Writing as Procrastination

Thoughts and news on a variety of games. But mostly Guild Wars 2.

[kitsuta]

UI Update: Robo Popup!

As we get closer to Starfarmer’s release, one of my tasks has been to overhaul the user interface for the game. The interface had been made very early on in the project and needed a facelift. The original interface was also so tiny that our playtesters kept having to squint.

I’m getting close to the finish line on this task, having already redone the front-end screens, the player’s computer, and the “IGDM” (a set of screens you use to monitor your farm and your status). Fresh home from MAGFest, I dusted off a screen Sku has been waiting for: our robo popup!

This was the old version. Yes, that is actual size. This is why you don’t go straight from making 32x32 sprites into making a user interface for a 1280x720 game window, folks.

The robo popup (or Robot Assignment Screen) is the player’s hub for controlling each of their farm robots: you can change the robot’s tool, rename them, change the channel they work on, and send them out to the field or recall them to the robo shed. You can also change their mode -- robots can be set to either await your orders, or go out on your farm automatically to look for work. All of this was crammed into the tiny screen you see above. Let’s see the new version:

Ah, that’s better! Everything got double-sized and a few things got shuffled around. I added the upgrades and expanded the status icon into its own row. The mode the robot is set to is also its own button now -- the old version had one button to both change the robot’s mode and send/recall them, which was confusing to say the least. Speaking of the send/recall button, you can now see the robot’s current charge level next to it, which will be super useful.

I love this new design, and I’m hoping to get this new screen added to the game this week. After that, Sku will hook it into the robot manager, and then playtesters can use it! No more squinting! :D

[kitsuta]

2017 -> 2018 and release dates

I was very sure that Starfarmer was gonna be done this year.

The most sure I’ve ever been! I felt like we were 80% “done” at the start of the year, and another 20% can’t possibly take a whole year, right? So I put down “2017″ as the game’s release date on all the official channels.

I’ve now changed this to “2018.″

The old adage “90% of the work done means 90% of the work is left” sounds funny, but boy, you have no idea how true it is until you really experience it. I hadn’t exactly overestimated how ‘done’ we were: the game is in a mostly playable state, with all the big gameplay features in and only a few major projects left.

But being 90% complete and being polished enough to release are two very different things. This won’t be news to anyone who’s done a big project, but ‘cleaning up all the little things’ is a ton of work when there’s a lot of little things to clean up. There’s also the matter of content: feature complete doesn’t mean content complete, and boy is there a lot of content. We even scaled things down, and that made it manageable, but not ‘this year’ manageable. And of course, ‘real life’ gets in the way, as my paid work took more time away from this project than expected and health problems Happened.

So what’s next? Well, I’m pretty optimistic about 2018. It’ll be a lot of polishing and bugfixing, and some more content creation, but I’m really looking forward to getting through that last mile. It can be frustrating to feel like you’re so close and yet so far, but the cool thing about being this far into a project is that you know it’s going to be done.

That’s one of the advantages of indie dev -- bigger studios have to spend money to keep going, so there’s always the chance that the money will run out right before the end. But our budget is just living expenses, which can be covered in a variety of ways, so it’s a lot different than having to pay a studio full of people a salary.

[kitsuta]

Exciting news: I’m making a videogame!

Hello followers! You may be wondering what I’ve been up to and why it’s not taking screenshots. The short answer is “a whole lot” but the long answer is: Starfarmer!

Starfarmer is a PC videogame that I’ve been helping to develop for several years now. It’s inspired by the farming games of old (Harvest Moon. I mean Harvest Moon) and it’s got a cool sci-fi twist with robots and aliens! I’m super excited about it -- so much so that I got a whole website and blog and Twitter set up! :D

... and then I didn’t have any time to maintain those! :’D

My partner (”Skulkin”) and I have gone back and forth on figuring out how to manage things, but the bottom line is, there’s a lot to do for the game still and doing official marketing AND game development wasn’t working out. Instead I’m going to post unofficial updates here on my personal blog, because unofficial updates are better than radio silence, and anyway it’s super exciting that I get to work on this and I wanna tell people about it!

I encourage you, dear reader, to check out the official channels to see some of the cool stuff we’ve already done. Making that daisy wheel was still one of my favorite projects. Since the last update, we’ve done a bunch of stuff, which I’ll go into more detail later. Look forward to it!

[keycrash]

apparently ppl don’t know about waifu2x??? despite its… concerning name it’s literally the most convenient website i’ve ever come across as an artist

it allows you to resize artwork without it becoming pixellated. this is a MASSIVE help if you, for example, make lineart too small or something. it works best with things that 1. have no textures 2. have smooth lines 3. have cel shading, but it still works really damn well for things that don’t fit that profile

here’s an example:

normal size

2x in paint

2x in waifu2x

so like, there’s that. go wild

[jake-clark]

Original:

Photoshop scaled:

Waifu2x scaled:

It’s legit!! Tell your friends!

[keenblade9]

That’s quite impressive! It must have some great code under the hood.

[calico807]

^Original

^x2 in Clip Studio

^x2 in waifu2x

Holy shit

[kitsuta]

It’s open-source with an MIT (read: extremely permissive) license! How cool is that?! https://github.com/nagadomi/waifu2x

(it’s very cool)

[kitsuta]

You know it’s bad when even Twitter Trends starts judging you.

[loltaku]

We're seeing a lot of articles about the failure of Sunset and Her Story. Is there any way these games could have been more successful?

While I’m not sure Sunset could have ever been successful purely because of it’s price…

The fact of the matter is that Steam isn’t really the platform for either of those games. Insert basic ‘because Steam is for games hurr hurr’ joke here. But really, both of those games are non-traditional experiences aimed, mostly, at a non-traditional audience. Which means that Steam, which is probably the single most ‘traditional’ gaming platform available right now, is a REALLY baffling choice for these games.

I mean, sure, I get it. Steam is the most popular platform for gaming on PC, but for an experimental game, it’s a poor choice for a primary platform, at the very least. People install Steam for one reason: To buy and play video games.

They can’t stream anything through it, it’s not (really) a social hub, it has one purpose and that is to buy and play video games. It’s even more singular in it’s focus than gaming consoles, which are basically multimedia centers nowadays.

Her Story has a version on mobile, but that brings the whole visibility problem up. We’re sort of in a weird place right now where there are two huge platforms (Steam and iOS/Android) that have opposite problems. Games on Steam have relatively high visibility but Steam has fairly traditional users who are unlikely to respond to weird experimental games.

And mobile has much more varied users more likely to respond but it has such a crippling visibility problem you might as well just play the lottery. There isn’t really a platform that combines the two traits, which is sadly probably where these sorts of games would have the highest chance for success. 

Hopefully Facebook’s inevitable app store (which will be for Oculus, but will surely have some non-oculus apps) will more carefully cultivate content and be the third pillar that could give these games a chance to succeed.

[kitsuta]

The secret to mixing a retro “videogamey” game with plot and dialogue is apparently breaking the fourth wall.

[kitsuta]

This is the best possible farm configuration. Look at it, look at how pretty it is. :D

What do you mean “inefficient”

[kitsuta]

Rex Rocket is a fun and challenging game and it has a retro feel, so they didn’t really have to add any dialogue. But I’m glad they did.

Also, bonus points for making both genders the titular character but with distinct names. That was pretty clever.

[kitsuta]

Look, I was very close, okay

[kitsuta]

The mine cart’s gonna need some cleaning.

[kitsuta]

Writing subversive and bizarre dialogue wasn’t enough, so they also put in profiles for all the enemies you defeat and “lore items” that are basically just there to be collectible and deliver jokes.

PS: This game is just $2 on Steam during the summer sale. Just sayin’.

[kitsuta]

First impression of the game: “Aww what a nice kid’s game, you go around collecting flowers and everything’s pretty”

Actually playing the game: “What.”

[kitsuta]

Monument Valley is a very pretty game.

The price is a little steep for the sheer length gameplay you’re getting, but I still recommend it if you value polish. The puzzle design is great, the game moves beautifully, and the sound design is as gorgeous as the art. The Forgotten Shores pack is great as well (and, level-for-level, a better value than the original game).

You’ll see some artifacts in the screenshots - these were, sadly, present in the game itself. No idea what caused them, but hopefully most devices don’t have this issue.

[kitsuta]

When the developers behind King of Thieves released an update to patch out spawn traps, I thought, “oh good, there will be fewer levels that require stupid cheaty frame-perfect jumps”

Ahahaha boy was I wrong.

In order: a level with Spinner trap that mysteriously wouldn’t go away no matter how many times I died, a level that required you to jump when you hit the pixel sticking out of the wall in order to travel straight up, and a level that required you to jump at a magical angle that takes you through the Blade trap to the goal.

I also had someone beat my dungeon today by, quite literally, running straight through my Blade trap. It wasn’t disabled, they just waltzed right through it. Really not sure how that works or makes sense, but there you go.

I love the game itself - it’s one of the few F2P games out there that has actual gameplay, and the structure of it sounds great on paper - but this is getting really tiresome. I’d like to play levels that are challenging because they’re designed well, not because they have some gimmicky exploit.

[kitsuta]

Wheeeee

[kitsuta]

Sorry Frost, you’re off the team. I got a new horse now.

Maybe this one won’t constantly pick fights when I’m entering a dungeon and then end up dead, eh