I did a live stream on my Twitch channel where I played a new build of Abstráctomon in Error Ware 2. 

You can watch the recording above!

I fixed the bugs I encountered during the stream already.  If you don't have time to watch the full video, here's a quick overview of recently added features:

• Buildings that you can enter
• the "Abstrácto-Center", where you can let a nurse heal your team and access the "A.S.S"
• The "A.S.S.", short for "Abstráctomon Storage System", where you can manage all your caught monsters. You can store them in up to 5 boxes with 25 spaces each (may be more in the future), watch their stats or delete them if you don't have a heart.
• Humans look like humans now
• You can swim now, simply by entering water as long as you own swimming trunks / a bikini. 
• Improved in game map

New Abstráctomon screenshots!

In the last two weeks, I made some more battle backgrounds + transitions, some new NPC sprites, improved the player's walking animations, added a lake you can swim in... and added a shop called "Monpoint". 

How about exploring the new area I've added to the test map?

Time for another Abstráctomon screenshot update!

I'm working on a "Abstrácto-Dex" for the Error Ware 2 homepage. You can view the first couple of entries already, including two never before seen monsters! https://errorware.jimdo.com/errorboygames/abstr%C3%A1ctomon-venom-violet-version... 

Cool video

Time for another screenshot update!

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 :) 

Here's a video of the new "Crazy Mode" I talked about last time!

Here's more gameplay footage of the new "crazy" difficulty in Error Ware 2's local multiplayer!

18 different effects are now implemented. One of my favorites is the "ERROR" effect, which makes the game glitch out badly I made this one today, actually!

You can now sit on benches, chairs or couches to let time pass by faster in Abstráctomon.

Here's a quick rundown of things I worked on in the past weeks:

• New Abstrácto-Ball animations made with Blender including the new "Dark" (better chance of success at night and in dark places) and "Net" Ball (good for catching Bug- and Water-type Abstráctomon).

• "Darkness" weather effect in battle (increases strength of Dark- and Ghost-type moves and lowers the speed of any non-Dark/Ghost Abstráctomon
• A move that can change the weather to "Darkness" in battle
• New eye blinking frames when looking left & right while standing and sitting (before the player character would only blink when looking down)
• Fixed some bugs involving battle music and leveling up
• The ball type you catch an Abstráctomon with now gets saved and is shown when you call an Abstráctomon or heal them in the Abstrácto-Center. Enemies can use different balls, too.
• Fixed some issue with NPC placing after a battle
• Improved the framerate when looking at the Trainer Guide
• Added information about weather to the Trainer Guide (still have translate that into French though)
• Improved the Atoneel-Tunnel map a bit, you can now find a few items
• You can now use ladders with a smooth climbing animation
• Fixed an issue where the Error Ware 2 logo did not play sounds sometimes

I need to replicate a bug  I encountered once where my Abstráctomon leveled up two levels at once and the game kinda softlocked after the level up jingle... 

When I fixed that and did some more test playing I can finally release a new Version of the EW2 demo with a bit of Abstráctomon included, to make the "2017" of the last trailer not a lie... Man time flies!

Sorry that it takes me so long to make this dang game!

Happy holidays everybody!

I'm glad that I am able to squeeze out another Abstráctomon screenshot update before I'm visiting my family.

So here it is:

To make the wait for the full version of Error Ware 2 easier, I decided to bring its precursor to itch.io!

Check out Error Ware here!

Error Ware was originally released in October 2012 for Windows. Prepare for crude graphics and midi music :) But it's a full game and it's free, so enjoy!

Time for another update for Abstráctomon!

But first I want to say thank you so much for 300 downloads of my games and well over 3000 views of this devlog! 

Did you know that you can rate games & write reviews on itch.io? I'd love to hear your feedback!

But now the latest news in Abstráctomon development:

• Improved text boxes are now able to show the name of the talking character and can highlight important words
• You can now rename monsters currently in your team anytime when accessing the A.S.S. (Abstráctomon Storage System)
• You can now unlock a new item that lets you access the A.S.S. from anywhere
• Reworked collision for the player & NPCs
• The introduction sequence in the Professor's lab is almost done, including the first battle against you rival (see video below!)
• The lab looks a bit more like lab (but still not final)
• The Exp. bar now changes to orange when full
• Savegame previews now show money as well
• Various other bugfixes

My internet connection is terrible this week (thanks for nothing, Vodaphone!), but I managed to upload a new video to YouTube!

Enjoy!

Hi there!

Here are some neat little things I added to Abstráctomon:

Other things I improved on:

• I finally figured out why I had some seemingly random audio issues with the Caster dll I use to load .ogg files into GameMaker8.1. Turns out you can't have numbers in the variable names assigned to the loaded files. Basically I named them Song1, Song2, etc. but caster treated everyone as "Song", so changes to Song 2 affected Song1 as well and so on. Anyway, it is fixed now!
• The scores at the results screen of "Turbo Taxi" mode are now displayed in the correct order (highest at the top)
• Made the final level of the microgame "Helicopter" easier
• Fixed a bug in the "Draw something" microgame where the brush would turn invisible some times
•  Added the new microgame "Sound TripZ"
• In Abstráctomon, you can now change direction when sitting on a chair or stool. Maybe I'll use this feature in a chair maze?

That's all I can think of right now. Overall many small improvements! The game feels quite stable now.  As I said before, the new demo is coming soon ™

Just a small screenshot update today. Enjoy!

Oh, and I added a few new songs I made for Abstráctomon to the soundtrack preview on the game's GameJolt page. 

I'm not sure if they will make it into the game, give them a listen and tell me what you think!

A quick Abstráctomon Screenshot Update!

That's all for today!

Edit: I made a short video of the new trees in action!

Hi everyone!

Since my internet connection is working today, I’d like to share another round of Abstráctomon screenshots!

Please vote at GameJolt (at the bottom of the post)!

Hey! 

Since the poll results regarding Twitch streams in the last post were a little inconclusive (thanks to everyone who voted!), I made a "normal" video about pixel art for the monsters of Abstráctomon (coming soon to Error Ware 2) instead!

If you have questions about the development process of Error Ware 2, art, music or something about myself, leave a comment and I'll answer them in a future video! You can also ask me on Twitter.

And to close this post, I want to share two new screenshots:

I added sidewalks and manholes to my "road" tileset.

I expanded the Abstrácto-Center a bit. Its human and not-quite-human nurses now take care of sick trainers, too!

Have a nice weekend!

During my Easter family visit I couldn't work on the game directly, but I let my sister play it and took some notes of some minor bugs (I already fixed them). Overall it ran pretty well on her old Windows 8 laptop, which is nice to know. 

My siblings thought it would be a good a idea to hide some easter eggs near my mother's little garden pond, and guess what? One of them fell in...
It lost some color but wasn't damaged otherwise, so I volunteered to eat it.

...

Oh excuse me, I guess you came here to see some new Abstráctomon screenshots. Here you go!

NPC cars work now. I can let them drive along the road or in circles like this one on my test road here. 

It'll brake and honk at you or other NPCs when they walk on front of it.
The animation for turning is pretty smooth, took a lot of frames! I modeled the car in Blender and added details to the sprites by hand. 

It also got working head - and taillights. Your bicycle now got a front light, too. And the construction workers inside the tunnel turned on their helmet lights!

WIP footage of an intersection (cross road) in "Abstráctomon", coming soon to Error Ware 2. Right now, all the cars look alike and sometimes glitch through each other, but overall it kinda works as intended.

I improved my crossroads in Abstráctomon a bit. Cars now come in different shapes and sizes and are less likely to crash thanks to the improved traffic light system.

Let's be honest: my original female player character sprites in Abstráctomon were pretty ugly; 

the hair looked like two brown M&M's shoved together, the arms were too long and the body too short. 

Well you might know my characters are based on 3D models made in Blender, and the model I made wasn't really good to begin with. So I made a second attempt and gave the model a brand new, more detailed head.

Then I reduced the color palette of the rendered images to a uniform one (about 25 colors), added some outlines to the arms and legs, cleaned up the eyes, hair and backpack and added some shadows to the skirt.

I also made some minor improvements to her male counterpart.

I improved the animations for walking, riding a bike, sitting and climbing a bit.
You can see some of the new sprites below!

I'm wondering if you'd like to be able to choose a different skin color at the start of the game? Let me know in the comments!

Here's a quick update of things I worked on since the last post.

The first gym is almost complete! It's a large swimming pool were children and adults can cool off after school / work. I only need to add some NPCs to it.

There's even a slide! 

These one-way gates can only be passed from one side.

We are getting really close to the finish line, folks! 
My "to do" list for the next release of Error Ware 2 gets shorter every day. The demo of Abstráctomon, which will be included in the upcoming update, will feature a small town, a dungeon & the first gym, the swimming pool.  I only need to connect these areas and finish the entrance of the pool.

Speaking of the pool, it's flooded with NPCs now!

You'll be able carry over your Abstráctomon progress to future releases, so don't delete your save files!

Thank you for 400 downloads!

You might have been noticing the red Wii Remote in Error Ware 2's logo. The Error Ware series has been compatible with that little love stick since the first game released in 2012.

When Development of Error Ware 2 began shortly after, the Nintendo WiiU had just been released and continued to support Wii Remotes, so I figured people still had them and added the good old motion controls to EW2 as well.

 But now the game has been in development for so long, Nintendo released   a whole new console in the meantime: the Nintendo Switch! Oh snap!

Since the WiiU did not sell that well many people sold their Wii or WiiU a long time ago,  working Wii Remotes are getting rare in peoples's homes, so why release a game with Wii Remote support in 201X? Switch is the hot stuff now, damnit!

Don't get me wrong, 
 EW2 will still fully support a single Wii Remote with motion controls, but I'm adding Joy-Con support, too! 

Unfortunately, I can't use all their features right now, but I've got them working as normal controllers. We'll see how much motion control I can get out of them!

The Wii Remote is still the best way to get the most out of Error Ware 2 in my experience, but I'll make sure the game's fun regardless of your input method of choice (and there are a lot of them!).

In my current build, you can play the game with

• keyboard + mouse
• one gamepad (Xbox, Playstation & WiiU / Switch Pro Controller Layout supported)
• single Joy-Con Left + Right

since the gameplay is mostly in a "hot seat" style, players can share a controller, but you can also mix them as you like.

Phew, that was a long post! More news coming soon!

Nowadays, whenever you buy anything anywhere, you get bombarded with bonus points, discount codes and coupons, so why haven't games reflected this "trend" more? 

I present to you the Discount Card item in Abstráctomon. It lets you shop for half the price! You can only use it once, though...

In other news, the Swimming pool gym now got an exteriour. Can you guess what Abstráctomon the building is based on?

Issues with my internet connection prevented me for posting news, my apologies. 

But here's some Abstráctomon stuff to look at:

This is the location of Herringtin, your hometown, a small village  on the first island of the Freezon region. 

This is your house (do you always blink too when taken a picture of?)

... and Proffessor Rich's laboratory.

You can visit the Mon Point store...

... have a nightly walk on the beach...

... or explore the Atoneel Tunnel which leads to the other side of the island.

Until now, I only had a convoluted test area with everything crammed in, but now I made the first real town. 
And here's something else I added to the game: 

You can now see the current time of day and weather in battle (top right corner). The time of day is also represented by the battle background in open areas, but when battling inside a cave or building, you didn't know unless you checked the clock before the battle.

Since some moves depend on sun- or moonlight, I figured this would make things more clear. 

Abstráctomon is one of the rare JRPG style games were both of the protagonist parents are still alive and well and the dad is actually at home, too!

You can visit them anytime if you're in need of some helpful advise and love. 

Or maybe you just want to poke around in your brother's / sister's bedroom?

"Tomorrow I'll beat the gym leader!"

A quick glimpse of the beach area in Abstráctomon I'm currently working on.

New footage of the Shieldcap Beach area in Abstráctomon. The area is pretty much finished now.

Gameplay video of two new areas in Abstráctomon.
First I show off the new water current that leads to a secret cave, then you get a glimpse of the new forest area.

Abstráctomon will be an unlockable bonus game in future releases of Error Ware 2.

Thank you for over 3.000 views and 500 downloads of my stuff! 

That's really amazing :D

Here's a new video showing off a cutscene & Gameplay of the forest area in Abstráctomon.*Slight spoiler warning*

A quick video showing some of the small improvements I made lately for "Abstráctomon".

I added a small side quest involving a girl's scout summer camp for "Abstráctomon" in Error Ware 2.

If you've played the Pokémon main games, you're probably familar with the concept of "TMs". They're usually treated as items you can find, buy or receive from NPCs. 

Using an TM enables you to teach a certain move to a Pokémon in your team, either just once or infinite times, depending on the generation of games.

I too want the player of my game Abstráctomon to customize his monsters' move sets, but I'm trying a different approach.

In Abstráctomon, you can get a note book called "Move Memo" early on. It lets your character take notes after a battle (wild & trainer battles) and write down any new move your opponent (successfully) used against you!

This happens automatically and you get a short notification at the end of the battle if there were new entries to your Move Memo.

In it, you can view all moves you encountered in a handy list with newly added moves at the top, highlighted with a small green ! symbol. 

I want to add a sort function that lets you sort the move list by number, name, type, cost to make finding moves that fit your team easier.

To teach a monster the selected move, it needs to have the correct type and enough EXP. The monster's current (not total!) EXP acts as a currency in this case. Your monster gets EXP for defeating an opposing monster, but beware - if it levels up, its EXP wrap around 0 again! 

So you have to decide if you want to train for a level up or rather stop when the EXP count is high, so you can exchange them for a custom move!

Do you like this idea? Leave a comment and let me know!

Time for some new Abstráctomon screenshots!

Here's the final Move Memo menu. Sorting works now, too!

I changed some sea floor tiles to make it more clear were you can and can't walk (shallow water vs. ocean floor).

Speaking of tiles, tiny pebbles now indicate the area you can push rocks in, You can walk over them, but the rock can't be pushed on them!

I added lanterns and new big hollow tree stumps (more about them here) to the forest area and turned part of it into a race track! 
Maybe you get a cool reward if you can break the record time?

Here are some things I worked on in Error Ware 2 since the last post.

Players can now use the WASD keys along the arrow keys. That makes it easier to share a keyboard!

In Abstráctomon, you can now turn on the spot without moving by tapping the directional buttons. 

Also, you might be able to find special nuts at suspicious places.
What they're good for? You'll have to find out yourself!

You can now easily go to your bag whenever you pick up an item. I improved the bag a bit, too. It now shows the last item you've got at start up.

I might add a sort function to the bag like I did with the Move Memo, but I'd need to change the code a bit for that to work.

Finally, I'd like to mention that I improved some of the monster's battle sprites.

That's it for today!

I added more borders to choose from when playing Abstráctomon! 


I had a hard time figuring out how to solve an scaling issue when taking screenshots of the game (still not solved!). They're never pixel-perfect even when I brute force the game to the 240x160 resolution... 

Anyway, while trying various things I implemented a debug feature to take a screenshot of the whole map at once (beyond the camera's current view) and figured I could use them for a game guide! 

Here's a preview of it (work in progress):

Quick tech update: 

I found a solution for the scaling issue (nasty gaps between tiles)! 

Seems like some graphics card drivers (= mine) have an issue with scaling Game Maker games. To be save I made it a toggle in the options menu.

"Sharpness A" now scales the image actually 1 px larger then it's intended resolution (481x321 instead of 480x320 and so on). 

The solutions online all suggested adding a pixel border to the tilesets, but that would be borderline insane with the amount of tiles I got! This 1 px stretch fixes it on my machine, so if you got that issue set it to "A". The "B" setting turns that fix off. 

Now I can scale the game any which way I want, so I added a third zoom option.

You can now choose from

Don't cut your eyes(?) on these sharp pixels!

A video about recent additions to Abstráctomon, coming soon to Error Ware 2.

Another quick development update for "Abstráctomon - Venom Violet Version" coming soon to "Error Ware 2" by U-GameZ.

I'm working on better lighting at night / inside caves in Abstráctomon. 

Here's a video...

...and some screenshots of my progess so far.

It took several different approaches but I finally managed to implement a lighting system that works with moving lights, too. I may tweak colors / brightness levels here and there, but for now I'm happy with the results.

Some neat visual stuff I recently added to "Abstráctomon". Happy Easter!

This time, I present two neat visual updates I finished today!

Showing off a new item + mechanic in Abstráctomon!

I ran out of space in the game options menu, so I added another page for the Graphics settings. Why I ran out of space? 

Because of the new LCD filter!

The filter displays faint black horizontal lines between pixels and also (very) faint RGB squares, one per pixel. It's a subtle effect but it emulates the feel of a handheld screen. Since we scale the view up, we can actually draw between the game's pixels. So these aren't scanlines in the traditional sense, more like the borders of the liquid crystals the Error Boy Adventure's display is made of. 

Whatever, I think it looks neat. If you like your graphics clean, just turn it off! 

Quite a few updates in this one! A berry system, "quality of life" additions and a neat little animation.

In this development update video for Abstráctomon I show off another use for the shovel, the finished berry planting process, holding items and some improved menus.

I rewrote the shadow system for large objects like trees and buildings in Abstráctomon. Their shadows now deform in a more realistic manner. 

In this gif

you can see the new shadows and a timelapse of the whole berry growing process.

Get a look at new plant-based ladder technology and a convenient place for your gardening needs.

I got lots of smaller things done in Abstráctomon this week. Here's a quick rundown:

You can now buy  berries and seeds from a lady in the Gardencenter. Seeds can be planted instead of a berry if you don't want to "waste" a berry.

Roughly 12 years after I graduated high school I finally figured out how sine and cosine work... So now reflections in water can have a wavy distortion. I'll probably use this for other effects (e.g. in battle) as well.

Blending a sprite in Gamemaker with a different color is quite easy to do, but for some reason if you want to color a sprite completely white, you have to do some trickery. I ended up switching to 3D mode (d3d) for a fraction of a second to enable white "fog" and then had to alter the distance of that fog to fade the "whitness" in an out. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Bonus Gamemaker 8 tip:

Since I added the "backlight" brightness setting to the game, I had an annoying issue with the text flickering when lowering the brightness (archived by a subtracting blendmode). I finally figured out the reason: 

To reduce lag in the menus caused by my crappy text script, I draw the text only for one frame, take a screenshot and then display that instead. But apparently Gamemaker's screenshots turn gray / black parts of the image slightly transparent (why???), hence the difference in the hue of the text.

I tried to draw a black rectangle under the sprite but here's a much easier fix:

To fix this, you can draw the screenshot with the blend mode draw_set_blend_mode_ext(bm_one,bm_src_alpha_sat);
which will ensure that the sprite drawn has its alpha set to 1 (= no transparency).

Some items have an effect in battle when held by a monster instead of being used by the trainer.

Example:

You can heal a poisoned Abstráctomon by opening your bag and use an onion during battle, but your active monster can't attack in that turn.

However, if you let it hold the onion before the battle, it'll eat it when necessary and heal itself without losing a turn!

Some Abstráctomon might even evolve when holding a certain item...

In your bag, the "normal" effect of an item is described at the bottom while the effect when the item is held is described in the golden text box near the top.

I improved the tileset for ponds and other bodies of water. They reflect the sky now along the sun, moon and stars. The moon even changes phases. Some events may depend on the current moon phase... Below are a few more impressions of the reflections!

The Freezon-Region is based on northern Germany where I grew up and its coastline and islands, where I like to go on vacation .

I always wanted the Atoneel Tunnel to look like a dyke; now I finally had some time (+ motivation) to swap the rocks with grass. I even added fencing and the cow-like Abstráctomon Weremoo to give it a bit more charme.

Normally dykes are just solid hills, but this one also acts as a tunnel to reach the other side of the island.

This is just a nice screenshot I wanted to share without a particular reason. You can see the new sunrise reflection I mentioned last time.

Here's something I should've included from the start: lower case letters! My stupid text script is such a mess, but at least I can now make long texts more readable.

The bad news: I have to rewrite each line of text to include the lower case letters. Oh well... So it will take a while to update all important dialogue. The plan is to limit lower case text to NPC dialogue and the trainer guide for now (or else it will take even longer to change everything).

Finally, I'd like to share this comparison of some of my earliest monster sprites and their newest iterations. Until next time!

I added shiny variants of the monsters to Abstráctomon! These rare specimens can have wild fur/skin/scale... patterns and colors. I might change other things about them, too. (A different type, maybe?) Maybe you'll be lucky to encounter a shiny Abstráctomon in the wild! So far I recolored a third of the monster sprites. Some designs are pretty fancy!

As of lower case text: I updated about 80% of the NPC text as of now. Thank god SHIFT+F3 is a thing!

Here's the type chart I mentioned in the video (you can also check the type effectiveness in the game by opening the Trainer Guide):

There's now a warning sound* playing and the HP bar turns red when your monsters' HP are dangerously low.

(* It just plays once, I don't like the constant beeping in the early Pokémon games either!)

I moved the symbol indicating the effectiveness of a move closer to the moves's type icon and made the type icon glow to make it more clear what that symbol means.

There's also now a rainbow star icon next to the monsters' level if that monster is a Shiny.

Speaking of Shinies...

You can now view shiny variants you've caught in your Abstrácto-DEX! The same star icon marks monsters whose shiny variant you've cought. When viewing the detailed info of a monster...

...you can now switch between its normal and shiny form. Neat!

Here's this week's Abstráctomon development digest!

I finished quite some work in the Atoneel Tunnel. You'll now encounter the construction worker's foreman in a new cutscene and battle!

I also made further improvements to the lighting in the tunnel:

the basement is now pitch-black with only some site spotlights lighting the way. The workers wear helmets with lights on them, but you've got to fumble around in the dark, I'm afraid!

Back on the surface, you can now buy a new kind of Abstrácto-Ball: The Medi-Ball. It won't increase your chance of catching an Abstráctomon, but it will slowly heal the monster kept in it it over time! It's a great ball in the early game when you're short on healing items. The Medi-Ball can't revive fainted monsters though...

Wish you had bought some Medi-Balls earlier 'cause now you caught some with different balls? Don't worry! You can change the ball a monster is kept in after the fact!

This way you can also change your starter's ball if you prefer a different summon animation, for example.

That's all for this week!

Thanks for reading!

A new development update video for Abstráctomon Venom Violet Version.

I show off the improved ocean and a neat detail for the DEX.

Here's this months's dev update video for Abstráctomon!

It goes over the many changes I made to the forest area and some new monster designs!

Since it's been a few weeks since the last post I throw in some new screenshots as a bonus!

New Abstráctomon screenshots! 

I made some large grass / moss covered rocks. They make the environment feel much more natural!

There are now even more trainers and NPCs in the Tuca Forest!

I added bug catchers who love bug Abstráctomon (I went with girls instead of boys to change it up a little)...

...and bird watchers who are fans of the bird like monsters. If you sit on this bench, you can play a fun trivia game and win something usefull. Speaking of birds...

You can now see wild Tucas and Freegulls flying over your head in some places. It's just a little detail to make the world feel more alive. 

New Abstráctomon screenshot  s!

I added more detail to buildings, like roof tiles and a brick structure.

The player's house looks more unique and has red bricks now. It looks a little like the houses typically found in the area I grew up as a child.

You may find an overgrown house in the Tuca Woods now...

I finally finished the bicycle time trial race I wanted to add for a long time. I had the race timer functionality working months ago, but now I implemented it in the game. I made a cute little finish line and added the NPC conversation.

In this development update I show off some side activities you can do now in Abstráctomon.

Abstráctomon Screenshot Update!

Professor Rich has now an assistant who is developing new apps for the Abstrácto-Dex. If you visit the lab once in a while and show them your progress, your Dex may get a handy upgrade! Like...

...the new Photo App. That's a fun little toy that lets's you take pictures of your team and yourself.

Right now you can include up to two monsters and your avatar in the pic, I may include more features in the future. The current time of day and weather is shown, too. The images are saved to the hard drive (in the "Drawings" folder in the game's directory) and can be viewed inside the app, too.

You could share your pics online or you can just use the Photo App to get an unobstructed look at the battle backgounds!

Here are some pictures I took with it.

Become a Patreon!

I set up a Patreon page for U-GameZ! 

For just 1 Dollar you get access to everything  I  post there - exclusive music from my game projects,  behind the scenes stuff and more!  Don't worry, this Devlog will continue here as it is.   I'm just trying to build a community, get feedback and post some  extra content in return!

The final   Abstráctomon Screenshot Update of the year!

There's now a suspicious looking tree hidden in the Tuca Woods...

I finally connected Herringtin and the Tuca Woods with an area called Tuca Track. It's a lush green route with plenty of birch trees and meadows. When leaving the starting village Herringtin, you can take this easier path or explore the more difficult Atoneel Tunnel to get to the other side of the island.

The children of Herringtin love to play outside and are always up for a battle!

I wish you happy holidays and a happy new year! I'll continue to share my progress (and the game, finally?) in 2020!

These fluffy snow monkeys are Abstráctomon No. 97 & 98 [ENG] Chillchim / [FR] Makrouler / [GER] Makuller and Lenzo.

They're Ice/Grass types. They love snow, but no signs of snow in my area yet. Maybe in February?

Abstráctomon  Screenshot   Update!

I added 3 new berries to the game! They all have different growing conditions and effects. Take a look at this chart I made!

The Moon Berry for example, can be found in dark caves. If one of your Abstráctomon holds a Moon Berry, it will illuminate the area around you, making navigating underground much easier!

This is what it looks like without a Moon Berry. Pretty dark, eh? Only your bicycle's light helps a little bit.

Back outside, why don't you take a look at the new shoreline of Herringtin? I changed some of the cliffs to mauve colored limestone, decorated with fossilized corals.

And I made the final section of the Water Gym a little more interesting by adding a maze of currents.

That's it for today!

Here are some zoomed out screenshots of some areas from the upcoming game Abstráctomon.

I recoded the lighting engine to make it more efficient. While it looks the same as before, it is easier on the framerate now.

Especially in underground areas the frame rate took a hit, but it's much better now. Before the lighting script always included every light source in the room, now it ignores those not visible on screen. As a bonus, the lighting works on the zoomed out map view now, too.

The laboratory looks a little different now, doesn't it?

I added an upper floor. If you climb these twisted staircase (I'm really proud of the animation; that took some time!)...

...you get access to a new astronomy themed room. What will happen if you take a look through that large telescope?

If you take a look through the professor's telescope at night...

...you might discover a cool star constellation! With each new moon a new constellation appears. Mark all twinkling stars with the cross hair to connect the dots... Maybe you will see a wishing star?

(Provided the sky's clear...)

In this Abstráctomon dev update video I show off the telescope & new NPC speech sounds!

The start menu looks nicer now with colored text and a little animated icon in the top-left corner.

I improved on the indoor lighting. Sunlight that shines through the windows now has the shape of the window (and things that are in front of the window). Below are some more examples from different times of the day.

On Saturday felt the urge to try to program a prototype for automatic island generation. If this works out, I could add randomized island to the game you can visit to catch more Abstráctomon.

My code scans the image and places the corresponding tiles on the map for each color.

So far, I managed to place the tiles for the beach from a tiny 32x22 pixel image. It also creates a unique island code & name that players could share with others.

Next I want to add gras, ponds and objects. We'll see how it turns out! Below are the results of two days of work on this:

Stay home & play video games!

Here's my progress with the automatic island generation     for Abstráctomon so far. Beaches, grass and ponds work now. It works with pretty much any source image size, but the larger the image, the longer it takes to generate the island. Next I'll try to add some elevation.

In this  dev update video I  show off footstep sounds and a sneak peak of the random island generation!

In this development update video, I  show off  a few smaller things I  added to Abstráctomon. 

I'm really happy how my little random island generation experiment turned out so far!

All it takes is a tiny sprite (up to 96x96 pixels) with specific colors representing things like beaches, ponds and cliffs, and a 5-letter code that defines things like

-the source image (=shape of the island) used

-if the island should be mirrored / rotated in various ways

-the biome (grassland, desert, snow...)

-the weather.

I made sure to not use actually random numbers but a fixed seed that is also generated from the Island code, so the island will look the same when you visit it again (or when it reloads after a battle).

You can see more examples below.

Please keep in mind that these screenshots are taken from my prototype and lack lighting and other stuff since I did not transfer over the code to the game project yet.

I also improved the look of frozen ponds a bit with a cool reflection. The ice sparkles even!

Other small improvements:

-footsteps have an echo in caves now

-I made a new textbox with a neat walkie-talkie design. The idea is that Herby, the helicopter pilot hands you a walkie-talkie so you can communicate with him. He will take you to the randomized islands (and bring you back, hopefully!) and you can also use the walkie-talkie to fly back to an Abstrácto-Center.

The item is in the game already, now I only have to create the conversation and some additional helicopter action!

Phew, that's all for today's post! Thanks for reading!

In this quick dev update video I show off the new walkie-talkie and alternative player characters!

Time for an Abstráctomon Screenshot Update!

You can now select a skin tone of your character at the start of the game (your choice affects the appearance of your rival and parents, too).

There's now a reward for connecting star constellations with the telescope. Remember that shooting star I talked about in an earlier dev update?

Seems like it chrashes somewhere on Herringtin's beach! You can dig this mysterious item up with your shovel.

I finished the whole sequence of flying to the randomized islands called Wild Shards.

Talk to the pilot Herby on the roof of a Abstrácto-Center and he will fly you to certain locations on the map (which I redrew, by the way). If you choose the Wild Shards, you can either let Herby pick a random island for you or enter a 5 letter code to fly to a specific one.

Today I'd like to share some GIFs and new artwork of Abstráctomon with ya'll.

https://imgur.com/OtNxuZ1

The first GIF shows that you can now dig up some sweet money.

https://imgur.com/oVrtFXH

The second GIF shows that you can now sort the item list by name, amount, worth and most recent! This took me almost a whole week to implement because of a some nasty bugs in my code. Oh well.

The different shops in the game  have a unique menu designs now.

While debugging the item list and waiting for the project to compile, I colored in the drawings of the gym leaders which you can see below.

Stay save and thank you for reading!

New Abstráctomon Screenshots!

The first time you visit a gym you'll receive a new item called League Pass. It acts as a legal document that proofs you're a registered member of the Abstrácto-League and permits you to challenge the gym leaders.

The card's electronic chip holds your personal data and records your achievements as a trainer. The front of the card is fully customizable with photos taken within the game, borders, backgrounds and effects.

After obtaining the League Pass you can access the new "League" menu.

Here you can customize your League Pass, look at so called "Promo-Passes" you might get from other trainers, view your badge collection and see if there are any trainers you've encountered before who are ready for a rematch.

I made a fake 3D effect for turning the League Pass around. You can also choose some cool "shiny" materials for it.

There are now two ways to take photos in the game:

use the Photo App on your Dex (ask the programmer in Prof. Rich's lab!) to take a picture of the various locations you visit on your travels,

or pose in front of the Green Screen in the Pengu Pool Gym to take a photo with an transparent background.

I added the option to pose with your whole team at once (before you could only pose with up to two of them).

Hope you'll have some fun with this feature and create & share some cool League Pass designs!

I finished the League Pass Designer!

In my last post I talked about designing the front of your League Pass, today I'll can show you how!

In the "League" menu, select your name and then choose "Design" start.

Choose a background, borders and a photo taken within the game. You can freely scale and move the photo as you like or choose none at all.

Select a font and color for your name...

...and add some silly decorations for good messure.

Hmm... Somehow this isn't shiny enough.

Much better!

When your're done, hit "Save" and that's it. A copy will be save to your hard drive in the "Drawings" folder where the game is located so you can share your design with others.

I bet you can create much better League Pass designs than my example!

Lastly, I'd like to share some monster icons I made for menus and stuff. These icons are just 32x32 pixels.

Kinda tough to squeeze the big bois in there, but it's fun and I can do it on the side while waiting for the game compile when debugging.

Stay save!

This time I show you how to customize your League Pass and search the Abstrácto-DEX!

I re-organized and expanded the options menu in Abstráctomon with separate pages for graphics, sound, controls and other settings.

Among the new features are optional auto-saving and setting the in-game clock to real-time (a day in the game takes 24 hours) or "fast" (a day in the game takes 24 minutes and you can fast-forward time by sitting on a chair, etc.).

The game supports the keyboard and all kinds of gamepads. Since the game has been in development for so long, it even still supports a sideways Wii Remote if you still own one (but I included single Switch Joy-Con support too to go with the times). You have to connect those via Bluetooth to your PC (It might take external software / a compatible Bluetooth dongle to do so).

I know these screenshots of menus aren't too exciting to look at, but this "quality of life" stuff is worth talking about, too!

It's now possible to select which save file you want to load or save to anytime from within the game. There are 3 slots available. You could keep a manual save and reserve another slot for auto-saving, for example. Since save files are basically text files on your hard drive, they are easy to archive and share (or edit, if you're a cheater!).

If you want to play with a real-time clock, you might want to offset it. I added an option to offset the real-time clock by -12 to +12 hours. Like any other option, the change happens immediately and there's no need to restart the game.

The only time you need to restart the game is for connecting / changing gamepads, since the game might not recognize them otherwise. I recommend connecting your gamepad before starting the game, especially if it is paired via Bluetooth. That's a limitation from the engine I'm using.

I touched up some monster sprites for Leechew, Dropchew + Wetchew. Especially Wetchew looks less like a used condom now XD

Remember the random islands I talked about a few weeks ago? I successfully ported over the prototype's island generation code into the actual game. There're still a few little bugs to iron out, but it's almost done.

You can visit these "Wild Shards" via Herby's helicopter, but as you an see you have to swim the last couple of feet...

This one is pretty small, but there might be some rare Abstráctomon to find! Right now there are 4 sizes (S, M , L and XXL) along with over a dozen different biomes to discover.

Last but not least, I'd like to show off new battle backgrounds I made. These will be used in the Tuca Forest area and islands with a autumn trees.

By the way: I'd like to thank  you all for  reaching 1.000 downloads of my stuff on itch.io and 10.000 views of this devlog! 

Stay save !

The 5 letter island code will now be shown in the main menu next to the island's name when you're visiting the Wild Shards.

I added an animation of your Abstráctomon running away when you flee from a wild battle.

I made new sprites for tall grass and reeds in cold areas.

This is just a neat screenshot I wanted to share :)

Happy Halloween!

The Wild Shards island can now have caves! I added this feature after fixing a lot of bugs my brother and I discovered recently. Some of them had pretty strange effects like turning every item in you inventory into water bottles.

Anyway, below are some more impressions of generated islands with caves!

You might get a wet surprise while digging with the shovel! These fountains while lift you up if you stand / swim over them. Here it will take you onto an otherwise inaccessible ledge. Neat!

In the last development update of 2020 we get wet in various ways.

Happy holidays and happy new year! 
Will 2021 finally be the year this game will be released to the public? I sure hope so!

I finished overworld sprites for the three Starter Abstráctomon so you can see them outside battles, too. Here you can see the aftermath of you first battle against your rival!

The monster that neither of you chose stays in the lab and roams around the upper floor.

I made some cac-tiles! Sorry for the bad pun.

Caves on the Wild Shards islands now feature some atmospheric sounds.

Here are more 32x32 icons!

That's all for today!

One of the unwritten rules of game design is that if you have an ice level, you gotta have a lava level as well. So I converted one of the island types of the Wild Shards into a vulcanic landscape with dead grass and lots of lava!

Lava can also appear in caves and acts as a light source.

Downhill mountain biking became even more fun with a new jumping animation.

Someone has apparently redecorated the laboratory and the "Mon Point" store. I'll be at the toy aisle! But first I want to buy new decorations for my League Pass...

After adding new sprites for jumping with a bicycle, I made some for jumping on foot as well. It'sa me!

"Shiny hunting" might be fun for some hardcore players, but most of us never get to see an odd colored monster during a normal playthrough. What if you just could ... recolor your 'mons at will? This machine in Herringtin's lab can do just that!

Put your regular old Abstráctomon in there and *BAM* it's shiny now! There's only one catch: that thing needs alotta juice. It's powered by "Shiny Pearls" that take a little effort to find. But you can even turn your starter into a shiny after the fact! Or give a shiny back its original color if you don't like the new look.

If you don't feel like cheating nature, you can still encounter shinies in the wild, too. Just ignore the machine and go huntin'. Oh, and I heard the Shiny Pearls can assist with that, too...

Here you can see my Spitsuck's new look along with improved stat-readability.

I had some fun with real time shadows in Abstráctomon. This isn't raytracing or even real 3D lighting, just some fakery with mirroring and rotating the sprite, depending on the player's position relative to the light source.

For now only the player's shadow will react to a nearby light source. If you move away too far, the shadow will turn into the regular old drop shadow again.

Just a neat little effect. Maybe I'll add it to other NPCs later if it doesn't affect the framerate.

In the team overview, fainted monsters are now highlighted with a red box to make it easier to tell how your team's doing.

There are now separate volume settings for music in and outside of battles.

I changed the "Tuca Track" route a little.

This screenshot shows a new battle background.

Happy Easter!

I added some useful features to the A.S.S. (Abstráctomon Storage System). You can now store up to 300 monsters in 12 boxes. Boxes can now be renamed and you can change their background image.

Monsters can be moved freely between boxes and you can take a stored monster's item without having to put it into your team first.

I made some tiles for ditches. They add some depth to the sand dunes on the beach, for example.

I also changed this rock. Yeah.

Since "New Pokémon Snap" came out and the ability to take selfies with your team in Abstráctomon Venom Violet Version already exists, I thought why stop there? Let's take photos of wild Abstráctomon, too! That could be a fun side activity. And it could be another incentive to visit the "randomly" generated "Wild Shards"-islands.

Obviously, in a 2D game it'll work a little different then in the Pokémon Snap games.

So first I added a professional camera item to the game. You can lend this camera from the photographer when going on a "Photo Safari". It can be equipped similarly to other gear like the shovel. You can then walk around freely with the camera in hand and sneak up close to wild Abstráctomon...

... (which are now visibly roaming around in tall grass and other places) and SNAP! They might get scared of you and run away, so be patient!

I haven't implemented the actual resulting photo yet, but the idea is that your position and distance to the monster will be reflected in the finished photograph. It will look something like this, but with the wild Abstráctomon instead of the player character and his / her team:

Maybe the photographer will eventually rate your pictures or request some specific ones in the future? We'll see.

At this point I had some visible monsters on the Wild Shards. I then decided to let them appear anywhere in the world. They're not fully animated and simply "hop" around, but still they make world feel more alive than ever.

Outside of Photo Safaris, they can be fought and caught like any other encounter. If the spot you, they either flee or attack.

Abstráctomon you haven't registered in your DEX yet appear as a black silhouette.

To be clear, tall grass and stuff still triggers regular fights! These visible monsters are just a little bonus. They might be slightly higher level than the invisible encounters in that area.

There are still some bugs to figure out, so I'll post another update when the photo mechanic is finished. Until then, why don't you try to find all Abstráctomon hiding in this screenshot? Zoom in and have fun!

New GIF: Taking pictures of wild Abstráctomon (WIP)

I'm currently (re)drawing back sprites for all Abstráctomon. The new sprites show the whole body. Before these sprites were cut off since you couldn't see the whole body of your own Abstráctomon during a fight, but know I need complete sprites for the photos taken with the Safari Camera. This includes drawing back sprites for the smaller overworld sprites as well. Well at least I have something to do while the game compiles...

Photos taken with the Safari Camera now include the current weather. The game saves the current time of day and location the photo was taken as well.

The photographer works for a local newspaper (the "Noddmany Times") and asks you for photos of wild Abstráctomon.

She can give you a request for a special photograph, e.g. a photo of a specific monster, at a certain time of day, in a certain location, with a specific monster type or a certain number of monsters. Such a request can even be a combination of these conditions!

If you fulfill a request, your photo earns extra points and you get paid!

During the the photo grading, the previously best photo of the monster is now displayed when you get a new high score.

The player's name and the date the photo was graded are now displayed when you view the photo album.

I also added a dialogue option to decline a request from the photographer. She'll then request a different photo.

I added two new fonts to the League Pass editor (Comic and Small).

I made new backgrounds for additional beach areas.

Here are the full back sprites for Cuddl and Grizzl.

Below are some more photos I've taken with the Safari Camera. Have a nice week!

Photographed Abstráctomon now cast shadows!

The first Abstráctomon of your team can now follow you around! I'm currently working on this little feature. 

Here you can see a new variant of tall grass for beaches.

You can now let one of your Abstráctomon follow you around (still a little buggy). They can swim, too.

The game now shows a small screenshot with the time, date and the name of the location you saved in when saving or loading a save file.

The Abstráctomon that follows you around has reflections now, too. Your character & your monster will also be wet for a short while after exiting water. Jumping over ledges is a bit smoother now.

I remade the battle backgrounds for the ocean. Shout out to "Sketches for Humanity" and his awesome Blender tutorial!

Here you can see the new back sprite for Weremoo. Happy Halloween everybody!

I redid the battle backgrounds for tall grass, the ocean, the Tuca Track route and more. Pretty much all battle backgrounds and many other assets are based on 3D renders created in Blender. I then touch up those renders in Photoshop.

I improved the Tuca Track layout a bit once again. It's the first route in the game and connects Herringtin and the Tuca Woods.

Watch Abstráctomon follow you around end enjoy some new atmospheric weather effects!

Watch the  latest update video!

In the video  I show off some   cool new environmental details     like rain puddles, ice pillars and fancy new grass tech!

Below are some   brand new screenshots showing     the smoother lighting & stuff.

I didn't mention it in the video, but   shadows can now have colours  depending on the time of day and area. For example, shadows are now tinted light blue on snow and light brown on sand!