Dev Log #7

Hey everyone!

August was an incredibly busy month for me, though largely positive.

Capy Games Mentorship

For those of you who didn’t see on Twitter (https://twitter.com/CAPYGAMES/status/1295104035087880192) , I was selected to be a part of Capy’s Mentorship program! I have been learning and getting a lot of feedback regarding my game development journey, and really enjoying it thus far.

I got a puppy!

His name is Hustle! 

He’s a Great Pyrenees. He’s really smart and cute and isn’t afraid of anything (so far). He sleeps a lot and he's almost got potty training down. 

When he’s excited, he likes to bite on things, but luckily, he hasn’t hurt or broke anything! He’s about 11 weeks old now.

I also got a new job

Probably one of the bigger life changes, I accepted a new job opportunity earlier last month after having worked with my previous employer for around 6.5~ years, so between the transition period, and getting on boarding onto the new job, it’s definitely made me have to change up some things mentally and break some old habits. 

Fortunately, I think I will end up being a lot less stressed, and potentially learn a lot more at my new gig.

Animator recruitment

As some of you may saw, Piti has stepped down from his animator position so that he can focus on some personal projects (I’ll miss you Piti!), but he did assist in the process of helping finding new animators, and we’ve closed in on some good ones! 

Things will probably slow in the area for a second as we adjust our animation process.

Productivity Improvements

So, a BIG thing I’ve been working on are ways to improve our development progress so that we can speed up production. Two of the largest things:

Codebase Improvements:

Since there is technically 3 programmers on the project now, it’s exposed a lot of potential pitfalls, and areas that kinda suck having to deal with.

Due to this, I decided to break up the systems and reduce "code dependencies” (making systems not have to tightly rely on each other to function) through a process of refactoring (Refactoring is the process of code restructuring to improve operation without altering functionality) and rewriting (though largely the latter). 

Since we have a good idea of the needed systems of the game already, I’ve been able to get a lot of the systems already completely rewritten, or at least in a state to where modifying or adding to them is significantly easier and faster to do!

There is a LOT less code to have to deal with now because of this, and it’s a lot easier to know what happens where.

CI/CD Pipeline

More technical jargon: CI (Continuous Integration) and CD (Continuous Delivery) in simplest terms allows me to automate a lot of testing, building, and deploying of games builds much quicker. This is especially helpful for always having up to date builds ready at any time for platforms that I’m building for. 

Anytime I push code to our source control system (our means of backing up the project and allowing for multiple people to work on it), it will automatically start making playable builds elsewhere. Those will then be uploaded to our private server where we can access them at any time and test/share them as needed. 

Normally for us to make a build, we'd have to stop what we're doing, wait for Unity to make the build, zip up the contents and upload it to our server, then tell Unity to switch platform (like to OSX) and repeat. Now that happens automatically, and we can continue to work!

Character Design and Development

In-between all of the recruiting work and programming, we've been working on finishing and tweaking many of our characters as we've been planning out animations for many of them, as well as some of the things they'll actually do in game.

Nono got a design update to further reflect his abilities and the general mood of his encounter.

Cumuli, the cumulus cloud bear also had some tweaks done!

Pile also got a new character sheet (again), since he found a jacket.

We're also continuing to work on sprite poses/keys for the animators. Here's an updated set of Nimbo, the nimbostratus cloud bear!

Looking for a Sound Designer and Graphic Designer for UI/Graphics

I will be reopening a position for both Graphic Designer/UI Artist, as well as a new Sound Designer soon. The last search did not yield the results/candidates we were looking for.

For both positions, we will be looking for candidates that can design assets with a similar vibe of a Nintendo game (Pokemon, Animal Crossing, Mario, etc).

Want an Enamel Pin?

Lastly, the first 25 existing patrons to reply to this post with what they like about the project thus far and/or are looking forward to with the project can get a Sodo, Pile, or Camo pin!

That’s pretty much it! I’ll try to get more frequent updates going now that my schedule might be seeing some normalcy.