Hey there!  Time for yet another weekly update on what the hell is going on.

Haulin’ Oats

Networking, networking, networking.  All that was done this week was getting the net-code added in; all Steamworks stuff.  Even put together some crude interface for multiplayer.

Right now lobbies can be made and joined.  Player avatars get pulled from Steam and displayed.  Servers can even be joined.  There are more tweaks, beyond the visual, that need done plus a lot of testing.

The next beta version is basically waiting on this to be done before it is uploaded, thus modes will not be changeable at the time.

The Dope Game Remaster

Here you can see the new capsule and game icon.  Also had to go through the wide variety of capsules, titles, and icons for everything.

Also, I am aiming to release the remaster version on the fourth anniversary of the game (May 30th).  That should give enough time to get it all done.  I think.

That’s it for this week.  Hope to have something more exciting next week!

A few days later than late but here nonetheless.  Time for another weekly update.

Haulin’ Oats

Mostly another week of graphical tweaks but there was also multiplayer…

You can see above, the main menu has some letter shadowing added to make it more like the newer logo.  Also makes thing pop a bit more and easier to read.

More importantly, multiplayer stuff has been added in.  A lot of the Steamworks functionality is in but nothing has been tested just yet.  The first test, lobbies and servers, will probably be next week.  Then there is a bunch of overhaul to make the game work with it.

The Dope Game

More drawing this week.  A never-ending onslaught of art assets to be converted.

As you can see above, the Sweaty Mike’s lair got a facelift this week; though the shading isn’t don’t yet.  While the list of assets that still need swapped over is long, it is probably time to get the multiplayer up and functional too.  Hopefully next week’s update will be more about multiplayer!

See you then.

Hello there.  It is that time again for another weekly update on what’s going on with Haulin’ Oats and The Dope Game remaster.  Enough introduction to a thing you may or may not read, let’s get into it.

Haulin’ Oats

It was yet another art asset week and fixing up some minor bugs in the character selection process.  Even hooked in the Steam username functions.

HUD trays were also updated; though in this screenshot they show up in their debug state.  Now they will only show what items the player has and slide back under the top portion like they did in pre-alpha.  There is a little animation where the slide back out when an item is received or taken.  And, of course, can be toggled at any time.  Granted there is a reason I switched it before, and surely that’ll come up again.

Now that the character selection process is fixed up and redesigned, all attention this week is to updating the last of the squares and testing them for bugs.  Then on to adding in another win condition: placed wins.

The Dope Game

The art just never stops.  This week was more redrawing character set-pieces for each interaction.

As shown above, each character was redrawn with a lot more detail and some changes made; mostly because up-scaling never really works.  Surprisingly, these character set-pieces take a lot more time than one would expect and will probably go on for the next two weeks of updates (surprise, surprise).  The environment shots take even longer.

Nonetheless, everything is a 1:1 drop-in so no code needs changed out for any of this thus saving some time down the road.

Well, that’s about it for this week.  Join me next week for another rather uninformative update on where things are at!

Hey there!  Another day later than usual and another rather boring (for you) week of updates.  This has been mostly a week of art and non-game development stuff.  Let’s get to it.

Haulin’ Oats

Art assets were the focus this week.  Still a lot more stuff to draw for alpha version 0.0.2 and most of what I did was focus on consistency across sections of the game.

This was mostly making certain text match the new logo and updating all associated images in various parts of the game like the main board, main menu, and square interaction pop-ups.

Since the new guest characters have been added in, I also spent a little bit of time expanding, re-writing, and bug-fixing the character selection process right before turn selection.  There are now even placeholders for the guest characters who do not have cards drawn yet but should before v0.0.2 drops on Steam / Itch.io.

The Dope Game

This week’s Dope Game progress was also all art.  Still slogging away at environment and character upgrades.  Here is an example of the new versus old Alpheus Park.

Next week I hope to show off some of the character upgrades.  Since the next major holiday in-game is Halloween, the seasonal environments and character changes will probably come after the game updates on Steam; mostly to save time on development and since it’s not really urgent.

Again, nothing too exciting and I’d wager nothing too crazy next week either as it is more drawing and less coding!

Cheers!

Hey there!  So the dev diary is a day late this week; kind of spaced it with all the different things going on.  That being said, let’s dig into what’s new.

Haulin’ Oats Status

More progress on the Steam setup.  All of the header, capsules, and additional assets have been created and entered, both for the store page and community.  During that process the main title got a little update with modifications to the font and a darker drop shadow added.

Statistics and achievements were all entered with quite a few of the achievements showing the specific progress towards obtaining them.  All depots have been set up and are ready to be filled.  Even though alpha v0.0.1 is buggy, it is added as a placeholder for v0.0.2.

The store page still need finishing and trading cards will be added at the very end right before launch.

As far as the game itself is concerned, I am still plugging away at getting all the new square animations rigged and the underline square code updated.  Most of it is the same but the there are now instanced scenes for the banner and text backing so they can be animated and reduce the code-base per square.

Hopefully all the square will be updated to the new system this week and move on to the last few bits before getting alpha v0.0.2 shipped out!

The Dope Game Remaster

This week was a lot of drawing.  Pretty much only drawing actually.  Recreating all the background environments is quite the undertaking; especially since they are more detailed.

The shot above is of Crockfort / the main title screen and you can see the pretty significant changes that have been made.

Also the character avatars have been dropped due to the way the new dialog window is set up.  The avatars, however, are still being re-drawn and will be added to the credits page next to the names of the people who played those characters.

The face-lift for the dialog interface will have a line of coke that slides into frame based on who is actually talking.  Granted the player mostly just picks a response choice.  Here we see what the full interface looks like with all the test data in place.  Pretty fancy compared to the original.

That’s about it for this week.  See you next week for more updates!