Super Toaster X: Learn Japanese

New layout for devlogs this week as requested by Etienne. This format will be far more structured for updates and will convey information far more effectively.
V 1.2.2
- Added new background music
- Applied audio transitions
- Added game over background
- Fixed health and battery restoration upon death
- Fixed map constriction
- Added wall slide animation
- Removed battery drain for jump & dash
- Reduced strength of hair dryer blow
- Removed restart room button
- Removed use of taser without energy
- Removed butterfly
- Added splash screen
- Fixed checkpoint flag animation
- Stopped music on death
- Displayed config on level start
- Config shoes buttons if controller connected (currently not changeable like keys)
- Fixed water drip stacking
- Fixed conversation animation
- New temporary cut transition

Greg





Trev is done until the KickStarter (well, almost).







When it comes to game development I more or less appreciate and share odblood’s transparent approach. I don’t want to hide everything that’s not going so well and just put up this perfect front as some sort of tip of an iceberg.

So I released the first demo of the game to a tester last week. To say that the reception was underwhelming would be an understatement. There were a *lot* of bugs present and other technical problems.

I was rather naïve about this and thought dealing with bugs would be too much of a hassle but yeah, I was naïve.

As it stands right now, I’d say we have about at least 40 bugs to iron out if not more. Actually it’s probably more as I’m sure we haven’t found everything just yet.

Honestly, my first reaction when I checked the video of the player knocking his head against the wall as he played the demo was frustration. I actually didn’t want watch the whole thing in one go, I could feel smoke coming out of ears.

Now, this being said, it’s part of the learning process. You don’t send a demo still in alpha and expect the player to have a blast I guess.

So now I’m taking this bull by the horns. Bugs will be taken very seriously and there the next release will be, as far as I can tell, bug free (or pretty much bug free). This means everything will be thoroughly tested. We’re currently working on tools to make sure the bug tracking is more efficient than it was before.

I currently use videos to point out where the bugs are to Greg and explain what needs to be changed or corrected. I also then write up a list of all those bugs down.

This is time consuming but necessary I find. I’ll now be using an online bug tracker with tickets and so on to make sure everything is flawless for the next version I send to the tester.

So basically, you might say we’re ironing out the technical side of the demo (and to some extent of the whole game).

Everyone has a share of responsibility with this aspect of game design. It’s all about clarifying where everyone stands and what everyone is supposed to do. I don’t want this to turn into something where people shovel stuff up in another person’s court.

Also, the thing, when working with people, it’s always so surprising how we all think differently. Things we take for granted as individuals vary from people to people.

Standards vary incredibly too. What I consider terrible might be thought up as good by another person. So extensive communication is necessary to make sure everyone is on the same page as far as bug testing is concerned.

So the demo will be kept under tight wraps until I deem it good enough to be shared for the Kick Starter.
There’s still so many things to fix on the technical side. It’s not really up to me however so we’ll see how things go. This is just a to say that I’m keeping a very close eye to demo testing and more specifically how bugs need to be dealt with and how.



No worries, I haven’t been idle.

Been trying out different setups for the stage select to find which one would please the users the most. Feel free to comment about it! I’m always very receptive to feedback, good or bad.


Although most of the complains regarding the latest build of the demo were technically related, I did get comments about how empty everything looks.

This was to be expected as I haven’t really gotten started on the tileset just yet. I mean, some elements are there but most of the decorations are missing. I kept that as the last part for the demo.

This doesn’t mean that we can’t slowly start integrating more and more graphical elements.

I’m slowly getting used to creating stuff which is 32x32 and the like. From what I understand it’ll make level constructions go a *lot* faster (which is good as we could use a bit of speed at the moment). This is what I have so far (no counting the various objects I’ve already shown guys in a previous devlog.

You’ll notice I have put together all the suggestions which were given so far:
-Flip flops
-bat math (still isn’t to my liking but I’m not too sure as to how to improve it).
-mirror
-candles (as well as an animated one to boot)
-more pipes, etc…



Candle is animated:


Apart from that, I did my little present for olblood. Oldblood was one of the first to support the project, give me some of his time and just plain helpful generally speaking. This is a pixel portrait of one his character, the little boyscout. As with other gifts, this will be present in-game. So thanks olblood!

(I send it to him on twitter as I'm not sure if he's still following the project).

I also worked on animating the water to replace the boring, static one we have at the moment.


It's still glitchy but I'm getting there.

Thanks for reading! See you in the next devlog!




Goulven is busy with real life and Greg will take over...