Mighty Knights Progress, Minigolf Blast Release Date/Price, & Home Improvement
Mighty Knights
Progress is being made on Mighty Knights (lol... fixed typo... wrote that as Nighty Knights). The user interface and various other things are being fixed up and puzzles are being made. Mid-March release looks to be tough to achieve - we'll see. The sooner the better.
Minigolf Blast
Tentative Release Date: July 6, 2023 Tentative Price: $7.99
This will be an Early Access release. Lots of holes and courses are already complete. Some courses will be complete with input from the community.
I continue to divide my time between working on code and fixing up the house that we just moved into last weekend. Lots of work to do on it.
My current office (this closet):
That's all for now. Onward and upwards!
Kevin
Oklahoma -- Game Dev -- and -- Home Fixer-Upper
Meant to post an update near the start of January when I arrived in Oklahoma, but the time I spend writing these announcements is time away from doing actually gamedev (and house fix-up work - see below). This will be short and a combined post about all three games.
Contraption Maker
I was working on this yesterday:
Going to get the Mighty Knights stuff out before mid March, which is coming up quick.
Minigolf Blast
Been having my youngest son working on fixing various holes that are too difficult or have other problems. We chat over Discord where I give him feedback and sketches of what needs to change:
The online multiplayer is now working. Gonna release this as early access at the same time I put out the Contraption Maker Mighty Knights update - before mid March.
This one is done. No more changes. Probably should just make it free.
The Other Project
Been working full-time (actually more than full-time) with my friend who owned Dynamix with me long ago. I only did some of the tech stuff on the Darkforge Dungeon game - no real design work. We also have a few casual games under development that I did program and design.
After living with us for about 6 years, my daughter, son-in-law, and two granddaughters (6 and 8) bought a home and moved to Oklahoma - 1,662 miles away (thanks Google Maps for the exact number). A very inexpensive house came up for sale in December a few miles from their home. So my wife and I bought. It needs LOTS OF WORK. After doing quite a bit of electrical work (only shocked myself once) now about to start drywall work.
My current job title: Game Developer Juggler
Kevin
Help!
So, I am no longer a one man band and finally have some HELP on these games from my son, Liam!
Progress is being made.
I'm just gonna write one short announcement about all three of my current games putting them on all their Steam pages. Someday I'll have more free time and less commitments... maybe I can even hire a marketing type person who knows how to do this stuff.
The current plan is to release this as an Early Access game. Online multiplayer is now working. Some of the newer holes are too hard and they need work. Also I want to add some newer design elements for the multiplayer BLAST part of the game.
It'd be nice to get this out in September/October and then adjust the holes based on feedback from that release. What a difference from the old days in the 1980s when there was no connection with the folks that played my games.
I'll update the official Steam release date after sitting down and going over everything thoroughly, I think, last I looked, the release date was set to is something like 1996 or so (kidding).
Here are a few screen shots of current build showing launching an online multiplayer game:
The Mighty Knights stuff still needs more work to be fun. It can't be worked on though until the Early Access version of Minigolf Blast is out the door. There are also some interfaces things that I'd like to get fixed up - just to make editing things smoother and easier.
Tentative release timeline: Before Christmas (this year - really!)
Not much of anything left to do with this very casual game. Most likely will drop the price or just make it free sometime in the future. I think I made one of the achievements for it too hard. Not sure if I can or should change it.
Opus One
This is a possible future game project. In the 1970s I wrote computer games in BASIC on an 8kb Wang computer that my high school had. I may recreate that experience for everyone along with the games and code that I wrote back then.
Here is the computer I worked on back then and also my Star Trek game code:
I see the Moon (finally)
Finally after a long delay got the new Moon part added.
Added new physics where the Moon and the Sun will be affected by gravitational attraction.
Create some cool gravity interactions. You can use all the other parts them.
Multiplayer is Up and Running
This is just a quick update notice.
I did some debugging and figured out why Multiplayer wasn't working. It is working now ːrbiggrinː
I've got a multiplayer game running right now for testing. Feel free to join (room for 8 users) and build anything you want or go ahead and create your own.
Fire, Surgery, and Work
So, several things have happened over the last year and a half to bring updates to Contraption Maker to a halt - Fire, some health issues, and mostly work on another future project.
The Creek Fire
Last year in September we were evacuated from our home for 3 weeks because of the Creek Fire. The Sherriff came by our home around midnight and said it was time to get out. Packed up what we could and left. The fire ended up coming within 1/2 mile of our home. Burned almost 400,000 acres. A lot of game dev history would have gone up in flames if it had taken out our home because I have a lot of old stuff saved here - everything I worked on over the decades - a prototype Amiga dev machine when making Arctic Fox for Electronic Arts, design docs, company docs, lots of stuff.
This is a time lapse of the fire I took from my home office in the afternoon before we have to evacuate later that night. The fire was about 10 miles away at this point: [previewyoutube="HKYLGQRzFcw;full"]
This is one of a large number of air tankers that flew over home to fight the fire: [previewyoutube="qE_FUnUIE-o;full"]
Surgery
In the months before that I hadn't been feeling well. Turns out my gall bladder no longer liked me. All of us from my family were staying at my Mom's house in Fresno because of the fire. This led to emergency gall bladder surgery with this no-fun drainage tube for a couple of weeks and longer than expected recovery. In the end just a bump in the road, but not a fun one.
New Game Project
Up until now it has been just me working on Contraption Maker. Or lately, not working on it. I'm currently working on a new game with my friend who owned Dynamix with me which has made it close to impossible to make time to get new updates out for Contraption Maker.
Anyway, I've figure out a way (I hope) to keep my current commitments on the new game while also getting updates out for Contraption Maker. Look for another update in a few weeks with a new part.
Now I've got to go an put out an update for my Minigolf Blast game (probably copy/paste much of this one) which is gonna be delayed even more. Haven't quite figured out that timing or how to get that one finished yet.
Fixed crash bug in "Bat Trap" puzzle.
This new build fixes the crash bug in the Wonderstructs puzzle "Bat Trap".
Crash bug fix for Bat Trap puzzle.
This fixes the crash when trying to play "Bat Trap" in the Wonderstructs set of puzzles.
64-bit Mac Build
I just made the 64-bit Mac build live. It has been on a beta branch for about a month.
Also, I know it has been a long time between updates. I've been very busy on another product to just pay the bills.
It is just me (Kevin Ryan) on Contraption Maker right now. Still planning on updates to Contraption Maker when things slow down. It is not dead. Really wish I could spend more time on it. Looking forward to getting that Moon part in there.
I see the Moon
Just a short announcement.
Gonna try something different with the next new part that I add to Contraption Maker. Look for some interesting gravitationally interactions between the new part and the current Sun part.
