RAILS devblog

development blog for the indie game developer RAILS

[railsdevblog]

Radio silence

Things have been pretty quiet here, unfortunately the last submission process has been waiting on me to sort out some business admin and contracts, which has taken me a long time to get around to doing, mainly because my real job just released an app so it’s been non stop crunch and fixing there for the last 2 odd months. Not a great excuse but finding the motivation proved too difficult to make a great amount of head way, now things have settled down at work slightly, things are back on track and moving in the right direction.

( /\ This sums up how I feel about the process right now)

So there’s been a lot going on in the background but the last sections left now are waiting for a D-U-N-S number and then resubmitting the app under the companies developer account, the binary it self seems to be in great condition (although I’m sure you guys will find a way to break it!), so I’m going to estimate 3-4 weeks until you see Highlin on the iOS App store.

Mike 

[railsdevblog]

Waiting waiting waiting...

Still waiting for the review process to be completed! I think this has been the hardest part so far xD.

Mike

[railsdevblog]

Last few tweaks

We have been knuckling down on the last bugs here, fixing, releasing, testing, repeat. The sound effects come in on Thursday and it’s looking hopeful that will be the build going live! Not sure about you, BUUUUUT I’M EXCITED :D.

Mike

[railsdevblog]

IT’S HERE!

THE BUILD YOU'VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR : Apple pre submission build v0.4.00!

It’s Arty, it’s beautiful, it’s logical, it’s story driven, it’s collectable, it’s kinda got one or 2 bugs but it’s finally feature complete! We've been working on this game for about 2 years now and to have finally reached this point where we have a product, a product that we are happy to release into the wild is an absolutely terrific feeling! I honestly can not wait to hear peoples thoughts on the end result of our love, sweat and hard work! Still that said, the next few weeks will be tidying up and bug fixing, we will be sending it out to our beta testers soon and moving into a bug free state ready for release in October. Mike

[railsdevblog]

England had one bloody job

I was slightly distracted by the rugby which England lost! it was looking so great for us, til those bloody Welsh came back with such a fire in the second half, they played a great game and deserved the win... but still...not happy ¬.¬ . I was also distracted by working on some circuitry for a cosplay, only simple stuff to make a pulsing led system but It was good fun :). Annnnyywho! enough about my distractions and lack of concentration,  I did do some work as well! The world map parallax is finished, some of the map is now cleaned up, the story doesn't crash and a few bugs involving the judges are fixed. So good job! (< self motivation). Tomorrow will tackle the things I forgot about until checking my task list and therefore didn't include in the last posts list, including but not limited to: The judge opponent selector screen. The new sleep animation. The small pile of bugs that have accumulated. Some more balancing. I'm still hopefully for the pre-submission build by Monday morning! Mike

[railsdevblog]

CHARGE TO THE FINISH!!

SO CLOSE I CAN TASTE IT!! This weekend will push the game into completion!! It will tie all the last pieces together and by Monday morning we will have a game ready to submit! 

Plan of action There are a few last bugs in the story arc. The world map has new parallax graphics to go in. Few bugs around the calender system. Sound effects. Maybe a new rule if we have time. Then send it off for testing and apple to make sure it gets past the approval process!!!

Mike

[railsdevblog]

Outside: amazing sunshine

Inside: we work!

Unfortunately we chose one of the sunniest days to meet up and have a huge Highlin Tale push, so as my Facebook filled up with pictures of the beach, fun and happiness, we grafted away!

What a weekend though! We have been working hard on getting the new story and it’s looking great, well I think so anyway! I'm a massive fan of tools, I think all games need tools otherwise you add so much extra tedious work, it clutters the code and creating tools helps make you think about the architecture a bit more, so I want to introduce you to the events page of our master tool! 

I’ll do a proper post on the tool sometime, but it lets us edit everything in the game, from the towns, cards, events, sounds and map layout.

Above is the events tab where we can add new events (displayed on the left) and edit the trigger, the conditions that need to be met and then the actions to take when triggered, On the right is popup box adding a new Dialogue message. 

Pretty awesome huh! it was inspired by rpg maker :p, which I spent half my childhood in. Yeahh so the entire weekend has been us setting this up, arguing other messages and fixing any issues that it causes.

The world map is pretty much complete now, just working on the animation when a new town is unlocked and then I’ll upload some screenshots!

Mike

[railsdevblog]

The last week in one commit.

Currently on the train going to meet ressie, this weekends going to be huge! everything is coming together. Expect updates throughout!

Mike

[railsdevblog]

Town Interface

Hiya, ressie here. I’m the one doing all the visuals and UI and I wanted to show you a feature in the game: the calendar system.

During the game, you’ll visit a handful of locations, each will have their own pool of new cards to collect, plus new rules that modify the base card game.

But in addition, each location has events spread across days of the week. Each day spawns a new set of opponents to battle.

In the screenshot above, the next scheduled events are listed in the strip along the bottom of the screen. By default, starting a new day gives you a bunch of money but there’s a shop sale on Tuesday and this location’s boss is available to battle on Wednesday.

Sleeping has a cooldown timer, so you’ll have to wait a few minutes before progressing again. You can, however, skip this wait by beating all the opponents that day. There’s a little more to that mechanic too, but you’ll just have to wait and see that one for yourself!

[railsdevblog]

Still here!

Hey it’s been a while since the last update and I want to try and keep this flowing with regular updates, even when nothing is going on! Not that nothing’s going on, I've been super busy with the World map tool, how very dare you accuse me otherwise! The problem is, you know when you just don’t want to do something, you avoid it like the plague, it just starts feeling like a massive chore, well that’s how I feel about this tool! Which is weird because I like this kinda stuff normally... so I'm not sure why I’m hating on this, oh wait yeah it’s because Corona sdk is shit for tools. 

Good news though! it is nearly done, once it’s been completed the last huge feature can be finished and we will be so close for a release build! Other good news; testers have been unable to find any new bugs :). MAAAAN!!!! NOT HAVING BUGS COMING IN FEELS AMAZING! I think I'm tearing up, I'm so happy!

Also, I'm not an artist, don’t judge my white boxes.

[railsdevblog]

Last bug release for a while

I’m pretty tired so imma keep this short y’all! This release fixed a few more bugs, I have about 12 left in my list with nothing major coming back from the testers. Now the games uber stable I'm going to focus on finishing the new world map implementation! Got to say it’s looking AWESOME!

[Change Log v0.3.95]

Fixed plunder rule.

Text outran certain rule text boxes.

Catalogue auto select showed card images based on inventory ID not card ID.

Fixed text alignment (again ;) ).

Auto sleep could trigger before event sequences.

Mike

[railsdevblog]

Bug fixing again!!!

Maaaan it’s got to that point where it’s mostly polish and bug fixing left, which is awesome and super exciting, also no where near as fun as creating cool new features! I did implement the brand new shiny confuse rule!!  it looks fucking awesome! (Wait, David am I allowed to swear on here?). Basically the confuse rule rotates the card stats round, every turn and everyone’s going to hate it xD.

[Change Log v0.3.94]

Time doesn't count down in Battle.  

Time counts down in dialogue.

Bonus wheel animation has a random flashing black semi circle.

Android error telling you to upgrade to latest shop.

Bonus wheel booster charges money (worst prize ever!).

In-game settings overlapped by current rules.

incorrect positions on judge victory screen.

Can fight judges without defeating their lackeys.

Changed Town names & updated balance.

Fixed an animated the Confuse rule.

Mike

[railsdevblog]

Now arriving at RAILS devblog

Hello! This is the place where myself (ressie) and my friend Mike (the one who is not me) will post information about our upcoming mobile game, Highlin Tale.

We got some real cards printed for GDC, but Highlin Tale is is not a real game, it’s a virtual game you see. I also just noticed I have ink on my nail.

Highlin Tale is...

A collectible card game adventure, meaning you’ll be going across a world map, visiting locations and filling up your collection of increasingly more fancy and powerful cards. And of course there will be bosses to beat, badges to be won, all the good stuff.

There are also lots of modular rules - or, there will be once we’ve finished setting them up and testing them, which transform the game at different locations.

It’s our homage to a much-loved minigame from a very popular role playing game franchise. Fans of the original will know it right away!

Development so far

We’ve been working on Highlin Tale very casually for about two years, so it’s about time we finished it off. As a matter of fact it’s very close to being finished and you should be able to get your hands on it October 2015. It’ll be out on iOS and Android.

And don’t worry - no free-to-play. No in-app purchases.

This development blog

We’ll be posting here semi-regularly from now until Highlin Tale’s release and possibly beyond, so why not pop back every now and then to see how it’s shaping up. Ok, that’s everything. Onwards!

[railsdevblog]

Generic ‘setup()’ names are boring

Internal Bug fix release! So the last few days I've been tackling some of the smaller issues in the game, (see change log below), It’s not much but all my time has been going into “THE WORLD MAP TOOL” TADAAA, which I’ve been trying to make with the Corona SDK… it’s a bloody nightmare, this engine was not made for tool building but hey, apart from the frequent tears it’s going well!!

[Change Log v0.3.93] - Fixed ‘Catalogue’ display on world map. - Backup animation now plays no matter the stat difference. - Fixed case where backup animation would show, but card would not backup. - Fixed Balance Alignment.

Mike