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.