upgrades in and added the dialogue for the Mage, Thunder to give the player hints on where to find the armor trainers. Anyway, the items turned out to be really intense because, although at first it was only busy work, I ended up needing some complex conditionals to check for all of the status ailments for stronger potions/curing items. Which means I needed to add in an entirely new switch and weave that into different parts of the game which checks to see if the player has no ailments and if they have even one ailment then they are no longer healthy. This is necessary for when the player uses a restorative when there is nothing to be cured.

Also, I've found a bug caused solely by the game's engine that doesn't seem to have a reasonable work-around yet. I might have to leave it in the game when all is said and done but I spent like two days trying to figure out how to fix it.

Dev Log 8/7/21

It seems that I have all of the battle mechanics firmly in place now. At this point I'll mostly be testing. The testing won't be for polish yet, it is to catch bugs, make sure everything is working smoothly, to see what kinds of design decisions I can change, how much can I reasonably add, what should I remove, etc etc. Other than testing the only thing I think I really, really absolutely NEED to do is to add more sound effects and hopefully expand on the music. 

The second most important thing I think I need to do at this point is make sure the game is as accessible as it can be and that it's not too much of a puzzle for normal game mechanics to be figured out and utilized. How and when to explain certain parts of the game and if those parts really need explanation, etc.

This is what I checked off of my list today:

X - Do a forced loss battle at the event outside of the first time at the Inn and take the numbers out of the dialogue question selections.

X - The Health Clinic doesn't actually have it's function yet.

X - Put cooldowns when the player leaves an area not when they arrive so that the status indicator changes at the proper time.

X - Remove Hoverboard from the start for proper testing.

X - try to come up with more original healing tech than liquid pods and glass bed pods.

X -Sometimes when choosing from sub options (such as travel options) going to ether the player menu or the hoverboard menu and then back to the main world screen can cause player choice buttons to overlap somehow.

As I get closer to the end I can feel the pressure rising, the depth of this water deepening. This is a marathon so treat it like one. I also had to fix some text errors and display errors when transitioning to and from battle scenes. I'm working on making effects for hovering over buttons, making them highlighted and glow and stuff. I like to remind myself that I have no real programming experience, my only real skills are writing and designing so for doing all of this by myself I am doing a wonderful job. Helps to have a no script engine to work with.

Dev Log 8/12/21

I did it! After tons of trial and error I finally found a way to make buttons have visual effects when hovered over and the button still does it's function and it seems bug free! It took like 3 days of constant trial and error T_T Why is it that the littlest things end up being so complex? I wish I could post a vid here to show it!

https://streamable.com/u084uy

I had to layer a hotspot over a hotspot lol

DEVLOG 9/14/21

Okay so... I've made good progress on the game even though I have been so busy. I added advertisements (not real ones) and made them seem kind of like a bug. I'm worried that some players might think that it's an actual bug and not intended so I need to work on making that more apparent.

I've implemented most things into the game. I've added some sound effects. Mostly for button presses. I don't think I'm going to add effects for every little thing because it's only text based.

I would say the game is quite close to completion. It's been a bit of a battle, trying to wrangle everything into place myself. Much respect for solo devs. Never do I want to work alone again haha.

Mostly I only have testing left. A bunch of bugfixes, testing and maybe one or two more interesting features left. Should be done in the next two months.

Already started setting up a steam storepage. That's been a weird experience haha. Going to be fun trying to figure out how to decide what kind of trailer to make for a text rpg. Not sure how much I should invest into advertising, either. Anyway, once this is done, I will have a fully shipped, paid game under my belt. I already have paid writing experience for games. I also have unpaid development experience, like, with a team. So with this game I will have a fully shipped game with both writing and design experience, paid.

I've read a lot of about some of the problems in the industry at many companies and how that's been getting exposed. A little apprehensive, I think I want to try to stick to indie if possible. Hopefully I can find a good team to make something awesome with after this. Might take a little break first, though.

Dev Log 10/31/21

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

My game isn't much of a scary or spooky one but it looks like I will be releasing it officially tomorrow. It will be available on steam at https://store.steampowered.com/app/1740870/Augmented_Future/.

Getting through steam, well, I'm not sure what expected but it was it's own little obstacle. Mostly a lot of waiting and a lot of me being not as familiar with the software side of things as I could be. It made me realize I had no legal stuff outlined and fixed that. Added in the basics.

But yeah. So beware if you're new to publishing a game and think it's like an upload and done well it's not so simple. There is all kinds of legal stuff like if you have a business or not, linking your financial accounts, etc etc. Nothing too bad or unreasonable. The worst part is waiting haha.

Well happy halloween yall i'll update this dev log again after the game's been released for a bit. It will be available for purchase here as well btw.

ALSO: I forgot to mention, and I really wanted to mention this... After I uploaded the zip file I realized it was larger than I wanted it to be. So I went into the program and started pruning the files as much as I could but no matter what I cut from it, no matter how unimportant it was, it would completely destroy the game. Which means I had to leave it at 1.46 gbs. It should be able to be smaller but?? it literally won't let me take anything out anymore so like... that's how it is I guess. First published solo made game ftw though! 

Okay so I'm posting again because, well, I can't release the game on Steam yet. I believe I have met all of the requirements but it keeps pushing the day I can release back by one day. All I can do is wait a little longer and then if it doesn't become releasable I suppose I will have to file a ticket. Once I can release it on steam I will also release it here. 

devlog 11/7/21

Steam still has not cleared me for release. It has been about 3 weeks since I was originally cleared through review for both the storefront and the game itself. I have sent support a message. Probably just a silly glitch or something. We'll see what happens next!

Alright the game is up. So I decided on a price equivalent to $5 u.s. dollars after going looking through other text games, narrative games, etc etc. Looking through the different prices, I decided $5 should be a generous price for the game.

Getting the file sizes right and uploaded to both itch and steam was more difficult than I imagined. I talked about this preciously but for some reason any time I tried to trim the game file size it would break whichever version I was working on. So I had no choice but to leave it the way it was. It's not terrible though, under 1 and a half gigs. Just a longer download than I would like to push on people.

I will probably only make one more post about this game after it's been out for a while, just to talk about how post release went for me.