Day 90

Starting the writing of this in the evening on July 5. July 4 was the U.S. Independence Day, plus the 1 year milestone for me actually starting work on this. Back then, I was barely figuring out how to make Scarlet *move!* Look how far I've come, all by myself no less.

After sick leave has (mostly) passed (and if you missed it, there are 2 articles about it on Steam, but brief recap: I've been hit by a pincer movement collaborated by vertigo and severe sadness), my next big priority has been listening to feedback.

From addressing the negative reviews to adding achievements on the game, I have come here to prove that I am, in fact, alive and (no less importantly) listening to what people have to say!

I already have ideas for achievements, so that's top on my list because I think that would be potentially the easiest to scratch off my dev's to-do list. I won't give away *every* achievement, and there are some actions or events that I want as purely "just for fun" sort of deals, meaning tying an achievement to such would defeat the whole "just for fun" angle. I won't spoil what specifically, just know that it's already in-game, even the V0.2.1 that you can access freely on Steam (or my cloud storage if you ask nicely and/or Steam ever decides to censor me).
So, for documentation purposes, not counting secret ones (because there are at least one or two that are secret), I'll tell you a handful of the ideas I have to get started:

"Cheater" - play around with the cheats menu. Simply toggle any of those "cheats" to on, then go to "new" or "continue" at main menu. Simple.
"FUCK YOU!" - Beat the Challenge using only the missiles of the S.S. FUCK YOU!
"The Sickest" - use Super Hobo's trash attack, with Duke's improved damage, and COVID needle all at the same time stacking on the same enemy.
"More Explosions Than a Michael Bay Movie!" - Have a grand total of 1,000 different explosions. (Can be from missiles, or cheats, and beating Chapter 1 Boss counts as 1)
"I Needed a Hug!" - Hug the Colonel (cheats or not, either would count)
"Royal Flush" (Not Implemented until Amanda is an implemented companion) - Have active companions include Violet, Doctor Amanda Kelly, and the Colonel. The whole royal family, united by a common passion: to rip and tear, until it is done!
"The Way of the Badass" (Not implemented until V1.0) - Beat the game. Final showdown, drive the freaks back to the void from whence they came, and show your mastery of all things badass while earning your rightful claim to the throne.
"Golden Knight Forever" (Not implemented until either V1.0 or V1.1) - AFTER beating the game, go back to beat the Colonel's bonus chapter! And have a taste of what it's like being the single greatest badass in all the world! Hail to the king, baby!

OK, time to make sure my vertigo doesn't knock me on my ear again, and / or that my lungs implode, and / or succumb to the temptation of playing any number of other, finished, juicier video games, and / or I lose this small burst of hope (illusion or not). Let's do this.
8:10 PM, The first step is to draw some icons to be shown on the Steam page. Some of that is just reusing images already made. But I may need to resize things depending on how picky Steam is about it.
8:20 PM, gonna look into the Steam Developer Kit (SDK) for figuring out how to tell Steam to toggle specific achievements...though that's later because I first want to get the images ready-ish. Focus on one thing at a time, and start with the easiest and work my way up.
9 PM, with a combination of rocking out, writing ideas for achievements, and getting the drawings ready, I think we're getting close to diving into the technical end of working on achievements. We certainly have a handful of images (even if they're just reused from already existing assets), but that's absolutely good enough to get started. Though, I'm on a roll with ideas, so I think I'll just enjoy the momentum I have right now.
One more thing, for fun...my mood right now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do9mgGXzo_g

9:25 PM, I got the images all converted to their proper duplicate file types, plus JPG this time as per specifications of Steam's tools explained on their backend. So now comes the hard part of implementing achievements, even though their how-to makes it sound comparatively easy. In practice, that remains to be seen, as this is absolutely a new frontier for me personally. Only one way to see how it goes. So, including small distractions from bursts of enthusiasm, I spent about an hour of effort tonight. A good start, but hardly a day's worth of work.

9:30 PM, there's just one problem on the backend. Steam has this to say:
"Since achievements can appear in various places throughout the Steam Community, the names and icons you enter must be appropriate for all ages and audiences. Valve may remove games from the store entirely if their achievements violate community content guidelines or are otherwise offensive."
Considering my whole game is specifically designed to be intentionally offensive, I'm not sure what would happen from certain, very specific achievements that flaunt this mindset. We know I hate, HATE rules, and these aren't "guidelines", they're "rules", so you can understand if I felt a flame of anger that got quenched by my brain strategizing.

9:35 PM had me get one degree warmer when I noticed the backend page was not functioning, and left me waiting for a few seconds longer than a stable connection was supposed to. Turned out there was no actual problem that I could see, but still...don't want to get cold feet, but I don't want to get completely censored, either, meaning...where do I find a middle ground here?

For Dev Diary purposes, and for those who enjoy ruining surprises and/or overthrowing authority, I'll tip my hand for what I was hoping would be one of my "secret achievements". The idea was "School Shooter" (that's right, no bullshit, you saw that correctly, so perhaps if "Achievements" were implemented more internally and not through Steam or similar distribution platforms, the PROPER Achievement name of "School Shooter" CAN live on - and I already have a vision for that, which involves another "room" in the Settings menu, some sprites and write-ups, and internal variables that'd get flagged like any other when the specific conditions are met), which is a secret shortcut to summoning the Chapter 2 boss fight. The image had a firing pistol in the foreground with the school in the background. After seeing the above bit with Steam, I saved the story here in the Dev Diary so that SOME semblance of that intention will live on, even if censored down the line. Though BECAUSE of that censorship, it's been "Renamed" into "School Shortcut", with a cheeky little roast in its description. :P

But, because Achievements are public and therefore don't allow anything NSFW, combined with my Dev Diaries being behind an NSFW warning, I felt that preservation of the idea here would be the most fair "meeting halfway" while also implementing sufficient change so that the intended achievements can still be published live.

10:30 PM, just pushed the basic setup from Steam's backend for a few Achievements and various icons. Haven't started the "internal version" of achievements, and next will be the truly hard part: getting into the Steam Development Kit (SDK) so that this game can talk to Steam. I spent 1 hour just on Step 1 of the "Step by Step" for adding Achievements. Step 2 is where things get truly challenging.

10:40 PM, right off the bat, we can see that copying and pasting what Steam has into an object for the game engine does not translate smoothly.

10:50 PM, So basically, translating C++ to GML...is that going to be like translating British English to American English, or more like translating English to German? Either way, it's not *that* simple, meaning it's time for another lesson in computer programming. Hoo boy.

Thankfully, there's already documentation for my specific engine. Still, going to take some time to learn how it's done.

11:10 PM, after 20 minutes of downloading, reading, and head-scratching, I've found a sample "Steamworks" project that opens in the game engine. Still learning how to translate that to my specific project. Also it's been about 3 hours I've been at it...1 more hour tops before I take a "lunch break". As in, go eat because basic needs, but it's awfully late for lunch per se.
11:20 PM, tutorial time! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoNH-v6aU9Q This is all public information, no "unlisted" or anything like that, so I feel I can freely share this with you. But it's going to take 10 or so minutes for the video itself, plus however long it takes for my brain to digest all this. Funny enough, the "Achievements" tab in the video is just Step 1, what I already did earlier. It's Step 2 that's more puzzling. Also in the video, "Configurations" was renamed to "General Installation", but it looks mostly the same.
11:30 PM, welp...that didn't answer my question. Let's try a different tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pc74zptCNFM
11:50 PM, I'm convinced that it'd be a lot easier just to do achievements internally, but then people won't be able to show that off on Steam. Thing is, I've downloaded the extension and SDK, so where do I slap those files into? How do I get the engine to look at it? There is no "Enable Steam" option in the options anymore. The Manual has me running around in circles! And I'm losing my voice, yet I'm not even speaking!

Midnight, not too long before the 4 hour mark, and honestly, I can't stand this, so I'm going to ask a human for help by opening up a Steam Support ticket, then going to break for basic needs and to recharge my sanity + mental powers.

12:54 AM, nearly an hour just composing my support ticket with Steam. Yeah, I'm definitely taking a break until both 1) Steam gets back to me, and 2) I am ready to take on this hurdle. I'm telling you, having achievements completely internal would be much simpler, but less satisfying. Punching out for Tuesday/Wednesday, now July 6.

Next day...
I got a response, but disappointment awaits. Here's what it says:
Thanks for reaching out. We're glad to help answer one-off questions or help overcome a bug, but we don't offer liaison services for getting your game up and running in Steamworks. Our documentation and tutorials provide all the necessary information. The actual step-by-step process of uploading a build and integrating with features is up to each individual developer.

You may also find the Steamworks Development discussion forums to be a useful resource as other developers may have helpful advice or have solved for similar implementation issues in the past

So...what next?
That evening, on July 6, I see the 1 achievement. And how does a greater than 0 number of people already have it? I am so confused!!!
But, for anyone paying attention between Dev Diaries, there IS one nugget of good news from this. The addition of that achievement implies that I *AM* working on it behind the scenes! ;)

(Thursday...)
Early afternoon, I had a small, mild dizziness and headache episode. It was nothing I couldn't handle, but it had been enough to remind and warn me that just because I was feeling fine the past day or two, the problems of sickness are not gone for good. At the time, all I was doing was reading at my computer. No music, no excitement, I was simply reading. And, I was planning on picking up with my game this evening (as in, probably after sunset), depending on how I feel. With some help from the Steamworks discussion area, I now have a couple pieces to the puzzle which eluded me. Here's hoping that's enough to solve the missing link and get achievements fully implemented. But we'll find out a few paragraphs down from here.

2:40 AM, Friday...got super distracted by my gaming, until a visitor of Discord snapped me out of that trance.
From what little I could read of the manual links, the code for implementing is surprisingly minimal. That's just the "in theory" phase, so after 10 minutes of reading, and copy-pasting, I'll sleep then see what that's actually like in practice. Probably push a separate build of "achievementstest" when I feel like it.
(Later that day...)
Today has been a LAZY day! Woke up for breakfast, went back to bed for another 5 hours, and STILL don't feel recharged. To think, only my most conscious part is thinking, "You should do *SOMETHING!*" The rest of me is like, "Nah."
This is the ULTIMATE example of why I say, "When I Feel Like it", and I'm going to be honest, right now, I DON'T feel like it.

(Saturday...)
I keep feeling like I can't bring myself to work on this. I don't fully understand it, as I don't have an answer. Is it because I'm tired? Lazy? Low morale? Some combination of those? I am seriously not sure. All I know is, I've already spent a lot of time, for something that's hardly done, and hardly attended to. And I don't see any benefit, when even the fun is dissipating. Something conscious inside me wants to do something with my life, but can't seem to get past the inertia holding me back. And I feel bad for not getting past that.
If the real world's working space were anything like the grind of an MMO, I'd actually be able to get by. Not everyone wants a second job. Some want *A* job that they feel qualified for. And, I have to put this onto digital paper, sometimes, it sucks to be unemployable - specifically in a Capitalism context. Too drained to do anything useful, not drained enough to go back into bed...ah, it's one of the flavors of limbo.Can I count this as sick leave?
Either way, the funks I get into can last for days, even weeks. I liked it better when I'd just create, pump out content, and wish for people to love it. Reality shows that people don't really love it, and there's more to this process than just making stuff.
While looking for job applications related to certain games I've been playing, I've come across one or two and I thought, "You know, MAYBE my game could make for a good portfolio." So, back to the store page for a link, and then, I see a 6th review came in.
What this means, even if I'm not feeling empowered to push the game build out for achievement testing, if nothing else now may be a decent-ish (or good enough) place to look at these reviews and acknowledge what people have to say. So, if you see your exact words here, let that inform you that I am listening.

pretty cool, a little buggy, but overall nice just like Gilmar Oliveira dos Santos.

One search of Gilmar later...nothing in English, so dismissed. Next.

The game is what it promises to be: a fun 2D game with controversial political ideologies although for the moment it is very short and i am very curious to see how it will be out of early access.

That's the nicest one I've seen so far. Doesn't really give me too much to go off of except "Do more", which was the original plan from the start.

Cons:
The art style is ugly
The voice acting is annoying
The story is weird
Pros:
Its short

Missing apostrophe aside, lessons learned is that everything sucks. I failed to depict adorable sentient plush dolls, I failed to have any gripping drama or character development, and one point of credit where it's due, the voice acting is limited by having only 1 voice to work with (so for future projects, lay off the voicing). Still, not a lot I can do to improve, but the short of the message is, "Stop trying."


It is not ironic.

That doesn't help me any. I presume the person wished I would be taking a more sarcastic approach to my commentary, and that's simply not how I tick. Moving on.

After listening to the feedback, safe to say that the reviews are, in fact, "mixed". Though, that actually seems like a very real-world outcome if I'm being honest. Why? Just look at any hot-button political topic out there. No matter the subject, no matter how factual or emotional, there is always some great divide (as in, 50% like and 50% dislike, with only enough margin to have a "majority" no matter how slim of a lead). They wouldn't be hot-button if an overwhelming majority had favored one outcome or the other.
So...guess that means I'm on the right path if I'm aiming for controversial. Oddly, that was my vision from Day Zero, meaning the evidence lines up neatly and I'm heading in the direction I want to be going in.
(But don't worry, the first game may cater to the right, but the hypothetical sequel is more for the left.)
Point is, time to once again spend a week in the void to try and get rid of that disappointment...except the disappointment follows me into the void.

What am I supposed to DO?!
Am I doing anything meaningful?
Should I just switch to a whole new elevator pitch and game engine?
Should I just get back to the writing and drawing for this in the hopes it may (even if only marginally) rekindle my spark?
Should I just give up and lay in bed until starvation claims me?
Who would give money for what I'm trying to offer to the world?

Honestly, I really don't know anymore.

(Sunday)
One long nap later...
1:45 AM, OK, let's at least TRY to compile the game build, put it up on Steam (hopefully as a separate, opt-in beta), and see what happens. Because Achievements usually work as a one-time thing, it's going to be hard to demonstrate since I'm not sure my capture software also knows to include the Steam overlay features as well. I took a screenshot of the code, which LOOKS simple enough. But as any experienced professional can reaffirm, "No plan survives contact with the enemy". (Sometimes, it doesn't even survive contact with the ALLIES, but that's beside the point here!)
To keep this subtly distinct, the game (and Steam) will recognize the build as Version 0.2.1.1 because IN THEORY, adding Steam Achievements is more minor than minor, and particularly exceptional for me to release such a small update since I originally vowed to only release on MAJOR milestones (and this ain't one). I haven't even started on Chapter 3 yet, like I had wanted to. Blame my sorry state of mental health (I don't mean that in chronic label sense, I mean it like the "Woe is me" sense).

2 AM, compile error. Compile tab closed, so I need to figure out how to open that first.
"Malformed statement" with the hug achievement. (Sigh) Figures. No plan survives contact with the enemy.
Dummied it out and kept that as comment for "historical preservation" to learn from this mistake, while trying to rebuild the nesting syntax.

2:05 AM, we get a NEW error.
"The specified steamworks SDK path doesn't exist please edit the file 'post_build_step.bat' in your project's root folder"

I should be more frustrated than I am now, with all the failures. Instead, I feel...FASCINATED! Like, the fact it's different says something interesting, that I am learning.
The file it's asking for DOES exist in the "extensions" folder of my project. And a right-clicking on Windows 11 shows the abridged options. Go to the bottom for "more options", to get the unabridged list, then hit "edit". That opens it in Notepad, and behold, it's all in plain text! Nice, clear English! (Well, English for techies and nerds, but still, comparatively it's English!)
2:10 AM, backing up the original bat file before making any changes.
2:15 AM, and lo! The new "Steam Achievements Beta" has spawned a new ZIP folder on my desktop as intended! 30 minutes of troubleshooting and learning, now I see results. Plus, now I have learned what to do with that "sdk" folder and why it's so important. Basically, it really just sits there, but you need to tell that very specific bat file to look at the "sdk" folder. Don't quiz me on this!
2:20 AM, now next up is uploading it to Steam, and then trying to configure it for "opt-in Beta". When or if I'm successful, it's where you right-click on the game's name in your Steam library, go to "Properties", then look for "Betas", and in the drop-down, should hopefully tell you a build name "achievementstest".
...That's IF everything works as intended, AND I have successfully figured out how to use Steam's dev tools on their backend.

Assuming I figured out how to make separate "beta" options, I'm going to do a bonus that I intend to be standard practice for the long-term future. I will also be uploading "V0.1" as one such "beta". Reason being historical preservation and appreciation, so 1) you can see all the unique title screens, and 2) appreciate how far I've come over these months or years.

2:35 AM, backend looks OK, but it may take a bit for the backend to update Steam client-side since the "Properties" tab does not show any "Betas" option. I've done the same process for a game that I personally KNOW has a "Betas" option, so I know the steps are correct since I found everything works there as it should.
2:40 AM, found I had rewritten the V0.1 build locally, so it was confusingly the "Steam First Contact Edition". Good thing for Google Drive, as the cloud backup has saved the actual V0.1 that I will use for Steam also!
2:45 AM, looking through the metrics of my news posts on Steam, and...WOAH! You can see the long string of single-digits for the "read" number, how many people actually READ the thing. Then it shoots up to 30 for Sick Leave, and 40 for the 1 year milestone.
Plus, the client-side is now updated to show the separate builds. Just downloaded "achievementtest" now.



2:50 AM, recording software is capturing the Steam popup integration, so assuming the achievement unlocks, here's hoping that it'll be captured on video. That is the main goal of today's Dev Diary. And it all took 1 hour so far.

...Ladies and gentlemen, that's a CRASH! At least V0.1 is up and ru-
CRASH! Using the rifle with a saved game made a crash in V0.1



Seriously? It's complaining because a variable is not set.
Just imagine if, of all the three or five people who actually CARE about this, they just HAPPENED to check at 3 AM Eastern time, right as all of these backend changes are going on, with them getting frustrated over crashes and confused from updates in rapid succession.

3:05 AM, no crash, but no achievement. Though to be fair, I WAS testing in a closed environment in my game engine, rather than out in the wild on Steam. Reason being I was checking for more crashes. I can't believe how much I'm laughing because of all the crashes. Insert image of Violet table-flipping.

3:15 AM, yay, I got the achievement! Test is a success!
OH and, at the time, 1.7% of players have the achievement. Mostly because only *I*, the developer, have unlocked it for testing. But Hallelujah, the video even captured the "achievement unlock" pop-up, reaffirming it's all functioning as intended! Such a simple feature in the code, and yet, it took quite the learning curve!
Queue more ape noises.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM6OIlreneA

And yeah, seriously, if people weren't in bed right now, I would actually be acting like a chimpanzee right around now!
3:20 AM, so, let me wrap this up, distribute the big fucking bulletin that is Day 90 (and the whole journey), then I can move forward with my life. Uploading today's video to Youtube because 1) this is one of the most IN-offiensive gameplay showcases, and 2) I am particularly stoked to have gotten past this very specific learning curve. Something so easy in hindsight, took this huge essay to get through...both behind-the-scenes AND behind-the-behind-the-scenes!

As far as the nuts-and-bolts go, this is all I had to do:


All of that culminating to just a few short seconds of gameplay footage:
https://youtu.be/6qTjSaE3KdM

Next up, whenever I'm done moping around, I'll add some of the more POTENTIALLY offensive achievements, and hopefully, we can get started on Chapter 3!

Semper Bellum!
Jay