Didgery, a game of power, a game of struggle, a game of cards.
It has certainly felt like a struggle at points, but Didgery is finally ready for release on the PC platform. A couple of days ago I finished writing and integrating the last of the forty Forbidden Parchments, so the entire storyline of Didgery is now complete! This was the last thing that I felt truly needed completed before I could safely release it to the wider public, so with that in place there isn’t much holding me back. I spent some time yesterday polishing up a couple minor rough spots (I changed the font in the Credits screen to be more fitting with the game, and fixed some bug/minor annoyances surrounding the reading of Forbidden Parchments) and I worked on the third-party abstraction model I built several weeks ago.When I first considered selling Didgery on third-party platforms, I realized that each platform would have differing APIs for leaderboards / achievements / DRM / etc. The last thing I needed was this already rather complicated game being bogged down with various build configurations and multiple code paths. I decided instead to build an abstraction between Didgery and the underlying services so that Didgery can access any service though this single abstraction layer.
The process was fairly simple. I looked at common features I wanted to implement, such as achievements, and I abstracted the method signatures into an interface. Then I create a class that implements this interface and wraps one of the underlying APIs. For each third-party API I wish to implement I just wrap it in a class and expose its functionality through the methods. The really nice thing about this is that it allows me to create my own API to allow achievement support on distribution platforms that have no such support (such as Indievania or my nonexistent webstore.) My custom-built achievement system doesn’t get the fancy stuff such as being able to compare achievements with other people over the nets, but at least it gives the game consistency across distribution portals.
I contacted Desura last night and asked them if they would be interested in releasing Didgery onto their platform. I hope I get the affirmative. I really enjoy the style of the Desura client , and I think Didgery would make a nice indie hardcore puzzler to add to their selection.
I’ll be uploading the current build of Didgery onto IndieCity in a few minutes. Their blog said they are getting close to having a functional recommendation and payment system in place, so it probably will not be too much longer before they go live.
Lastly, or, perhaps, firstly, I plan to release Didgery onto a platform I recently heard of called Indievania. Unlike the other platforms, there is no API that must be implemented, no lengthy approval process, and no revenue cut. This makes Indievania the likely place where Didgery will first appear. One of the cool things about this service is that you can sell your game as a ‘Pay what you want model’ in which the player pays whatever amount they think the game is worth. I’m heavily considering going this route.
Later!
