It's been quite a while because my old computer went out of service. I've been able to get a bigger, better, newer pc and now development can progress again. After this forced break i thought it would be a good point to try to upgrade the engine once more, the last time i had massive problems but they seemed to have fixed a thing or two. (see Dev-Blog #9 & Dev-Blog #12)
I did alot of cleanup on my systems and servers. This is not actually that important but because i was unable to develop I could atleast clean the environment a bit.
All playable clowns were added to the game although most of them aren't unlockable yet i will let you know once more get unlocked. Along with that Trading Cards are almost done, after the emoticons and backgrounds are done they will be unlocked right away.
The enemy characters were also replaced. As the player characters they only have their walking animation for now, the other animations will be added in the future.
For me, Early Access is a great success, the game saw more sales then expected, thanks alot for this! I will put all funds generated back into the games development.
It's a bit overwhelming because im only able to work on this during my spare time, which is kinda rare since i also have a regular daytime job.
But this game will be finished sooner or later, being more and more improved over time. This might take a while but unlike mentioned in the comments section this game is not abandonware, its just a big big task to fund and create an original game.
Actually the game's development could easily take another year. I have alot of plans for the release version and it's still a long road to go.
Early Access launched! The game is still very far from being done, actually there is no real gameplay right now. Please only get this game if you want to actively support the development by funding the game! The main reason is some people bought the game through the humble widget and were unable to download it because i added early access instead of beta keys to the humble widget. Sorry guys, you now can enjoy the typing adventure! :)
There soon will be a demo so you can try out the game before purchasing it. Please also read the early access box before considering purchasing this as there is almost nothing to do as of right now! But i already became alot of great feedback and maybe that way more people can get into touch with the game.
The game just became its fourth logo! The first one was fine but i had to change the game's name because of legal reasons (see Dev-Blog #2) I'm happy to show you the games final logo! Along with the new logo some steam images were replaced now also showing the new logo.
You are now able to unlock characters for endless mode, but in the current version you are only able to unlock a single one because you can't fulfill other characters requirements. Also i activated achievement unlocking, right now you can achieve 2/23 achievements, more will unlock once the game development progresses. I will mention if more achievements will be obtainable, but since there are hidden achievements i won't say how to unlock them. As usual there were bugfixes and sadly i had to revert to GameMaker 1.X because of frame drops on the newest engine. Even though i was able to fix the shader problem i couldn't overcome the frame drops. But during writing this Dev-Blog i tried it out once more and on the most recent runtime i didnt have those framedrops, which means i will give it another try in the near future, i still believe in the engine upgrade! I added two more clowns to the game, only three more to go until all playable characters are inside the game. Since they arent unlockable yet i will further introduce them with the final five Trading Cards.
I started making the Steam Trading Cards, there will be 10 cards showing all playable characters in a different color palette. Today i will show you the first five cards, this will also show some of the characters for the first time.
Those are Jester, Ladyjester, King Clown, Grandjester, Muscleclown. The order is not related to the ingame appearance. After the next 5 cards are done i will activate card dropping.
A new background layer was added so its now possible to view the lightest cloud color, before it blended with the one colored background, now it feels more natural. Also the character's shadow was fixed, it's now drawn on the correct layer again.
Finnish was added to the game in a beta state, right now only overlay messages were translated. Work on the dictionary is in progress. If you find any mistakes or have ideas for improvements or even want to help on speeding up the finnish language development feel free to leave a comment somewhere :).
The last few patches contained alot of code related improvements, but some stuff changed that is noticeable: The ingame pause menu now works as intended, prior to some fixes only the resume option also resumed the sound. Another 4-color palette was added called "Dunes", its some classic fourscale palette with a yellowish/brown touch.
This makes 12 preset themes out of 14. Steam Workshop integration for custom palettes will follow at some point. The next few updates will overhaul the options menu and also work on the dictionary will be continued because its necessary for further gameplay. As usual there were some bugfixes, but im still working on a major one.
The character selection for endless mode was improved, theres still enough room for improvements and updates, but for now its in a good state to begin with. Right now only the current selected character is visible, i plan on showing the ancestor and descendant characters, and hiding all unlocked characters instead of simply not displaying them.
Typing with Jester is being made in GameMaker Studio and the new version is about to release. During the GameMaker Studio 2 beta i ported the game to the new engine but there is a bug with GLSL EL shaders... So until they fixed it there wont be any builds in the new engine sadly...
Three new Clowns joined the Ensemble: Grandjester, King Clown himself and Muscleclown, those will be unlockables for Endless mode although they arent unlockable right now because you cant fulfill the requirements yet.
All achievement icons were created and implemented, but most arent unlockable yet, because obvious reasons. Also achievements won't be activated unless the game hits early access. Those are the final achievement icons so i hope you like them :)
The first version of the character selection was implemented. It will be updated in one of the next versions. Right now endless mode is the same as the Alpha Gameplay stage except missing story textboxes.
Recently i made a twitter account, if you are interested in the game make sure to follow it here.
ETA now is 2017, i had alot of stuff to take care off this year so sadly there was not as much time as expected to develop the game.
Feel free to follow the official group to stay up to date about the game's development.
Since the female jester was added there also had to be an option to choose characters. For now i implemented the story side solution - where the game asks if you are a boy or a girl during the first few textboxes. Also the shadows for all new characters, and all upcoming ones were included. The old characters will be replaced over time.
Some more words were added for german and english, but the dictionary is still a heavy work in progress. The current idea is that on easy you will get works between 3 and 13 letters, depending on the story level or the progress on endless mode. By now only words upto 8 letters exist. This means the current dictionary is about 1/3th finished.!
The main menu was improved and the option to view the game credits was included.
It's still a very long road until the game gets finished but keep in mind this is mainly a one man project as you can see on the newly added credits :)
Feel free to follow the official group to stay up to date about the game's development.
After some changes with the logo and the name in the past we now have a new logo again. It fit's the overall style of the game better and also looks much better with shaders :) I also replaced the jester's sprite and the walk animation was also improved. It's now 8 frames instead of 2. Also there are death, hit and attack animations for this character which weren't implemented yet. I started working on the Achievement system which won't be available until official Steam release. With the male jester being done the next update will introduce the female jester. The new character's shadows will be added with the next update too, they are now seperate images instead of adding the on the sprites themself.
I once more want to thank all supporters and groupees buyers for all the votes and the feedback.
As you most likely noticed i've already sent the steam keys to you guys but the game is still under heavy development.
Feel free to follow the official group to stay up to date about the game's development.
Typing with Jester was recently greenlit and as you can see it now has it's own store page. I already copied all previous dev-blog's to the official group and from now on all news will be posted there aswell.
Also since i got access to the SteamAPI i already included Steam cloud and Steam screenshots to the game. On the gameplay side no changes were made. So far the audio engine only had to deal with a single track and some sound effects. The pause menu now pauses the music while open and only plays sounds if you interact within the menu. Also a second background track was included which plays during the credits. The credits will be available once the menu overhaul is complete. A little more than 100 words were added to the german and english dictionary.
Last month there was no seperate Dev-Blog because i had less time to work on the game than i wanted to. So this weeks Dev-Blog features the last 4 weeks. Follow this greenlight campaign to stay tuned!
The biggest news first: Typing with Jester is on Groupees Build a Greenlight Bundle 45!
Buy the bundle here and support the game's development. The DRM-Free version on groupees will be updated until the game hits steam. Every groupees owner will receive a Steamkey once available!
I added a pause menu and the option to return to the level, restart it or go back to the stage selection or the main menu. Adjusting the volume will be implemented with the next patch!
So first the new Color Select UI was improved, new sprites were added to display various keys. Those will be implemented whenever i find a suitable place. Also 11 preset themes are finished. Minor changes can happen but overall i found 11 shades i like.
The custom color editor is still a work in progress, but it improved quite alot.
Players will be able to make and save their own preset. Once the game is available on Steam those color themes can be shared via the Steam Workshop! Those custom Palettes will be displayed with it's name and the author's name.
The Workshop will also be used for user dictionarys, but that's for a way later version.
On the gameplay side the ability to change enemys was added, if you started typing one enemys word and want to switch to another enemy, you simply have to press the backspace button to clear your current word, and then you can start typing whatever enemy's word you want to. But you will lose the points for the letters you typed already, because otherwise it would be pretty easy to abuse this system and gain massive highscores.
Also ~200 new words were added for the english and german dictionary.
A knowledge system was implemented that shows useful information on the main menu, right now theres just 1 tip. The main menu and the options will be overhauled very soon.
It's still a long road to go but im looking forward to the next Dev-Blog.
Stay tuned touch typists!
Right now the current version is 0.1.19, there will be a few more 0.1.x versions until the dictionary is completed.
This week a new trailer was made, because the old one was really outdated by now, that went fast. Other than that obviously the Shader overhaul was finished, at least half of it. There are currently 14 preset themes of which 9 will most likely change again. The option to use a custom usercolor was added, but the editor is not implemented yet.