Heyyo, it's CraftedCircuitry again. For today, it'll be a quick Devlog for my polishing progress on v0.9.12. Little steps as the final weeks before releasing the game is coming to a close.
v0.9.10 - Final Bugfixing
I still had some time to polish and bugfix and it’s good that I still try to break my game whenever I can. A remnant of an old bug that destroyed a few weeks of game dev was the Area Notifier not properly syncing whether I was in a certain area or not. This time it was in the Hidden Veil Shop, which is a very big misstep if I did not see that bug.
The Area Notifiers have 2 main collision areas, signifying the 2 areas it would connect. What I would do is check collisions to see if the Adventurer has passed through it or not. On my first iterations, it would not properly log what area the Adventurer was in, making it possible where enemies would not spawn in the area you want to go and not properly activating certain important functions for that area.
I fixed it by simply checking if the Adventurer’s current area was already different from the collision’s area, making it more precise.
However, I didn't do it properly for Veil Shop, which resulted in this bug again. This can be easily manipulated by players as there is a very powerful function it does that would essentially break the game if I let the bug happen. Luckily, since I already know how to do it properly, it's an easy fix.
V0.9.11 - Adventurer Hitstop VFX
In pursuit of polishing the game further, I added more hit feeling whenever the Adventurer gets hit. I made it more exaggerated, I emulated the feeling you get on how Hollow Knight does it. Blackening of the screen, shockwaves to see that you got hit, and more red when the Adventurer is already at 1 HP.
There’s also a lot more effects when the Adventurer dies in the run. Again, I wanted to add a bit more exaggeration.
I essentially just reused the Oracle Appraisal effect for this so I didn’t really have to make a brand new module. It was also White normally, so I can easily modulate the colors to what I need it to be. It’s the same as the small effects you get when Enchanted Cards apply, the Adventurer healing, or when they get Points. The effect only ever gets used for the Oracle so I might as well reuse it.
V0.9.12 - Stamps
The Adventurer can now get Stamps from their adventures that automatically show up in their Save Journal. This is only saved on your Save Data and is not connected to stuff like Steam’s Achievements system. But I might add the functionality post-release.
I’ve even added a little Info page in the Dungeon Chronicles so you can get a hint of how to get the three Stamps on your Save Journal.
Ready for Cloud Saving
Yes, I was honestly debating whether to add this or not. But it always stuck in my mind that this is a grindy game. Adding Cloud Save to Steam is another layer of protection with the Save Backup functionality of the Save Journal. I decided to do it, it was pretty easy with Steam anyway, and I got it working in literal minutes.
I’ve done some developer tests and it seems to be working flawlessly. What’s nice is that both this and the Save Journal Backing Up work very seamlessly together.
The Cloud Saving seamlessly follows the local save first and not the Steam Cloud, so your current progress will always be safe no matter which platform you play from. (EDIT 2024-05-09)
A Quick Ending to a Quick Devlog
Not much in this past week, but a lot of polishing and bugfixing. I even have a release candidate ready that I'm testing rigorously now to make sure everything is working well. I have also added more optimizations to certain things in the Dungeon, making your life as an Adventurer a little bit easier.
This has been CraftedCircuitry, signing off for now.
