On October 13th, it will be exactly one year since I've released GB Rober and to celebrate the occasion, the game will be discounted for the whole week (October 10th-October 17th)*!
I also updated the game for the first time in a while. Unfortunately it's not the really big update that I wanted to do, because I just couldn't fing the time for it, but there's still some significant stuff in there, that should make the overall experience a bit more pleasant.
Here are the changes:
Re-implemented the Steamworks integration after an update to Game Maker broke the old integration.
Added prompts that allow you to both skip the entire intro sequence (not the intro stage though), as well as enter the modifier menu, before you start a new game.
Added two tutorial prompts to the game, one that hopefully teaches you how to use your dash, and another that tells you about hyper mode, once you have a full energy meter, and you haven't previously activated it.
Added button indicators in the pause screen, that hopefully should tell players that there are more things in it, than just the weapons screen.
Dashing now doesn't require you to also move at the same time.
Double Jumping resets your ability to dash.
Initiating a dash within a certain amount frames after doing a double jump, resets your ability to do said double jump. This means that it's now theoretically possible to just stay in the air for as long as you want, if you time things correctly.
The first point isn't really an update, but the broken Steamworks integration meant that doing any kind of update to the game was impossible. So having that out of the way is just a huge step to keep adding small things, when I can find the time to do so. The new implementation should work, but please let me know, if you run into any weirdness, like achievements not getting registered and things like that.
Giving players an option to skip the intro, as much as it hurts me to do so, because I personally find it fairly amusing, hopefully addresses some frustrations I've seen. The same goes for the dash-tutorial, which now is much more nicer and clearer.
Most of the rest is just stuff I did in my current project and felt like porting back to GB Rober, because playing it without these things just felt weird.
I plan on doing some more stuff this week to celebrate the game's anniversary and if things go well enough, I might have another update or two coming within the next few weeks. All depending on how much time I can find to work on it and all that.
Anyway, please let me know if you run into any issues, and as always thank you so much for supporting this little game.
Have a nice week!
*the discount might not have started when this post goes live, but it should appear later on Monday.
The (somewhat near) future of GB Rober
Hi everyone!
I just wanted to do short post to inform you about my current plans with GB Rober and where those currently are.
So last year when the game came out, I wanted to add at least one larger bonus area to the game (that's what the trinkets you can pick up were meant to unlock), however so far I haven't really had the space, nor the money (I wanted to commission a composer for the leveltrack) to actually get around to working on it. Most of my time so far has been eaten up by my work on my next game Virtue's Heaven and I haven't really had the capacity to do anything else.
To make things worse, one of the plugins I want to use for Virtue's Heaven, required me to update my version of Game Maker Studio 2 and apparently the way the engine handles Steamworks implementation has changed in the meantime.
That means any kind of content update for GB Rober either would require me to install an older version of Game Maker, or I would have to completely re-do the existing Steamworks integration, or else stuff like Achievements would just stop working.
So there's an additional layer of difficulty here that I need to work past to even think about updating the actual game, which I still want to do!
Anyway, I hope that I have a bit more time to work on a smaller update for GB Rober in October, but that very much depends on how the next few weeks will go.
Thanks again for your support and your patience and I hope I have something cool for you all soon!
Wishlist Virtue's Heaven, the next game from the developer of Splinter Zone!
Happy to announce that I just published the Steam page for my next game "Virtue's Heaven"! Virtue's Heaven is an action/exploration platformer about living at the End of History, killing God and creating a future. I've been working on this project on and off for the over four years now and I'm really excited that it's finally in a stage where I can properly announce it!
Anyway, you can find out more on the game's Steampage and don't forget to wishlist it!!
Thank you so much for your support!
Ever wanted to destroy Christmas?
Hi Everyone!
The Holidays are upon us, and to both celebrate the season of giving as well as a thank you for everyone who has bought and supported this game so far, I made an extra Holiday themed level for GB Rober.
Fight the evil Sat-Ann Klaws and her surveillance company and help destroy the most commodified Holiday of all times!
The level will be available between December 21st and January 6th!
Completing the stage won't give you an extra weapon (didn't had the time to put it in without breaking a bunch of stuff) and you don't have to complete it, in order to progress through the game. If you have already completed GB Rober, you won't have to restart the game (unless you want to). You can just hit "continue" in the main menu and move back to the main overworld, where you can access it.
Anyways, I hope you have a good end of the year and let us all work towards making 2022 a better year for us all.
GB Rober: A barrage of small updates
Hi everyone!
Thank you so much for your interest in this little game. I can't stress how much it means to me to know that so many people have found and enjoyed GB Rober so far.
Now on to today's post:
Over the past few weeks I've been occasionally fixing some bugs that have brought to my attention, by a nice person who took it upon themselves to try and speedrun this game. However in my attempts to fix these various small things, I unknowingly introduced some more problems, that I have been fixing over the last three days, while I was trying to record a speedrun of GB Rober myself.
You see, for some reason Game Maker decided to remove parts of the game's collision code, after I imported some of GB Rober's assets into a different project, to give me a bit of a headstart with things. I caught the worst stuff very early, but some small things went unnoticed until today and yesterday.
Anyway, those are fixed now and also I remembered to set the camera layer in Vintage Prospective stage back to invisible, so that you're not looking at a solid red background for the entire stage.
I also wrote up a short guide for those people who might be interested in speedrunning GB Rober themselves. No idea if it's already live in the game's guide section, but it should be there at some point.
Aside from that, I'm slowly regaining the energy back to start working on the additional stuff I had in mind for this game, though it's still a bit out until I can share news on that.
GB Rober Devlog (Ocotober 18th, 2021)
Hi everyone!
Thank you so much for everyone's interest in GB Rober. The past week has been stressful, but overall it was really nice to see that folks seem to enjoy this game. Anyway, I made a video where talk a little bit about how the launch went and what I plan on doing now.
