Family Visiting (August 08 2025)

Progress has once again slowed down because I have family visiting. Now the expected release date for the platformer is September. It feels bad to go this long without having released anything due to various factors, and also this game doesn't feel especially content-heavy (it'll be 6 short levels at most). Many things have happened in the summer that have made things much busier than before, and I feel like I've lost some of my creative energy because of it.

The secret online game has continued to take up time. I thought I'd get the chance to play it with my cousin in-person but they constantly have to leave the house with their dad for many hours at a time, which ruins that plan. I never go with them because it doesn't sound fun. Having to accompany 2 kids who I can't communicate with in any language also doesn't make me want to go along. I would just be spending 99% of the time on my phone, with no audio, and I'd rather than just do that at home with a computer instead.

I also never understood the point of going on vacation. It costs a lot of money (both for flights and getting a place to stay) and time (all the traveling), and all of that is just for 1-2 weeks of going somewhere and then probably never going back again. It just doesn't seem worth it to me. I don't really care about sightseeing or taking pictures, and most of time still seems to be on your phone (again you don't need to go outside to use your phone). I also never understood how people could get bored staying at home during covid; most people have computers/phones with wifi, finding things to do is easy.

There's still another week before the other family members leave. It's been less than a week and I'm already tired of their existence. Even small things like losing one of the bathrooms has been very disruptive. It makes me wish to never have long-term guests at this place ever again.

Code Rewrites (August 01 2025)

I kept working on the tower level, and I'm a bit stuck at the ending right now. For the ending I wanted you to unlock a way to make it easier (but still with a few restrictions) to get boxes past the tower. I tried several things, but decided on having bounce blocks that will send the box to the top of the tower (where it will get bounced away again). Now the question is, what unlocks those new bounce blocks, and then what to do with all the boxes you get access too.

Another thing I did was change how switches work. The tower level really wanted it where multiple switches had to be activated at the same time in order to deactivate/activate a platform. The problem is this was basically impossible to do with the switches as is. I instead rewrote the game where the player object would first find every switch in the level, and keep a list of what objects those switches interact with. Then for each object, it checks whether any switches that interact with that object are on or off.

Anyways, I've been working on this one level for a while now, and I think maybe it'd be better if I take a bit of time away from it. Instead maybe I can try to make a level based around the bullets I programmed earlier. It's possible I have to change the way the player holds boxes in order to more effectively use boxes as a shield against the bullets.

Finally I discovered a new innovation. Originally when you're given text buttons in my digital card games, that's that, they were just text. When you click one of those buttons, the player receives a number and then figures out what to do from there. It mostly worked, except there were some tricky cases that could happen when some buttons need a condition in order to show up. I now changed that system where when a button is created, it gets sent both text and also what will happen when the button is clicked. It's more direct and accurate this way.

Tower Level (July 25 2025)

I've finally done with changing Randomly Generated RPG to support translations. It has over 750 lines, which surely isn't much compared to really large / more story-based games, but it's definitely the most out of any game I've translated so far. In comparison, Relentless Waves and the platforming game are under 40 lines (and I doubt the platformer is going to get many more lines).

Another thing about the platformer is that there isn't even much code for it. Which in a way makes it a great first try at test cases, since I don't need too many of them. What this means though is that most of the work remaining is just on me, making new levels. Currently I'm not on pace to finish the game before August, and now the goal is instead mid-August.

Currently I'm still working on level 5. I have a cool idea, although it has nothing to do with the bullets I created earlier. Instead there is a tower in the middle of the level, and while it's easy to move yourself between both sides of the tower, moving boxes is trickier, as it's surrounded by purple barriers. The tower itself is a column of upwards arrows that launch a box upwards, and then at the top there is either a rightwards arrow or a leftwards arrow. Except what arrow is there is determined by a button. I still don't know what the player is doing yet in the level, but the goal will be to constantly move boxes between the 2 sides of the tower.

The mysterious online game is still taking up a ton of my time. I've had to work on it every day for a while now, and while it is fun I would like to calm down on it. Time spent on it is time not spent on the platformer. However if I had to guess it's still going to be like one or two weeks before I can finally stop having to put time into it every single day.

Finally here's a new song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdZNsRqM_cY