Flock of Dogs
2.5 Weeks of Early Access, Bug Fixes, Feedback Form, Beyond the Gate(?)
Build Version 0.3.51
So are you ready to here about the new feature that I'm most excited about in Flock of Dogs? Hmm?
Ok. Here goes...
There's a new, in-game form to submit feedback to me!
Hot dog! You can press F9 and create a bug report/feedback message at any time. So yeah, do that.
I'm now allowing players on the beta branch to fly beyond the gate. If you're unsatisfied with the amount of bugs in the current experience, I apologize. I can provide many, many, many more on the beta branch when you fly beyond the gate ahahaha. Seriously though, let me know if you (and your friend(s)) would like a beta key and promise to give me feedback. Join the Discord.
-Max
P.S. MESSI MESSI MESSI MESSI MESSI!!!!!!!!!!!
P.P.S. Just realized I didn't include this message in the new, in-game "developer note" menu option. I guess I'll have to publish build 0.3.51 in like 5 minutes from now. Whoops.
Patch notes:
- Fixed properly killing items in whale belly (fixed issue with end of Block Buffet)
- Fixed properly killing items selected by player in belly at end of block buffet
- Fixed network issue with potting items while being chewed in block buffet
- Fixed trove hints to show controls not destroying properly
- Fixed regression balloon gallery not finding subclasses of living tool, failing to take away the popguns
- Fixed giant pot overbooming
- Fixed regression battlezone not finding all subtypes of mario kart items
- Fixed dogpark not registering magic bouncers in time
- Wrapped whale swallow item in null check
- Easter egg room names added
- Reduced servers used to consolidate player population
- Better UX flow for changing servers in menus
- Fixed double popping question boxes
- Fixed SkyTrack desync by initializing race tracks for client by having master share tracks in level load
- Fixed the colors of the sky track
- Fixed sync/loading player instantiation data with new numbering
- Can call whale even when piloted (just won't obey right away)
- Fixed bug with trying to launch from nest from dog that is still scrambling in
- Fixed syncing dead units by landing them
- FlyingDog on rossmoor will fly to whale if rider quits and whale has available nests, otherwise will fly to tree
- Fixed mop non owner sending swipes
- Fixed player numbering byte code issue
- Fixed thorny dens endlessly scanning (when synced dead was the problem realaly)(might have introduced new bug)
- Fixed mailbox interacted with vs delivery done
- Fixed summoning pit regression
- Fixed picking random color only trying once
- Redid summoning rocks save/load
- Fixed joining while waiting for game state
- Inverting LS and RS in
- Fixed unlocking gate on beta and sound
- Fixed gavel menu aiming
- Fixed profile menu renaming
- Fixed arrowKeysMap drop out button
- Increased moon onscreen range
- Fixed clicking on usemouse
- Fixed some race office desyncs when mashing the open track lever
- Fixed numbering players (it wasn't the handles that were messing up to begin with!)
- Added arrow key input check at start
- Fixed parade credits disappearing asyou lerp away
- Fixed easy feebdack input not working while on title screen with menu dot
- Fixed sky track cover offset and color
- Fixed loading tracks, highlightig, unhighlighting, syncing tracks
- Fixed regression for mop swiping
- Fixed No Registrants syncing
- Better battle zone camera
- Reduced cover tarp life
- Fixed some other issues with treehouse residency
- Fixed chennai!
- Addeed etting vsync in title
- Fixed airwalking
- Fixed getting into bed and getting on ladder breaking treehouse
- Fixed items instant death not destroying them, preventing lost and found to work
- Fixed extra filling on button station UIs
One Week of Early Access Down
This is what Early Access is all about woo hoo. If you have you more bugs to report or would like to participate in play testing, join the Discord.
It's crazy to me that there's people finally playing my game. It messed up some of my debugging routines that auto-joined rooms, because I never thought to check for more than 1 room existing! Anyway, I've been working long hours, but I'm like more into it than ever, which is sorta surprising, sorta not. I figured I'd be motivated by having actual players.
I'm hoping that after another week of really hammering on network code bugs, I will be able to pour my full attention to the Flight to the Festival.
Patch notes:
- Better trove visuals
- No more petting while on car back (so tool rack and trove are more easily accessed)
- Better trove controls and instructions
- Fixed sliding key/items thru gate via whale by putting gate top blocker on tilemap layer
- Teaching how to trove
- Better local menuers handling, separating off network menuing (flower powering, should use different icons)
- Better UX for hosting/joining rooms that are still at main menu
- Added radiance to other UI elements
- Improved trove instructions canvases
- Fixed regression from dogs launching on blocked side of whale (able to bridge oob)
- Fixing menu dots to be all local players (unless flower powers menu)
- Ensuring treehouse tree bares fruit upon return
- Fixed sliding key/items thru gate via whale by putting gate top blocker on tilemap layer
- Teaching how to trove
- Better local menuers handling, separating off network menuing (flower powering, should use different icons)
- Better UX for hosting/joining rooms that are still at main menu
- Added radiance to other UI elements
- Improved trove instructions canvases
- Fixed regression from dogs launching on blocked side of whale (able to bridge oob)
- Fixing menu dots to be all local players (unless flower powers menu)
- Ensuring treehouse tree bares fruit upon return
- Debug joining will use persona name now
- Hinting how to open trove better
- Reworking syncing player handles
- Fixed making goldfish clickable
- improved naming on BAP
- zooming if all locals on island
- pods release near dogs
- Better mailbox button prompt
- Players start with no names
- Dynamic zooming at rossmoor
- Fixed some flower sorting on rossmoor
- Reset flock also resets player names
- Made sure stage cleanups return to stretch follow locals
- Redid thorny vine munching
- Redid thorny den munching
- Fork synamic stretching
- Dogs eat bones unless you're holding dog food bag
- Removed whale nose
- Fixed some rossmoor camera behavior
- Fixed landing on destroyed thorny dens
- Better loading screen
- Fixed clicking letting people try to lerp away to join unstarted room
- Fixed CornerUI correctly displays version on title screen when not online
- Fixed joining room by entering room name!!!!!!!
- Fixed turning invisible when climbing in/out of treehouse windows
- Better loading screen image
- Fixed corner ui ver
- hat null ref fixed
- DogFoodBag auto shelving issue fixed
- Fixed syncing vines hp as float not int
- Fixed player manning nest while there was still a launcher!!!
- Fixed feeding from whaleback (item matching holder layer)
- Spawning players better place
- Twaeked whale cam pos
- Added dead check in all item droppedrpc
- Masterclient can override blockbuffet game length
- Fixed kite syncing, fixed kites not dying (items not dying)
- Saving/loading preferred whale position
- Added UI element on browse rooms list for when waiting for rooms to update
- Fixed not clearning dead items between areas
- Lowered target frame rate to 60
- Removed auto opening popup menu for plyers with unknown glyphs
Loading Screen!
Day 2 Fixes
Fixed some issues with the belly trove.
Other fixes.
0.3.27 build!
Hotfix for some Macs unable to load SkyTrack and BattleZone .jsons
Little (Blue Dune) Buggies In My [Video Game]
Alright, perhaps, this is the beginning of a nice, new habit of posting updates on Steam!
November 30th approaches!
Hello, Steam community.
In preparation for launching my game in Early Access on November 30th, I've...you know..been debugging. I'm fairly happy with how it's going. Today, nothing has caused me more than a few minutes puzzlement. Yesterday there were a couple tricky ones that scared me. Anytime I have what seems to be a Photon Unity Networking issue, I get scared. Usually, it's not Photon messing up. Yesterday, it was like...kinda my fault, but really, I think Photon should created some warnings somewhere that clearing Unity's player prefs also resets the Photon Server Settings.
Anyway.
The other reason, I think, that I'm feeling good is because of rearranging my little world a bit. I've added The Fork (in the Island). A central location that branches off to the Minigame Park, the Air River, the Treehouse, and connects to a little loop for an introduction to the combat and exploration of Flock of Dogs. I really like my giant Fork. It's a homage to the Muppet Movie when Fozzie and Kermit see a fork in the road. It has nothing to do with Elon Musk's memo about a fork in the road.
I have to confess tho, that I don't think the Flight to the Festival DLC will be ready enough on November 30th. I mean. Maybe. If things go as well as they did today, perhaps the 3 biomes can be ready in a simple, not-fleshed-out version and be fairly stable. Doubt it though.
I still need to integrate Steam's API with my game. That would help letting players quickly join your game and also the only way I can verify if you have bought the DLC! Or also to buy anything.
Dune Buggy, by Presidents of the United State of America is a great song and inspired the title of this "Announcement".
See ya,
-Max
Park of Flock of Dogs 🐕🐳🐕
Announcing Park of Flock of Dogs (working title I guess)
This is a behind-the-scenes look. Unedited, no audio, extensive placeholder art. This is a behind-the-scenes look. Unedited, no audio, extensive placeholder art. This is a behind-the-scenes look. Unedited, no audio, extensive placeholder art. This is a behind-the-scenes look. Unedited, no audio, extensive placeholder art.
:)
The Flock of Dogs Sky Park will be included in the "Free Friend Version" of Flock of Dogs (WISHLIST NOW!) as well. As in, people who don't buy the game can still play all these minigames both online and locally and will not have to rely on someone else having a Friend Slot for them to join in with.
The idea is this will be done...soon. And I'm super into it. And I'm sorry I haven't finished my video game yet. I was into this idea for several reasons.
1. I love minigames
2. I have already built this platform for playing an online game together with friends where you can get on and off dogs/whales/islands and pick up items and fall into the sky and stuff. So making a space to just mess around in and maybe engage in some friend competition would be pretty quick to implement.
3. Let's me stress test my game with a larger audience.
4. Exposure. Specifically to a younger audience. You know, "free" sells.
So let's see what we got right now...
For some hungry, hungry whale action, go to the Block Buffet.
Each team starts with a whale and their own flock of dogs. They compete to fill their pots with as many blocks as possible before time runs out. You can stuff your whale for more efficient hoarding, you board enemy whales and purge them, you can punch opponents off their dogs, and more.For the speedsters there's the Air Track.
Race dogs or whales or maybe even just balloon racing through tracks, gate by gate, with zippers, blocks, weird obstacle thingies, and powerups (watermelon missiles, pus balls, ring shield). YOU CAN MAKE YOUR OWN TRACKS WITH YOUR FRIENDS ONLINE AND SAVE/LOAD THEM AND SHARE THEM.And then for the old school, we have The Game Board.
Play chess, checkers, Chinese checkers, or make up your own rules. And maybe other minigames one day who even knows.I probably shouldn't make any promises about future games, but I can't help sharing my ideas! They get me so excited!
Maybe one day:
(1) Umbrella Ball
(2) Take the Mario-Kart style powerups from the racing minigame and do arena racing combat
(3) Flock of Dogs Pac Man, where players can choose to be the ghosts or the pac-dog.
(4) Hide-n-seek with the daylight/nighttime mechanic already in the game as well as hiding behind clouds and stuff that also already exists.
(5) Dogback archery competition
(6) A cooperative sky-trail-drawing game where you're shown an example picture and then you have to work together to draw it the flight trails of each your dogs.
(7) Bring back bomberman (which some of you might remember was my first minigame I made in FOD shortly after I first started doing netcode)
(8) Bring back Shady Ripkins (at the start of the pandemic, I implemented an item that was like a sheet of paper that you could type a secret message on and then others wouldn't be able to read it unless they were the one whose turn it was or whatever, which was going to be a way for my friends and me to recreate the passing of notes required for our game of Shady Ripkins via Zoom. Some of you mihgt know Shady Ripkins by another name, which is Telestrations)
(9) And more!!!
Alright, listen, I promsied myself that I wasn't going to spend forever writing this email/creating the video. So the other stuff I've been working on like auotmating converitng sprite sheets into animations and drawing more dog breeds and stuff I'm just not going to talk about. And you'll have to ask me personally for an update on my soccer career and my Starcraft career.
Peace
-Max
This Week For The Flock 🐕🐳🐕
HEY BIG ANNOUNCMENT
I realize I promised I would be releasing in Early Access about this time. And I apologize for not doing that. I offer any Kickstarter backer access to the game's beta builds on Steam. Join the Discord and send me a message.
I'm happy about my decision to make the Dog Park (a land inside of Flock of Dogs where you can play minigames). Block Buffet and Whale/Dog are just about done and I've been working out a bunch of networking issues through this.
I plan on an archery minigame and sky trail drawing minigame.
Schedule
Streaming: now (Monday, 3:30 - 6 pm PDT)
Open Playtest Tuesday: 10 pm PDT
Open Playtest Thursday: 3 pm PDT
Some Exciting Code
Alright. On Friday, I realized an issue with how I've been using the Photon Unity Networking plug-in. I needed to reorder the network messages for when a new player joins.
I got pretty scared. Didn't really do any more work the rest of Friday and instead prepared for my Starcraft match (see below).
After my match, I ate cereal and thought my issue, but didn't write any code and felt some fear creeping in.
The fear is mostly because (a) I do not have access to all of the code from Photon and what if the good/performant/proper solution has to be implemented at a level I do not control? (b) What if I just can't even figure out what Photon is doing with the code I can access? (c) What if my game is bad? (d) What if I'm wasting my life? (e) What if no one loves? (f) What if we're out of milk when I go down stairs for another bowl of cereal?
On Saturday, I didn't write any code either and thought about my problem. (I did go to a small celebratory dinner with Patrick of Patrick's Parabox fame and that was great). (Go play the demo, if you like it, buy it).
On Sunday, after my first 11v11 soccer game in about 4 months (see below), I dug into Photon's code and found a clear point of intercepting the data I was sending to Photon and how I could stash that temporarily, let some of my other data process first, and then go back to the stashed data and operate on that and felt great relief. After all, it ended up being quite simple.
And while I could show you some fun new gifs of the racing minigame, I'm just going to show you these lines of code that aren't that complicated, but I'm very happy about.
This is inside Photon's ExecuteRpc function, where I catch and cache the data of RPCs sent to a newly joined client if they've not yet received the GameStateRPC.
This is my helper class for making a holding the RPCs data as well as some public variables that I can access from my Flock of Dogs code, and finally the public function I can call from my code to execute the cached RPCs after the joining client has processed the GameStateRPC
Some Technical Details (this ended up being way longer that I Imagined, and you might think more details would mean even boringer Writing, but It's filled with drama)
When you play Flock of Dogs with a friend I use Photon's relay servers to connect you together, because figuring out to properly do that and all is fiddly. When you choose a server city, like San Jose, or Washington DC, that's the location of Photon's relay server.
What I mean by relay server is that it's a computer that just relays all our network messages to each other. Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs) are one of the most common types of network messages. What that server doesn't do is run a copy of Flock of Dogs. Photon doesn't know a flying dog is. Doesn't know what a flying whale is. Doesn't remember the color or hat you put on your player character. Almost all it does it receive messages from one player and sends it to the other.
Got it? Relay server relays RPCs sent by one player to the others.
So what happens when someone joins the game?
Well, the relay server sends a special message that "hey, someone new is here! let's party!"
But that server can't tell the joining player where the whale should be, how many dogs should be on the whale or in flight, etc. So the thing to do is to have a player who's already in the room and playing Flock of Dogs to send a message to the newly joined player what's up. I default this to the player who creates the room and is designated, in Photon's terms, the "Master-Client".
So the problem is that immediately after joining the room, the newly joined player will start receiving network messagse. Messages that were sent by other players before they even knew that someone new had joined. And some of those messages might arrive before the Master-Client's message with the state of the game arrives.
So let's say you're the new player. And you join the game. And we're playing with my buddy Ted. And
Ted just climbed into the belly of the whale the moment after you joined. So Ted and I receive the message that you've joined the party. And we're super happy to have you here. So I pack up the state of the game and send you all this exciting into a giant byte array to tell you about the wonderings goings-on of the game. And immediately after it, I get a message from Ted, "Hey, Max, I just climbed in to the belly of this awesome sky whale!" and I'm like...oh...oh shit. I didn't tell the new guy about that.
And you, new guy, you're eagerly awaiting the game state RPC, the invitation to the ball, because you've heard all these amazing things aboud Flock of Dogs, and you've gotten everything prepared, you have all these cool lines of code that tell you what to do, if you receive certain data from the network. Then sure enough, the network mailman knocks on your door and passes you this network message, but it's not the one you've been waiting for! It's from some guy, Theodore, who says I just hopped off my blue Dalmation midflight into the belly of our whale, while holding a key. And you're like "what's a Dalmation?" And you get scared. And you freak out. And you start crying. And then the network mailman says "oh, yeah, this other message came for you right after that" and yes, it's the whole game state and it tells you where the whale is and the color and breeds of the dogs and the colors and names of the players, and where the islands are and the trees and the stone steppes and the tetris pieces...but you try to read it, but with all those tears in your eyes, you get confused, it's all blurry. And it's a big mess. And maybe you're able to live with this mess for a little while, but probably not. And then the game crashes or you disconnect, or more likely, you just see a blue Dalmation stuck in the air, not flapping her wings, not part of the Flock.
It's all very sad.
Anyway, I think i've fixed this with a little interception method.
Miscellaneous Soccer Update
Yesterday, I played my first 11v11 soccer game since Dec 5th. I played very badly and then I played very goodly. I did miss my one shot after a nice couple of passes I was free about 16 yards out, the keeper had come out a little and cut down my angle, but I should have put it away. I hit it off the post though. We won 4-1. This was actually a play off game, but we're the 1 seed maybe? We're all very confused about the competition, because there's the league cup, the Master's Cup, and one of our season games got rained out and some people thought this was a make up game for that.
Anyway, I mostly played forward and one of the long balls I was contesting, I stepped on the defender's foot. I turned to apologize and he was pretty pissed off and said that I hadn't been looking at the ball at all and had done it intentionally. I remembered what Tony told me about a month ago when I showed up to our little pickup game with my knee brace on for the first time. As I was lacing up, he touched my knee brace and said "This? This is no good. You can play with it here, because maybe we like you. But guys will come straight for this."
Idk, in most of my years playing, I never felt that targetted or that players ever really went after someone with a knee brace on. But still, I was scared that that defender was going to come at me and sure enough another ball over the top and I hesitate, but it didn't matter. The ball was over hit and flew well over both of us, but he did a little lunge at me and hissed or kinda went "boo", and I flinched, but I also kinda giggled. We were winning 4-1 at that point anyway and the other team was pretty deflated. I'm very happy to be back.
Miscellaneous Starcraft Update
On Friday rnight I had my first match of the Coach-Pupil League (CPL) for foreigner Starcrat Brood War players. This is the first week of season play, and I had said I would only play if we were short on players. We were short on players. Since I struggle with balancing playing video games with the rest of my life, my Starcraft rule generally has been to only play during the CPL seasons, when I can play within a community and not just endlessly, and lonely-ly, grind for a high rank on the anonymous ranked ladder. And I had stuck to my rule and hadn't been playing. This also means that I am, as they say, rusty.
It was a pvz against viletomato (Protoss vs Zerg, I play Protoss) (best of 3) (note: Viletomato beat me during pre-season with a "9-7-3", a variant of 3 hatch hdyra timing attack) The modern way of playing against zerg as the protoss is to "gateway expand". The older way is to "forge expand". In the case of a gateway expand, you can immediately build zealots and attack, but you risk being counter attacked. In the cowardly forge first method, you build cannons to defend and cower behind your cannons.
I had been able to get in two practice sessions, one with the assistant coach, ModeratelyChill, and another session with Lightswarm, the team coach. They recommended I play forge first. I played forge forge first.
Okay, listen, with forge first, if you're not super duper cowardly, you only build 1 cannon. So I'm only a small coward and so I built 1 cannon. This is kinda safe, but still would fall to any number of lings greater than 4. In order to know what's coming, you send your probe (basic, worker unit) to go scout and hope you find their base fast and see any zerlings they make. My scout probe was brave and smart and found Viletomato right away and caught sight of the 6 putrid zerglings he had rushed out. I swiftly pulled probes from my main base and sent them to my natural. Now, there's many things to consider when using your fragile probes to protect your photon cannon.
(1) Probes are not great at fighting and die fast
(2) If you pull extra probes to make the fight easier, that means fewer probes mining
(3) If he sees a lot of probes, he may not attack in and your probes sit there like dumbasses
(4) If you surround your cannon, he may run his lings right by and into your main base!
I first held them in a line blocking the path from my natural to my expansion, waiting to see what he would do and hoping to react fast enough to save the cannon if he want for the cannon. He went for the cannon. I sent my probes in to the rescue, he got thru the cannon's shield and most of its hit points and you could see blue flames all over it, but it remained standing and the vile zerglings of Viletomato all were squashed like squishy tomatoes and I cried "Ketch-Up!" as their red blood blotted the terrain.
My scout probe had remained alive, ignored, in his base, so I now could easily see that I was way ahead, and while later he tried a sneaky quick tech to mutalisk, he had 0 ground army and was crushed.
In game 2, I also opened forge first and this time he did not try a ling rush, but went back to his 9-7-3 build and while I lost my 1st scout probe, and my 2nd, my 3rd scout probe was able to sneak in (posthumously, I named my 3rd probe Paul "the probe" Revere) and witness the hydralisk den, before meeting his demise. I was able to get up defenses and stop the hydra timing attack. I was way ahead after that, played safe and secured the win.
maaaaxaxa 2-0 viletomato
My team's name this season is United Emu Directorate. I did not vote for that name.
Play (today with me) BLOCK BUFFET: A Flock of Dogs Minigame 🐳🥊 🐕☂️ 🐕🎈🐕
Fest Upon Fest
The Steam Next Fest has come and gone. There's a bunch of numbers I've spent a lot of time analyzing, but at the end of the day, I'd say it all was a moderate success. I had peak viewership of about 800, which sounds amazing, but I think a lot of my stream's viewrships numbers were heavily bloated or rather hollow viewers. Just people who were browsing Steam's event page getting counted as a viewer or something.
That's ok. I did have a some people join the Discord and say very nice things about the game.
Also, the livestream was a lot of fun. If you didn't see it, you really missed out some amazing wardrobe changes and prop design. Truly.
Behold, the Block Buffet!
A Flock of Dogs Minigame
You can play 1v1, 2v2, 1v1v2v3v1. Race to feed your team's whale the most blocks. Defend and attack other teams with the beloved Flock of Dogs arsenal of mops, umbrellas, balloons, and boxing-glove lances!
Block Buffet Features:
- A cornucopia of gigantic tetrominos*
- Dogback jousting
- Hijacking (in the Halo sense) your enemies' flying dogs
- Umbrella defense
- Aggressive ballooning
- A diegetic lever and roster UI system that...like, it's cool
- And plenty of bugs to discover...........!
*Note that tetrominos are just the 2d, 4-square instantiation of the generlizable polyomino structure. For those interested in math lore, look it up on Wikipedia. Flock of Dogs blocks aren't really tetrominos because of a few attributes actually. See if you can figure out why! Tell me in the Discord!
Today. Thursday.
4 pm - 6 pm PST
7 pm - 9 pm EST
Come alone,
come with team,
time to MINIGAME!!!
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/maaaaxaxa
Discord: https://discord.com/invite/fYZFNTB
(I will start the steam at 10:30 am PST, fixing bugs from last night playtests)
I've known I really wanted to add minigames to Flock of Dogs and I know I put that as a Kickstarter stretch goal, which I didn't hit. However, the idea of making a (few) minigames now and then putting it on the Steam store for free would provide (1) martketing and (2) more people to network test the game. Also, I thought I could get it working in a week.
While, I kinda did, I also have just discovered all these ways to improve my network code that I've been dealing with. I feel like I've been cleaning the gutters of my netcode for a month now, scooping out gunk. I don't love it, but it's so satisfying. And only now is it beginning to start to shine. No one reported any crashes during the Steam Next Fest, but there were definitely desyncs and clunkiness. Anyway, I AM SUPER EXCITED ABOUT THIS MINIGAME.
Anyway. don't you love all the colors!!!!?
A Stream of the Dream of Flock of Dogs on Steam
Come watch the Flock take flight and pray that it doesn't crash and burn :)
I'm happy to answer any questions or talk about design or whatever. Who knows! I'm super excited to finally be almost nearly approaching the time when I might release my game. So please come tell me that you love dogs and flying.
-Max