Refactor Devlog - itch.io

Updated to LÖVE 11.3

Fri, 17 Jan 2020 06:15:16 GMT

I haven't actually worked on this game in a while but now that macOS Catalina is here I figured it was prudent to update the build so that it would, you know, work on it. I do have an idea for &counti...

Updated to LÖVE 11.2

Sat, 19 Jan 2019 22:32:14 GMT

This probably doesn't matter to anyone but I've updated the build to use the latest version of LÖVE, which should hopefully fix some of the problems with running in the itch.io sandbox. Someday I mig...

Tiny perf improvements, graphical tweaks

Mon, 27 Aug 2018 08:19:52 GMT

Just a little more performance work and a little tiny bit of visual polish while getting ready for SIX this coming weekend. Main things: Little Bouncing Ball's RoamingEye shader is a little faster now...

Performance improvements in Little Bouncing Ball

Wed, 15 Aug 2018 01:16:46 GMT

I finally did something I'd been meaning to do for quite some time: I replaced the naïve collision check in Little Bouncing Ball with one that uses a quadtree. Previously, it would check every ball a...

Some small updates from user feedback

Tue, 10 Jul 2018 07:46:03 GMT

I got a nice thorough round of user testing, which is such a great and useful experience! A lot of the feedback was very helpful and I've pushed a new build that makes a bunch of the low-hanging-fruit...

High-DPI support is back

Wed, 16 May 2018 22:02:38 GMT

Restoring high-DPI support was really easy. As is the case with most of the LÖVE 11 changes, this made it so I could get rid of most of my DPI management stuff, with two exceptions: I had to change t...

Take it to (LÖVE) 11

Wed, 16 May 2018 17:44:23 GMT

Have you ever heard the expression "ripping off the Band-Aid?" So, Refactor is written using LÖVE , which is a wonderful little game-development framework. LÖVE had been on version 0.10.2 for ages...

New monk design

Mon, 05 Mar 2018 08:27:33 GMT

After some feedback at ECCC and some good conversations with folks regarding the feedback, I decided to redesign the monk in Flight. Here's the new design. There are no other changes since the previou...

Bug fix with config stuff

Sat, 03 Mar 2018 10:10:31 GMT

There was a silly bug with how I was handling the game version number; for the purpose of future bug-related analytics I decided to also put the last version run into the config file, but unfortunatel...

Lots of little UI tweaks

Thu, 01 Mar 2018 04:20:04 GMT

Okay, wow, it's been a while since my last devlog. Part of that is because I've been really busy with non-Refactor things , or with non-game parts of Refactor . Part of that was because I was waiting...

Finally added "play all"

Sat, 03 Feb 2018 06:55:44 GMT

In keeping with the album-ness of this game collection I finally got around to making a "play all" function. It's very rudimentary for now but at some point there will be full-on transport/track selec...

Fixed some embarrassing bugs

Wed, 31 Jan 2018 10:46:26 GMT

Turns out that on macOS it was doubling the font size on non-retina screens due to an apparent bug in LÖVE; I switched to a different API for determining the pixel scale which simplified my code anyw...

Fixed some licensing issues

Sun, 28 Jan 2018 22:29:54 GMT

The most recent version shouldn't have any visual or gameplay changes; however, I did finally fix some problems that were bothering me: namely, I fixed my LICENSE file to properly attribute all the fo...

Some more additions to Flight

Fri, 26 Jan 2018 10:40:03 GMT

I decided to draw more faces, bringing the total up to 45. (Not so "final" after all I guess.) I also made a slight change to the ending, such as it is. I've also been experimenting with the dialog sy...

Flight is done

Tue, 23 Jan 2018 19:55:08 GMT

I could add a few more faces to the second sprite sheet but for all intents and purposes, Flight is now complete. Next up: I'm going to make some changes to the Strangers dialog system to hopefully fi...

Finally have platform jam/demo builds

Fri, 19 Jan 2018 11:53:19 GMT

Now you can download native/packaged versions of the demo/jam builds as well. Makefiles are painful. I really should convert my build system to something more suitable, like a friggin' shell script...

Sprite sheet 1 "done"

Thu, 18 Jan 2018 07:02:13 GMT

The first 25 animal faces/masks/whatever are now "done" (modulo my meager art skills – remember, all the art in this game is technically programmer art), and that happened faster than I expected. So...

Inching towards completion

Wed, 17 Jan 2018 02:05:06 GMT

17 critters down, 56 to go. If I can keep up this pace of 5/day then I should be done in like 12 days, which was pretty much what I was expecting. Kind of a big "if" though; I might end up just making...

Pretty much code-complete

Mon, 15 Jan 2018 08:01:48 GMT

All that's left to do is draw more heads. A LOT more heads. I also changed some of the coin/gem bounce physics. Not really a lot else to say...

The last bit of functionality is in

Sun, 14 Jan 2018 10:27:05 GMT

All that's left to do now is to draw a whole bunch more animal heads...

Finally drew the monk, and made it windy

Sat, 13 Jan 2018 06:47:38 GMT

So I finally got around to drawing something approaching a final Monk. I'm not that happy with how it turned out (because of my usual self-criticality in my art vis-a-vis it not turning out how I imag...

Coin sprites

Fri, 12 Jan 2018 00:21:37 GMT

Nothing major gameplay-wise, but I'm finally getting more final assets in. In particular, there is now a nicer-looking coin. My process for making the coin started out with me launching Blender, reali...

Even better graphics!

Thu, 11 Jan 2018 07:42:03 GMT

Two things in this build: Fixed the chasm procedural generator Improved the background art, using a photo I took of Mount St. Helens and then some Photoshop filters...

Improved mountain graphics

Thu, 11 Jan 2018 05:28:31 GMT

It's hard to tell because of the very very temporary background, but I've improved the mountain graphics. There's still a lot more to do on it of course but it's getting somewhere! Since the last devl...

Quick update: Jam-specific builds

Wed, 10 Jan 2018 06:38:16 GMT

Now that the game requires payment to download, and because I'm still doing individual tracks for jams, I've added a build for the current jam. So, when I'm working on a track for a jam there will be...

Very rough prototype of Flight

Wed, 10 Jan 2018 01:05:39 GMT

Hi there, long time no devlog! For Games Made Quick , I'm finally actually implementing Flight. So far there's just the barest skeleton of the gameplay; you have a falling monk, a procedurally-generat...

More graphical tweaking

Fri, 15 Dec 2017 09:31:17 GMT

I should be working on Flight, but instead I've been tuning the heck out of some of the visual faff in the existing tracks, because I can't leave well enough alone. In Little Bouncing Ball I restored...

Oops, builds were broken

Wed, 13 Dec 2017 06:40:05 GMT

Once again I have learned not to sleepily publish versions to itch.io at 2 AM without testing them. Someday the lesson might actually stick! Not that a changelist is necessary for this update but for...

Also added hidpi support

Sat, 09 Dec 2017 12:19:15 GMT

Since I was making the renderer be able to adjust resolutions on the fly, I figured, why not also support high-DPI screens? (e.g. MacBooks and so on) For now the feature is disabled by default (becaus...

Graphics quality improvements

Sat, 09 Dec 2017 01:14:46 GMT

I decided to make some changes to Little Bouncing Ball's graphics; now it will automatically adjust the rendering quality on the fly. If the framerate is below 45 it will decrease the quality to try t...

End of October wrap-up

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 19:39:36 GMT

Not a lot of development happened since the last devlog, as I've been equal parts busy on paid client work and still recovering from the craziness that was September. The changes I've made since the l...

Finally fixed some LBB physics glitches

Tue, 17 Oct 2017 09:21:21 GMT

Sorry for not posting here in a while! After GeekGirlCon I decided I'd spend this whole month not working on Refactor. However, I just decided to break that in order to fix a long-standing issue with...

ALMOST DONE WITH STRANGERS!!!

Thu, 28 Sep 2017 08:43:25 GMT

Two of the three art things that I had left are now done - one of the background photos, and the vacation scene. And the last photo isn't actually necessary, so this game is actually, like, done. or s...

All scenes finished!

Wed, 27 Sep 2017 22:24:48 GMT

Oh wow, the last scene I had to do (the vacation scene) is now done. Or at least GGC-ready. There's still a bit I want to do (especially with the water) but what I have for now seems pretty okay I gue...

More progress!

Tue, 26 Sep 2017 06:25:42 GMT

I finished the "therapist" vignette and did a bunch of tuning to some of the other vignettes. I also finally added a basic credits screen and redid the way I'm handling text on the menu, because I cou...

More changes for GeekGirlCon

Sun, 24 Sep 2017 08:22:28 GMT

Only one week left before GGC! So I'm trying to get as much show-ready as possible. Finally made debug mode a configuration option, rather than compile-time Finally also made configuration a thing - n...

Two more ending scenes

Sat, 23 Sep 2017 05:46:05 GMT

Finally got back to work on ending vignettes for Strangers, namely the hospital scene and the park bench scene. I had fun making these. There isn't a lot else to mention; those are the only changes as...

In which a better GPU makes me debug a shader

Tue, 19 Sep 2017 08:55:48 GMT

I haven't gotten much new work done on my games because I'm mostly getting ready to show my games at GeekGirlCon . Which means polishing stuff enough for show, and also getting my booth ready. Part of...

Some updates

Mon, 11 Sep 2017 04:55:33 GMT

I haven't gotten a lot of playtest feedback yet, but what I have gotten has been very helpful. Thanks, everyone! I've fixed a couple of dialog paths. Also, note that in the latest builds, the app iden...

Please playtest this version instead

Fri, 08 Sep 2017 11:25:59 GMT

I've made a bunch of minor tweaks to the dialog in a few places, and also improved the ending cinematic to be more representative of what it's a placeholder for. The instructions for play testing are...

Strangers: now ready for playtesting!

Thu, 07 Sep 2017 10:07:54 GMT

Hi, sorry for not posting a devlog in a while, but I've just been working hard on filling in various bits of scaffolding and filling out the dialog forest to get it to a point where it's ready for pla...

A bit more progress

Thu, 31 Aug 2017 01:48:04 GMT

I finally got around to drawing the first of several images that the player sees during the "So many pictures of us together" part of the song, and the start of the background image that goes with the...

Track 2: finished dialog is in sight

Wed, 30 Aug 2017 11:49:16 GMT

The dialog tree has gotten complex enough that running my automated coverage on it takes too long to be feasible. Hooray for exponential growth and weird interactions between states! Guess I'll have t...

More animation and dialog

Mon, 28 Aug 2017 09:20:23 GMT

The animation system now has enough in it to actually let the NPC walk around in a scripted way. Yay! One of the conversation paths is actually fully fleshed-out! Yay! Many more of the conversation pa...

Finally have an animation system

Sat, 26 Aug 2017 08:08:12 GMT

Took a break from working on the dialog tree (which I've simplified a lot, because I was going overboard with condition variables unnecessarily) and finally got around to building an animation system...

A whole bunch of stuff!

Wed, 23 Aug 2017 08:27:33 GMT

Dialog engine stuff: see my Patreon post for more information Other things since the last build: Tweaks to the main menu (fonts, layout, etc.) Finally set up an app icon for the macOS build Added luac...

More plumbing-type stuff

Tue, 22 Aug 2017 07:58:54 GMT

Not a whole lot has happened on track2 from a gameplay standpoint, but I'm finally properly rendering sprites and graphics layers and whatnot, so there's that. Also the beginnings of a rudimentary ani...

Haha so itch builds have been broken for a while...

Sun, 20 Aug 2017 00:33:32 GMT

Well, that's fun. Turns out my builds have been broken for a while because of a case-sensitivity issue in the build, which was easy to miss because I do all my development on macOS where the filesyste...

Finally a proper main menu

Sun, 20 Aug 2017 00:22:09 GMT

Well, less improper, anyway...

Finally have some dialog in!

Thu, 17 Aug 2017 10:32:17 GMT

There's actually something to do in Strangers other than watch the lyrics go by. I mean, there isn't A LOT to do, but you can certainly do it. Jeeze, this was annoying to figure out. But now I can fin...

Finally publishing builds including Strangers

Sun, 13 Aug 2017 10:10:11 GMT

Nothing much to see here, but I am making progress. Slowly. No gameplay in Strangers yet but I'm getting various pieces of content in place and generally doing... things, I guess. Still trying to fig...

Track 2: Strangers

Tue, 08 Aug 2017 23:37:37 GMT

I'm finally starting on Track 2, " Strangers ." It's in the form of an RPG cut scene with a dialog tree, and there will eventually be a couple of minigames that might or might not show up depending on...

Just some aesthetic faffing about

Sat, 29 Jul 2017 10:46:41 GMT

Instead of working on a Ludum Dare entry I've been fiddling around with some of the minor aesthetics of Little Bouncing Ball, namely changing the score font to be more in keeping with the era I'm goin...

Flappy bat!

Wed, 26 Jul 2017 05:59:28 GMT

I finally got around to implementing FlappyBat. Just look at these cute little critters! They're just tryin' to fly around in the world without a care Oh no watch out for that ball!...

Tiny input update

Mon, 17 Jul 2017 16:53:27 GMT

I haven't worked on this game in the last several days, except last night I refactored the input layer to make it easier to support all of the games I have planned. This also includes better support f...

Some more changes

Wed, 12 Jul 2017 08:48:34 GMT

I have now disabled vsync by default, because for some reason LÖVE has decided to cap my framerate to 30 FPS on my desktop despite vsyncless rendering going at 200+ FPS. This is yet another thing tha...

More tweaks

Tue, 11 Jul 2017 23:09:00 GMT

Today I had some friends playtest my game and the one big takeaway I got - which is something I'd been aware of - was that the input was way too sensitive and jumpy. So, I made the input less sensitiv...

Some more performance tweaks

Tue, 11 Jul 2017 09:53:25 GMT

Just some graphics performance tweaks. Previously the tonemapping stuff needed 5 texture lookups per pixel per pass and 6 postprocess passes. Now it needs 7 texture lookups per pixel per pass, but onl...

Some minute post-jam changes

Tue, 11 Jul 2017 01:19:53 GMT

Minute like small, not like time. Tweaked the behavior of the various mobs so they don't die quite so easily; in particular, after they're hit they stay hit-immune until all balls have passed through...

Final build for jam

Mon, 10 Jul 2017 05:01:53 GMT

After the last week of nonstop crunching I've hit a wall. Did some last-minute gameplay tweaks which I feel make it feel better, but I'm otherwise calling the gamejam entry done. This was a lot of fun...

Everything from here is gravy

Mon, 10 Jul 2017 00:49:34 GMT

This build has the following changes: Visual tweaks, namely making glowy things look extra-glowy Fixes to the point system Another brick spawn pattern Now there's brick and enemy spawns everywhere I w...

It's the final stretch

Sun, 09 Jul 2017 20:01:41 GMT

Aside from improving the ROAMING EYE's visuals substantially, this build is mostly for compatibility and bug-fixes prior to the end of the jam. I doubt I'll get Flappy Bat done in the next 12 hours,...

All hail the ROAMING EYE

Sun, 09 Jul 2017 07:01:10 GMT

Added another enemy type, the ROAMING EYE (yes, the name is a Steven Universe reference). It basically wanders around and shoots stun bullets at you; if you hit the bullet it'll stun you for a bit but...

I judder to think

Sat, 08 Jul 2017 01:56:23 GMT

Sorry for another devlog so soon, but just two quick things here: I finally fixed my oBS encoder settings so it won't look like total ass (although I didn't realize until too late that I had my screen...

Water you looking at?!

Fri, 07 Jul 2017 23:17:08 GMT

So, I've added a fun visual effect. You'll probably never guess from the cheesy title of this devlog. Go on, guess. The effect itself is fairly simple. It treats the water surface as a tapestry of spr...

Our first alien: meet the Randomizer

Thu, 06 Jul 2017 23:28:04 GMT

You might notice that build versions are now a string of seemingly-random hex characters. This is because at least for now I've switched to using the git shorthash to version my builds, which makes it...

So many improvements!

Thu, 06 Jul 2017 03:51:30 GMT

Originally my intention was to make the graphics look pixely and low-resolution, akin to Arkanoid or 90s PC demos or the like. But the more I played with the vector-art visuals the more I liked them...

And now, bricks

Wed, 05 Jul 2017 02:54:18 GMT

Bricks can now be spawned. And they can be spawned in sequence, as well. This is turning into an actual game! Of course there's a fun thing that this exposes, where if the ball hits multiple objects a...

Updated me some physics

Tue, 04 Jul 2017 09:49:02 GMT

My polygon-ball intersection test wasn't working right, and I had to take a few steps back to rewrite it correctly. Now it's both faster (because it does early rejection wherever possible) and more ac...

Really really really early prototype post

Tue, 04 Jul 2017 02:10:13 GMT

Hey I guess I should use this devlog function. Refactor is an album I did back in 2015, as part of trying to get back into making electronic music. Many of the tracks started out as game soundtracks o...