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!
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.
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.
