Nov 1

Unnamed Space Idle - Sylv

Added 2 new AI Upgrades: Auto Buy Synth Upgrades + Auto Buy Warp Upgrades (requires buy max)
Fleet Patrol Nodes now do not affect your ship counts on battles that come before them
Galaxy 7 was optimal to ignore F1 node, so F1 node has been buffed and reduced in cost, BB1 and B5 enemies buffed
Due to the above, your previous battles may not clear these again in specific circumstances
Galaxy 8 BB1 increased base health slightly so its not a straight forward 1 shot on the very first visit
Warp Tether now auto sets Oizys as target when unlocked
Spliced crew now reset select adaptation to mastery on reinforce
Galaxy 7+ Apply Selected Upgrades button now flashes when it can be used.
Overkill Boost now turn on Veil Piercer if applicable
The 136 Residuum Keep upgrade no longer affects the current reinforce (was confusing and did not matter in normal play)
Fixed some display issues with various upgrades
Fixed late game research upgrade applying early
Fixed Warp Tether discharging after a reinforce
Fixed hangar fighter postpone not working if no priority set but all parts destroyed
Fixed capital being in wrong sector sometimes
Fixed default Warp Tether text
Fixed reactor to flash when no Overdrives are charging and they could be
Fixed capital health bar symbols not fading correctly
Fixed boss warning stuck on-screen in some cases
Fixed late game Residuum Gain upgrade that wasn't working
Fixed some .0s

Nov 1

Team Dehdehbon - HaroldoftheNuts

For years, we've clung onto GameMaker 8 (and GM8.1 to be more precise). It's the program that introduced me to game development, and because this was all just a hobby and for fun, we never bothered switching. Don't fix what ain't broke we thought. GM8.1's workflow was just so cozy, we had a great debug workflow and besides, it was cool to be able to work on and play the game on old Windows XP machines!

so cozy... any real ones reading this just got really nostalgic.

But sadly, it was broke. If you go back to Windows 7 or older, our game ran perfect on basically anything, even Athlon XPs, but there was a problem...

Windows 10 and 11 just do not like Gamemaker 8 games! Most systems ran just fine, but some lagged, making us look like typical lazy indie devs that can't even get a pixel game to run on a modern gaming PC. This was really embarrassing considering it SHOULD run just fine on modern PCs, considering it runs easily on hardware from 2003, but life isn't that simple. The GameMaker 8 engine is just too old and too crusty... If I had my way, the game would have been finished on GM8.1. But since that's not the world we live in:

We spent the last couple weeks migrating the game to GMS2!

And finally, we think the game is in a good enough state to push out The Patch™.

so........ cold...

So, with this big change, Team Dehdehbon should be up to snuff now! Right off the bat, the game runs about 5x faster on my Ryzen 5600x rig, and 3x faster on a bottom end HP Stream laptop! Just about any computer should run the game perfectly now. Bonus: It even halved the memory usage! The game starts pretty much instantly now and loading hangs are pretty much gone now.

This also opened us up to the world of shaders. Although I really don't wanna start throwing shaders everywhere, it will be really cool to have extra palettes!

really rough example of real time sprite recoloring, so much innovation...

and a rough example of shaders doing shader things!

It also fixed some problems old crusty GM8 had, like:

The Steam overlay did not work in 240p mode no matter what we did in GM8, so we had to ship the demo in 1080p mode, which broke the pixel grid. Now, the game ships in glorious 240p by default, obeying the grid!

left: icky mixels!!! right: chunky indie pixel goodness.....

Steam remote play actually works now from our testing!!! Before where it had a lot of delay and was REALLY laggy for some reason, it seems to work great now! And screenshots and recordings are even working proper now. (gee, how groundbreaking....)

This update also includes rebalancing and QoL changes, and we did a completely poor job of tracking the changes, so no changelog!!! We promise we'll get better about that. I'll try to list some of the changes here:

Finished mouse support for the main menu screen/file select. (still none on the pause menu, sry!!!)
RT and LT can now be remapped to on Xbox controllers! (This was a GM8 limitation)
Some rooms are a lil easier, some a lil harder...
Dehdehbon damage buffs!!!
Boss 1 is a lil tougher now.

boss 1's punch sends shock waves that deal damage now, and is generally quicker to act.

Some known issues with the conversion:

Zooming cameras are broken in VS mode, so they don't zoom anymore!
We've had reports that alt tabbing can stop music, but we can't seem to recreate it.
VS mode is a lil brokey right now in general...
For some reason the start button icon is not displayed in the controller remap menu... huh...

And also, there's probably gonna be some other bugs we missed... So, sorry bout that....

Anyways, this update isn't really much in the grand scheme, but it feels really great for us to see our lil' guy growing up into a real product, er, game. This was a huge step into treating Team Dehdehbon as a serious game that we can sell to people as opposed to a little passion project. Thank you to everyone that's stuck with us through it all and hopefully, big things soon!!!

Nov 1

Status Update: Unknown

Push & Plunder - Skylor Beck

Hello!

This is a bit of a different one from usual. I spent a lot of time updating and improving this game over the first half of the year, and we were entering the content phase of production. As many of you are aware, Unity had a critical engine flaw discovered that affected nearly all versions of the engine that aren't the newest (convenient for the contract you sign, but that's another story). This includes the version we have been building Push & Plunder on for some time now. This version was already outdated, to make things just a little worse.

What this means, in effect, is that Push & Plunder needs yet another core overhaul. This would be the third core overhaul of the project. This project has suffered far too many setbacks as it is. The cost of overhauling this project would cause the cost of the development to rise ever higher.

Estimated value of time invested in the development of P&P: $28,000

Estimated time & value required to overhaul: 160hrs-320hrs | $5,600-$11,200

I have invested over 800 hours into this project. That is 100 work days, or 8h every Saturday for two years straight.

And it looks like the game needs another month, maybe two, of core engine improvement and reimagining.

Here is a breakdown of my projected workload for this cost prediction.

Unity Engine 2022.3.8F1 -> 6000.2.10F1

Push & Plunder is built on an extremely old version of Unity. There are many, many problems this causes. And a lot of strange quirks of P&P are due to engine bugs that I cannot solve, and have been solved since. This includes many security upgrades. It also comes with some negatives that I won't get into here, in regards to data privacy and the contract I sign when I use it.

Custom Save System -> EasySave3

Two years ago, I was determined to make everything myself. I built a custom serializer, and a custom save system. It was efficient, and worked for my needs. As the game grew, the save system became quite the limitation.

When I took a break to develop Fungal Colony Sim 2, I decided to invest in some plugins for Unity to improve my development. The first one was EasySave3. The save system I had previously was retired and adapted to fit ES3. Now, adding new save data is effortless, and I no longer have to clear player progression when making changes to the save file structure. If P&P wants to succeed, it needs to be updated to use the same system.

Challenge System -> Badge System

Again, for FCS2, I created a system that tracks game progress that is more efficient than the original version I had created for P&P. The core of the game is driven by this unlock system, and the badges are more stable and easier to add new challenges with than the old implementation.

Custom Shader -> All In One 3D Shader

I custom built a shader for all of my games, and P&P is the pinnacle of that shader. But it too has many limits. Another plugin I purchased for FCS2, was this shader. It can do everything my shader did, and more. It has more integration with Unity, and a better interface in the editor. It is superior to my custom implementation in every way.

Default Unity Physics -> Havok Physics

When I started this project, Havok Physics was too expensive to use. Since then, they have made changes to the pricing and now it is reasonable to use. Switching Physics engines would mean a complete reimagining of the core systems of the game. All the coin shooting, bauble bouncing, chest wiggling action would need to be re-engineered and tested.

This would be a radical and extreme investment.

It would, however, allow for better coin stacking and more "real" feeling bounces. A Higher quality final game would result, if the proper time and effort was spent.

Translation System

For FCS2, I learned how to properly use a string translation system, and localizing my games is as easy as paying someone to translate the sheet of text. P&P has a barebones translation system that doesn't work correctly and was not finished. This would need to be removed and replaced with the working version previously mentioned.

Finish The Game

and then the rest of the development can continue as planned. Enemies can be made, tables can be put together, and content can be added and expanded.

What about Early Access?

There are a lot of things to repair and fix, and the cost of the time required has the potential to be larger than the sales of the game could hope to be. It may already have cost more than it could ever hope to sell. All of the above stuff could be done in Early Access, but I am uncertain if I want to go that route. Early Access could cause this game to die in an unfinished state just as easily as it could save the game.

Unless the wishlist number explode, Early Access will not be considered.

An alternative path forward

There is... another way... A risky one... With all the work that needs to be done, it could be just as easy to start the project over entirely with all the knowledge we have and implement all the correct systems from the get go. This would probably cause several major overhauls and a complete design doc rewrite. FCS2 and Grammar Grind were developed for ~$5000 each. There is a way to rescope, redesign, and rebuild the entire game for the same cost as it would be to upgrade and fix the old build on the new engine.

So that's where I am at. I am working on other projects that have better futures ahead of them. And I don't know what to do here. Let me know your thoughts here, or on Bluesky, or on Threads. I'm back on Threads btw.