October Dev Log

Hello everyone! Welcome to the spooky month's dev log! Happy early Halloween.

Seattle Adventures

We had quite a few things going on this month!  

Earlier in October, we went to the Unreal Dev Days event, where we started learning more about the Unreal Engine--the engine we're going to be using for the next game, and possibly more in the future.

We've also been traveling around, going to various meetups, and generally gathering material/experiences for future projects.

Whether Dovah will stay long-term in Seattle for work purposes is still up in the air, but in the meantime, there are still adventures to be had--like with bookstore cats!

Android Ports 

However, October hasn't all been fun and games, sadly.

We've been deep in the hellscape that is porting our games to Android. The original Red Embrace, which was made on an older version of the Ren'Py engine, had to be updated in many ways in order to be compatible with the new Google Play store. But we finally made it, thanks to hours of struggling and a few intrepid QA testers.

And then there's the Google Play version of Red Embrace: Hollywood, which we divided into chapters and route purchases in order to make it more accessible for mobile players. Little did we know, this endeavor was a one-way ticket to microtransaction hell.

At first, we figured the pricing structure would be a simple matter: set prices for each chapter, full routes, and the full game. But as we tested purchases and encountered the purchase screens, we noticed how odd it would be (and unfair) if a user purchased many chapters across the board, perhaps a route or two, but the price of the full game remained the same. Thus, the complexity in calculating the dynamic cost of parts of the game ballooned.

3D Learning Funtimes

We've also been learning things this month! Because we're getting ready to expand into the 3D realm, we've been hard at work experimenting with both the Unreal Engine and 3D modeling.

Below: witness the glory of Dovah's Unfinished Donut.

Next Month and Beyond

As we approach the next month, both of us are focusing on wrapping up RE:H things while simultaneously gathering resources for our next interim game. The jump from 2D to 3D is a difficult one, but we're excited.

We're also gearing up for mid-November, where we'll be heading to a convention (details forthcoming) to show off RE:H, similar (but at a larger scale) to our showcase during PAX Weekend. 

Stay tuned for the November dev log to hear about our adventures at the convention, as well as our progress on the early designs for the next project! Thanks again for all your amazing support <3