TV Game

dev diary #2

People who played my Patreon demo probably noticed a few things: the load times were strangely long for a game like this, the frame rate had problems when too much stuff was on screen, and the game’s resolution was way too small.

I’ve been dividing my time among a number of different things for this game. The most important was optimization. I fixed a number of things under-the-hood that completely removed those problems I mentioned. Now it runs a hell of a lot better, at a bigger resolution! Compare these before and after screenshots.

Pixel Game Maker MV is still in the early access phase, with plans to improve optimization on their end as well. So this work I’ve been doing should be much easier in the future.

Now, you probably watched that video and asked, “Ramona, this stage isn’t actually going to just be a fucking straight line with a handful of enemies in it, right?” Of course it’s not! In all my work to actually make this thing run well, I had to make a lot of adjustments to art assets and mess around with stuff, that this is more or less a debug stage to test everything out. But with that out the way, I can actually start to work on real design. Levels that are good, and fun, and won’t make you close the game thinking it’s a bunch of bullshit. I’m at a point now where I’m planning and mapping out what levels will be like, and how many there will be.

The other thing I’ve been working on is sound. Here’s where the problems come in: of all the trans stereotypes for me to buck, “being good at making music” just so happened to be one of them. Creating songs that don’t become grating after a while is a pain, and it’s frustrating. But I’ll eventually come up with something good. I can only hope, anyway.

For now, though, I’ll leave you with a few features I threw in for you to look forward to.

Conveyor belts!

Secret weapon upgrades!

Crude dialogue between stages!

Adventures On The Lonely Frontier

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