Turnament now has a steam page! Please add it to your wishlist because it helps out the visibility of the game.

You can also subscribe to my new newsletter and get informed when the demo is live. This is my new mailing list that I will use for all of my project updates from now on.

Catty & Batty are saving the world as part of the World Land Trust Bundle, it contains 60+ games, including Hidden Folks, The Hex, Hacknet, Old Man's Journey, Samorost 2 and more. I'm really happy my game can be a part of this.

And my new album Still Leben has been delayed until February 2022. Music is done, just waiting for the cover. It will be worth the wait.

I've also recorded a secret update video for my patrons, if you want to watch it, check it out here and make my day.

Hey! I've got something exciting to share:

Catty and Batty are out there saving the world today 🎉✨

My game is part of the World Land Trust Bundle on itch.io. It contains 60+ games for $5, including Hidden Folks, Hacknet, The Hex, and more.

Hope it reaches the goal within the next 7 days!

I saw the opportunity randomly on Twitter a few days ago and only had to send 1 email to participate, I'm glad my game got chosen! 🌞

🌲🌳🐈🦇

P.S.: If you have the game on itch, please leave a review because currently it only has 1 review - thank you!! Direct link: https://muddasheep.itch.io/cattybatty2

We're already at 10 entries! 🙀 I think it's coming along nicely so far. There's still lots to do, and I'm currently right in the details, so I'll probably post a roadmap in the next entry!

Anyway, I've been playing the current build for a bit, and a few things came up that I wanted to change.

1) I wanted to improve the way "free will" seekers were moving, by adding a delay. This resulted in a funny bug:

Because the new target got set every frame for half a second. XD I kinda liked it, but of course, I had to fix it.

I wanted it to "look ahead" and then go into the direction that it has chosen, but with a half second delay, so it was easier to catch.

2) I reduced the grid size by 2 on each side. The old game was 11 x 9 grid squares, now it was 23 x 13, and I think it was a noticeable difference when traversing through the field, everything took juuuuuuust a tiny bit longer. The new size is 21 x 11 now, not sure if I shouldn't reduce it even further. Good thing about the new change is that I will have space for UI stuff, like display hotkeys and buttons. In addition, I will make sure that the puzzles don't use the borders as much, that will also help.

In any case, I've refactored the code slightly so it is a lot easier to just change the size of the grid without having to adjust hardcoded values.

Comparison time! Old map:

New map:

3) I've had the idea for a while and I was already doing a similar effect in MelodyMaze, so I sat down to plan and code it. Here's the new wave for when a seeker explodes (which usually means "game over", but also for repair seekers):

I think it adds a bit of a dramatic effect to it! I initially wanted to add it to all explosions, but it was way too irritating.

4) This also was on my list for a while already: A targeting trail for seeker. This time I started with a sketch in Affinity Photo (I normally just do it directly in-engine, but I thought it would help this time with the algorithm):

Here's the first version in action, still was not done yet (the target cursor and some additional animations were missing):

And, after another day or two, here's the version with a new target animation. I made sure the arrows animate with a sine wave, so that it looks like it's pulsating. Also, the animator for the actual target cross can start an outgoing animation and then resumes the idle animation.

I like how it feels in-game, and I've made sure the little arrows use an object pool (to make sure they are only created once).

5) Also visible in the gif above - I redid the cursor! It was bugging me for a while now, so I had to change it. I think it looks pretty cool, what do you think? :D I've used a photo of a wrench to add some texture to it, but otherwise it's still using the old vector graphics.

6) Last, but not least, I finally imported all dialogue lines into the I2Localization plugin.

I was looking at having to copy/paste about 600 times, and having to manually change the associated cutscene number every time. Luckily, I can code a bit 😎, so I've made a little tool in javascript to easily convert all cutscene text into the new format:

(The textarea contains text directly from the flash code, below is the converted code with the IDs needed for the localization tool.)

And then it only took me about 10 minutes to copy and paste all of the text!

I still have to manually apply each line in the dialogue system. I don't think there's a good way around it, because I also have to set the mood image for each sentence. It's okay, I can do one cutscene per day or something like that.

I also did two smaller fixes: I fixed creators shooting projectiles while game is paused or level is complete, and clicking on a "free will seeker" now turns the grid square behind it.

But that concludes this devlog entry! As usual, let me know what you think! I never really know how technical I should get - if you want me to explain something in detail, I'd be happy to do so!

What's next?

• Keep remaking cutscenes and levels
• Menu / interface mockup

To be continued...

After getting the Steam page out, I knew it was time to go back into actually making the game.

Since I now have the new character portraits, the next thing on my list was to get the dialogue boxes running again with the new art.

I put some more time into making sure it looks a bit more intentional than the old design, and added more animation to when the dialogue box appears, using the new colors.

Old:

New:

I also extracted all portraits variants (there are six different ones for each character with slight variations), and applied them to the existing moods from Catty & Batty.

For my next trick, I added some red circles into the maw of the creator, right before it spawns a projectile. You can see it in action in this gif:

I still want to try and get some bloom going there, but not sure if it's a good idea. It would require lights and things like that get taxing quickly.

Next, I implemented the "seeker's eye", an idea I've had for a while now. Basically, it's a little light that follows the cursor, or looks towards the target direction that it's going.

This uses the same code from Catty & Batty's eye pupils, but there's another Vector3.Lerp() between the current and target position of the eye, so it moves a bit slower.

Afterwards, I read through the whole dialogue, approximately 600 lines. I changed a few things here and there, but I want to improve it even further later on. Overall, I think it holds up well, even after writing Walter's Deal. The dialogue feels alive and you feel like you need to keep reading. (Of course, that's subjective. :D) There are some sentences that feel like an injected tutorial (because that's what it was) and not something Neek would say, but I have some ideas to improve that.

Next, I decided to import the dialogue of the first cutscene. This time, I used the Google Drive implementation of the I2Localization plugin. It automatically syncs the data to a Google Sheet, in both directions, which saves me a lot of time. For Catty & Batty I didn't do this, but over time I realized it would've been better. After importing the first 13 sentences, I applied them to the new character images, and I was happy to realize it works really well!

I also wanted to quickly mention the work I did on the border (which you can see at the top). I added one for the Steam screenshots, and I used a photo from unsplash as a texture. I quite enjoy using some of these photos as an additional layer, makes things feel a bit better. Here's the photo I used:

Anyway! As you might know, Turnament has a new website now: https://turnament.muddasheep.com

As a patron, you don't really have to sign up for the free demo, since you'll always be the first to know whenever I release new projects or information. But just so you know, with this I'm starting a mailing list called Muddasheep Mastermind. This will be the list that will survive everything, Twitter, Discord, Patreon, and heck, maybe even Steam. 😂 And I'm excited about it!

What's next?

• Keep making cutscenes and levels, one after another.
• Add some indicator for targetting when sending a seeker around
• For "broken" seekers, I want to add a bit of delay between moving, so they are easier to catch.
• Start thinking about the new menus and maybe make a quick draft in Affinity Photo

To be continued...

P.S.: In case you've seen my recent twitter thread, i'm feeling better, i've taken a bit of a break, and as you can see, i'm already back at it (because i just gotta move forward anyway). I will write a longer private status update for you soon.

Turnament now has a Steam store page! 🎉

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1804890/Turnament/ 

Make sure to wishlist it 🎁 - this helps the game out tremendously. Steam quite enjoys a game with a bunch of wishlists.

This also marks the reveal of the new character art! It was drawn by Robert Guillaume, please take take a look at his other work here!

I've had to make 5 levels for the screenshots on Steam, and it was quite an interesting experience. I have a lot more space now (hehe, space), and I'm still not sure whether I should shrink down the level size or not. But so far, I like it and I think I can add a few more things that should make it work.

I also looked for a color scheme. Here's what I chose:

The enemies were previously blue, the same color as your own units and the first few crystals, which I thought was a bit confusing. I decided to change all enemy colors to the red one, the cursor got a better shade of yellow (it's called Cyber Yellow xD), and the player units are more in the bright blue tone. The other two colors I'll use for the interface, for now they're just used in the border.

Also, I've decided to participate in #PitchYaGame on Twitter, that's another reason why the Steam page is now live.

Hope you enjoy the new logo! Now the real fun begins.

To be continued...