Weekly Update #9

So, version 0.1.0 of Giant's Sandbox is now out, which you've probably seen, if you are a 10$ or more patron and oh boy, this one dominated my week. I'll warn you, there's a little rant coming up, I just have to get it off my chest. Anyway, onward to the updates.

Giant's Sandbox

So this thing pretty much was my whole week and before I go into the rant, let me tell you on what my plans for the next update(s) are.

First of all, I'll try to make more frequent but less expansive updates. With the handheld interaction in place, one of the biggest features is done. I've set it up in a way, so that I can expand on the interaction "fairly simply". Focusing on one thing at a time seems more reasonable, especially after this week. I also think that you guys might appreciate that a little more. Thanks to my now faster internet connection I was able to upload both 64 and 32-bit versions of the game in about an hour were it previously took between 5-6. So that makes frequent updates certainly much more feasible.

What's next?

As for what I'm going to focus on next, there are some minor and easier to implement features in my Trello list, like the "Unaware State" or barefoot options for all models that I'm gonna focus on next. I also want to overhaul the footstep sound system, making it so that it adapts to the players own size, rather than having fixed sounds. For example, a size 5 giant would sound much different to a size -5 character than size 0 (I hope this makes sense, this is how the sizes in-game are set).

Now for the rant and the reason why this took so long.

Last week, I've said that it would go online within the next couple of days and I was fairly positive that I would be able to make that. So on Monday, I did a test run and it turned out that the A.I. was not working properly at all. So Monday and Tuesday became days where I just tried to fix the A.I. and I sort of succeeded. Wednesday I went on to fix other issues and mainly work on the new controls screen. By then I was fairly positive that I could release the update on Thursday. However on Thursday more and more things turned up that weren't quite running the way they should, so it's more bug fixing from here on. On Friday night I realized that my whole A.I. setup was a convoluted mess that needed to be cleaned to get into working order and so the first thing I did on Saturday was overhauling the whole A.I. and just like that, Saturday was gone too. At least there was success and I was able to iron out the last issues that bothered me today. So now I'm really looking forward to it not working for people at all for some reason but I hope that won't be the case.

Macro Museum

I'll make a little prototype for it this week, shouldn't really take much time. I think it's easier to imagine what I had in mind, if you can get your hands on it and see for yourselves.

Art

Well, if you've read the rant above then you'd know that I had no time for anything else this whole damn week. I do however have some ideas that I want to work on and I'm certainly gonna do some art this week and basically take a break from Giant's Sandbox for a few days.

Anything Else?

If you want to get into game developement, bring a lot of patience.

That's all for now.

Thank you for your time and support!