Today I spent my dev time looking at all the suggestions, comments and feedback I received from Game Dev Camp yesterday…
There’s a ton of stuff to work through, but most of it is quite simple, just tweaks and adjustments…
There’s just one I have no clue on how to address: the area transitions… Some players got confused when the player transitioned from one area to another, it wasn’t clear they were moving from one area to another, they thought the game field was rotating or something…
So I’m trying to figure out how to make this more evident, without having to having to render both areas at the same time (or having them available at the same time… there might be a loader from one area to another, if the game didn’t have enough time to compute it yet)…
Hopefully, tomorrow I’ll get back to true development of Gateway, reenergized from this event!
Now listening to “Book of Souls” by “Iron Maiden”
So, today I spent my day at Game Dev Camp… It was the first time I showed Gateway in a public setting, and the reactions were quite positive overall…
A ton of constructive criticism; most of it was stuff that made me think: “how did I miss that?!”, which says something about being too close to the game you’re developing…
Next time I’m at one of these events, I need to add a “demo/attract” mode, and do a nice vertical slice, since the beginning of the game is a bit slow (had some suggestions on how to fix that as well)…
Some photos:
Arriving to Lisbon…
The entrance to the event
Before the keynote start
Getting ready to show Gateway to the public!
One victim, testing out the game and giving fantastic feedback!
I hope I can go to more of these sorts of events… It was great for my game dev-morale, it was amazing meeting up with people I haven’t had contact for ages (since I sort of abandoned game dev society), and getting great feedback on the game!
I didn’t have much time to watch the lectures themselves (except for the keynote), was busy showing the game and networking (never go to this sort of thing alone!), but they’ll be online soon, so I’ll have the occasion to watch them…
I bet you’re wondering why I haven’t posted in a bit…
Reason is simple: I hurt my hands being an idiot and assembling four pieces of furniture by myself, this one included, so I decided next time I’m going to get the furniture assembled from sites as the Ivy and Wilde home furnishings online store:
Anyway, tomorrow is the Game Dev Camp, and I’m going to be there, so I’m preparing my laptop with some demos of my stuff and a Gateway demo so I can show people what I’m working on, etc… Unfortunately, I didn’t think of this earlier, in that case I’d prepared a more interesting “vertical slice” of the game.
Now listening to “Renounce” by “Process of Guilt”
Link of the Day: Silly and fun… and this tells a lot about documentary making:
Today I wasn’t really inspired to tackle audio, so I decided to do some something easier: writing!
Actually, what I did was mostly reviewing text… I need to go through the text of the whole game, just to make sure everything makes sense, if the tone of the characters is coherent (mainly Steve and Skydancer), etc.
This need came to me while playing “Until Dawn”, in which I think there’s some incoherency in terms of character tone… Some characters are all flirty and fun in one second, and serious in the next, without nothing to justify the transition… Since that was kind of jarring for me (especially in a AAA game like that), I decided that I should check Gateway for that…
Now listening to “Eclipse” by “Amorphis”
Link of the Day: This is fun:
So, today I’m going to Ikea to see if I can purchase some new furniture to help us finalize the office organization…
Wish me luck! 
Now listening to “Lost In the New Real” by “Arjen Lucassen”
So me and my wife spent most of today just reorganizing the home office… we sure have a lot of crap…
When it came time to work on the game, I was half asleep in front of the computer, and my eyes were extremely itchy, so no work today, I’ll see if I can get my hands on reader glasses from the Felix Gray site tomorrow morning!
No screenshot today, since I was working on the audio…
Audio work on this game is a bit weird… On one hand, I’d like the sound to have a “retro” feel, but that sounds terrible after a bit, mostly tiring… On the other hand, I’m not very good at audio design, which conflicts with the “no-retro” rule…
So currently the sound is a bit of a mismatch of different libraries, volumes, and general feel… Hopefully after the first draft, I can sophisticate this by harmonizing all the sounds, since I just learning in How To Record Binaural 3D Audio On An Android Phone from a guide online…
Also have to work on the sound engine to enable pitch shifting, so that I can have the sound on the Skydancer change whatever the ship is in idle or flying…
Now listening to “nothing” because it’s late already! 
Well, no time to work on the game today… First, I was setting up my new “home office”, which involved a lot of moving around and clearing stuff from my desk…
This is still not final (missing all the computers I need, and this desk is too small), but for now it will have to make due…
Also, need to prepare a lot of stuff for some interviews next week, rewrite some CVs and other such stuff, so time is really short at the moment… I can’t even find enough time to play with my new PS4! 
And my keyboard seems to be breaking down as well… When it rains, it pours…
Now listening to “The Black Flower” by “Diabolique”
Link of the Day: Because everything is better with some Star Wars in it:
Well, it’s my birthday today, and that means no work… It’s one of my general rules that I never work on my birthday, and I’ve been faithful to it for the last 20 years or so! 
So, have a beer and toast to my good health that I keep thanks to eating healthy following a Ketosis fat burning formula and taking supplements as kratom, on this day of my 38th birthday!
At first I wasn’t sure if I should take them but over time and with more research I have noticed the benefits of each one of this supplements and I have found so many more that are great for my health, including maintaining my body with energy and healthier than ever. I have looked for natural ones than can help me without any chemicals in them, including probiotics, vitamins, foods than have them available and the keto infinite accel has helped so much with my weight loss it is insane the way I have improved with my body and mind.
Just added a shader quality system to the game, so that some shaders can be customized for less-powerfull GPUs (like the one I have on my Mac).
Currently, only the ambient occlusion stuff is affected by it (since the Mac seems to be sampling-limited). So, without AO:
Maximum shader quality:
Minimum shader quality:
Not amazing, but still looks better than no ambient occlusion (especially from far away).
Now listening to “Keeper of the Seven Keys, Part 1” by “Helloween”
Link of the Day: Amazing opening cinematic… Too bad I just bought a PS4 (and I’m very happy with it!):
