After countless delays, [the 2022 DEMO] Update thing is finally ready! (Jesus, you know you messed up when you originally called it “[the 2021 DEMO] Update”, huh…?)
First, sorry for the lack of updates over the last few months. Trust me, that doesn’t mean I haven’t been working. I invested a great part of this time learning code, creating tools and systems, porting the game to a new version of the engine, and… well, doing everything in my hands to make the mechanics and presentation be as polished as possible.
(This is going to be a pretty long, boring update note, so please, ignore it now or hang in there with me.)
(If you found something weird/broken, please report it to contact@portvalleygame.com, and I’ll fix it ASP.)
Okay! About the update itself:
This is an updated version of [the 2020 DEMO]. This means that the puzzle structure and plot are basically the same. However, apart from endless mechanical and visual improvements, you will find 2 times de amount of dialogues, new animations, brand-new scenes, and a bunch of surprises. (I'd recommend checking everything out, just in case…)
Some things the update brings to the table:
<*>A new Game Engine version and many performance improvements
I decided to port the whole game to a new engine version (not without complications!) to take advantage of some features. This affected performance, but I managed to keep it graphically inexpensive thanks to some cheap tricks. (Actually, the game should load 3-4 times faster now!)
This update made possible most things you’ll see on this list... so I’d say it was worth it.
<*>A real-time Light/Shadows system
The game uses 3 different techniques to make backgrounds and characters react to lights in a somewhat realistic way. For example, characters and items now drop shadows and are affected by dynamic light sources.
<*>A fully animated Cursor
The old cursor had 3 animations. The new one… over 30, and context-sensitive!
This is, by far, the trickiest thing I’ve animated so far, so let’s hope it doesn’t just break! Here’s the map of how animations are linked:
(No, I don’t get it either.)
<*>Hold Click to walk/run
This was a player’s suggestion that I immediately added because I loved it. Hold click and move the cursor to walk, move it a bit further to run. Easy-peasy!
This is 100% optional and compatible with traditional point & click movement so, don’t worry, you can use your preferred movement system at any time.
<*>New Character Animation System
Apart from sprite animation, I’ve made a system that makes characters subtly (or not that subtly) move and rotate their heads/torsos procedurally, so they never really “stand still” in place.
Making this was… not easy. But l really think it gives a lot of “life” to them, (even if they’re indeed literally just standing still).
<*>A new Inventory
It now has 6 available slots (crazy stuff!), and it's fully animated and compatible with the mouse wheel to make your life a little less extremely tedious.
This means you can finally use the wheel to show/hide the inventory and shift between items! Additionally, if your mouse is fancy enough, you can just use the secondary wheel to shift between items without needing to hover the inventory. (Now, that’s convenient!)
Also, every item has been redrawn to fit the new inventory design, allowing for more detailed and interesting sprites.
<*>A new Pause Menu
Not much to say. The old one was incredibly lame, and I’ve always liked games with cool menu designs. I tried to make one and this is the result:
<*>Music
I’ve been working with a couple of composers on an original, professional soundtrack for the game. In the demo, you will see (hear?) some of those tracks, as well as remastered/cleaner versions of already existing ones. But, of course, this is still a work in progress.
(You can’t really show music with GIFs, sorry.)
<*>An original Font
I couldn’t find a pixel art font that I liked… So, I made one, pixel by pixel, letter by letter.
I called it RedArrow, and it’ll be free to use for anyone, by the way.
<*>And, of course, new content, redesigned backgrounds and thousands of bug fixes.
___
Now, about the game itself
Some questions someone may ask:
<*>So, what have you been doing all this time?
Mostly… writing code and debugging.
I invested these past few months properly learning code and building my own set of tools to stop relying on 3rd party solutions, as they tended to be buggy and limit the features I had in mind. Unity is not RPG Marker, it’s a competent 3D engine, and I knew I wasn’t taking full advantage of it.
Thanks to these tools, things will go WAY faster once the asset creation part is over, which is the longest and most frustrating part. After all, I'm a single person writing, drawing and animating every single thing of this game. (And, for some reason, I do like to animate a lot of useless stuff…?!)
These tools have completely changed the way the game is built, how characters/objects are animated, how dialogues/texts are displayed, how the camera works, how sprites react to lights, how sounds play, how characters move… etc. So, yeah, it’s a pretty big step up.
<*>If it's only an update, what the heck took so long?
Being honest, this demo was never meant to be updated again.
Retroactively adding mechanics is never a great idea, and adding tricky stuff like the new character animation engine meant I literally had to remake and reanimate every single character of the demo for every single scene... And that, trust me, it's not exactly easy!
Furthermore, this demo update has served as an "anticipated testing phase" for all the stuff I’ve been working on. So, if a bug was found, or I wanted to improve/add a feature, the update had to be pushed back, as it wouldn’t make sense to update it knowing it was unfinished/buggy or would be outdated in a week.
And, of course... There were also annoying last-minute bugs and incompatibility issues with Linux and macOS versions.
I finally decided to fix everything, in every version, before pushing any update. And this is basically all I’ve been doing, almost exclusively, for the last few weeks. (It has not been fun!)
<*>Why only an update?! Why not a new demo, YOU LAZY *****!!
Even if they're vertical slices of the game, I always try to make them feel like "self-contained episodes" with an organic progression and ending. Thus, dialogues have to be rewritten, puzzles need to be redesigned and, of course, additional scenes have to be written in to fill in gaps and provide context. It’s just too much work.
However, as I wanted to have something new to show you guys, I decided to "just update the already existing demo with all the stuff I had been working on"... Which didn't exactly work as intended, as this probably took more time than making a whole new one!
<*>How's development going?
It's going well!
After literal months of stressful debugging, I think I'll go back to drawing for a while and hopefully finish the remaining backgrounds, (which are not that many at this point).
But, don’t worry, writing code was not all I had time to do: The plot is already written (as are most of the dialogues), puzzles are designed, the "code part" should be finished now (hopefully!), we're working on the soundtrack, and there are just a bunch of backgrounds and characters left to design and animate. (Will I provide anything similar to a release date, then…? No! Because I’ve already proven how terrible I’m at that!)
After finishing the art creation part, things should speed up A LOT, as I'll finally be able to focus entirely on ‘scene building’, which is what my tools are actually most useful for.
Oh, and here are a bunch of new screenshots just because:
And, again, please just let me know if anything explodes, okay...? (If possible, notify any bug to: contact@portvalleygame.com and I’ll fix any bug ASAP)
Anyway, have fun!
So [the 2022 DEMO Update] is FINALLY ready!
Hey!
After countless delays, [the 2022 DEMO Update] thing is finally ready!
First, sorry for the lack of updates over the last few months. That doesn't mean I haven't been working on the game (I've been… and a lot!), but said work was not exactly something that could be easily shared or even shown.
I invested most of this time learning code, porting the game to a new engine, creating new development tools and… well, doing everything in my hands to make the mechanics and presentation be as polished as possible!
(*Mandatory apology bridge GIF) __
(Okay, this is going to be a pretty long, boring update note, so please, ignore it now or hang in there with me.)
(If you find something weird/broken, please report it to contact@portvalleygame.com, and I’ll fix it ASAP.) __
Okay! About the update itself:
This is an updated version of [the 2020 DEMO]. Yes, this means that the puzzle structure and plot are basically the same.
However, you'll find endless mechanical and visual improvements, 2 times the amount of dialogues, hundreds of new animations, brand-new scenes, and a bunch of surprises. (I'd recommend checking everything out, just in case…!)
Some things the update brings to the table:
<*>A new Game Engine version with many performance improvements
I ported the whole game to a new engine version (not without complications!) to take advantage of some new features I found quite interesting. This negatively affected performance, but I managed to keep it graphically inexpensive thanks to some cheap tricks. (Actually, the game loads 3-4 times faster now!)
This update made possible most things on this list... so I’d say it was worth it!
<*>A real-time Light/Shadows system
The game uses 3 different techniques to make backgrounds and characters react to lights in a somewhat realistic way. For example, sprites now drop shadows and are affected by dynamic light sources:
<*>New Character Animation Engine
Apart from sprite animation, I’ve designed a system that makes characters subtly (or not that subtly) move and rotate their heads/torsos procedurally, so they never really “stand still” in place:
Making this was… not easy. But l really think it gives a lot of “life” to them, (even if they’re indeed literally just standing still, I mean).
<*>A fully animated Cursor
The old cursor had 3 animations. The new one… over 30?
Here’s the map of how animations are linked:
(No, I don’t get it either.)
<*>Hold Click to walk/run
Hold click and move the cursor to walk, move it a bit further to run. Easy-peasy!
This is 100% optional and compatible with traditional point & click movement, so you can choose your preferred movement system at any time!
<*>A new Inventory
It now has 6 available slots (crazy stuff!), and it's fully animated and compatible with the mouse wheel to show or hide the inventory and shift between items!
Also, if your mouse is fancy enough, you can just use a secondary wheel to shift between items at any time. (Now, that’s convenient!)
Oh, and every item has been redrawn to fit the new inventory design, allowing for more detailed and interesting sprites!
<*>A new Pause Menu
Not much to say. The old one was incredibly lame, so I made a new one:
<*>Music
I’ve been working with a couple of composers on an original, professional soundtrack for the game. In the demo, you will see (hear?) some of those tracks, as well as remastered/cleaner versions of already existing ones. But, of course, this is still a work in progress.
(You can’t really show music with GIFs, sorry.)
<*>An original Font
I couldn’t find a pixel art font that I liked… So, I made one, pixel by pixel!
I called it RedArrow, and it’s free to use for anyone.
<*>And, of course, new content, redesigned backgrounds and thousands of bug fixes.
___
Now, about the game itself
Some questions someone may ask:
<*>So, what have you been doing all this time?
Mostly… writing code and debugging!
I've been building my own set of tools and systems to stop relying on most 3rd party solutions, as they tend to be buggy and condition the features I have in mind. Unity is not RPG Marker, it’s quite a competent 3D engine, and I knew I wasn’t taking advantage of it.
These tools have completely changed the way the game is built, how sprites are animated, how text is displayed, how the camera works, how sounds play, how characters move… etc. So, yeah...! A pretty big step up.
Thanks to them, things will go WAY faster once the asset creation part is completed (and, more importantly, my life will be much easier when building the scenes!).
<*>If it's only an update, what the heck took so long?!
So… This demo was never really meant to be updated again…?
Retroactively adding mechanics is never a great idea, and adding tricky stuff like the new animation engine meant I literally had to remake and reanimate eeevery single character of the demo for every single scene... Which, trust me, takes time!
On the other hand, this update has served as an "anticipated testing phase" for all the new stuff I made. So, if a bug was found, or was I adding some new feature, the update had to be pushed back, as it wouldn’t make sense to release it knowing it was buggy or that it would be outdated in a week.
And, as usual... The annoying last-minute bugs and incompatibility issues with Linux and macOS versions. Actually, fixing and testing them is all I’ve been doing for the last few weeks. (It has not been fun!)
<*>Why only an update?! Why not a new demo, YOU LAZY *****!!
Even if they're vertical slices of the game, I always try to make them feel like "self-contained episodes" with an organic progression and ending. So, dialogues have to be rewritten, puzzles redesigned, and additional scenes have to be added to fill in gaps and provide context. (It’s just too much extra work!!!)
However, as I also wanted to have something new to show you guys, I thought: "Hey! Why not just update the existing demo, adding the new stuff?! Genius!" … But that didn't exactly work as intended, as it probably took WAY more time than actually making a whole new one! (Oooops...!)
<*>How's development going?
It's going well, I swear! :)
Worry not, writing code is not all I had time to do: The plot is already written (as are most dialogues), puzzles are designed, the "code part" should be finished now (hopefully?), we're working on the soundtrack, and there are just a bunch of backgrounds and characters left to design and animate. (Will I provide anything similar to a release date, then…? No! Because I’ve already proven how terrible I’m at that!)
But, for now, after literal months of stressful coding and debugging, I'll go back to drawing for a while to hopefully finish the remaining backgrounds. Keep in mind that asset creation is actually the longest part, as I'm a single person writing, drawing and animating every single thing of this game. (And, for some reason, I do like to animate a lot of useless stuff…?!)
But, once the asset creation part is completed, things will speed up considerably, as I'll finally be able to focus entirely on ‘scene building’ (which is what my new tools are most useful for) and because a great part of the testing phase has been completed in advance thanks to this update.
Oh, and here are a bunch of new screenshots just because:
And, again, please just let me know if anything explodes, okay...?
Update 1.0.6: The Hint System is (finally) available!
Okay, this took longer than I wished, but I needed a couple of weeks of just painting backgrounds to recover from the burnout that was releasing the 2020 DEMO.
After seeing some people struggling to get through the second part of the demo, I thought it would be a good idea to take back the old demo's hint system and adapt it into the new one.
So how does the system work?
I don’t like boring hint systems that outright tell what the solution is, so this one has little tweak:
If you choose to enable the HINTS in the menu, you’ll find a very special item in your inventory: An overpowered Fortune Cookie (1st half of the demo)… or a Hint Phone (2nd Half). ___
Hint Cookie
Every time you use it, a clue in the form of a vague cryptic prediction will appear inside.
Hint Phone
Every time you use it, you'll make a call to your mysterious partner. He'll tell you about his whereabouts and what he's up to while he waits for you… which are of course subtle hints about what you should do to solve a puzzle.
(So yeah… you’ll have to use you brain in order to advance anyway!)
If you have many fronts open, it’s possible that the same hint will be repeated once or twice. If that happens, just keep insisting until you see a different one.
But please try to play without hints unless you get too stuck, okay…? That’s kind of the fun.
Also thanks for playing! ___
PS - Oh, and here are a couple of the new backgrounds… in case someone cares about this kind of stuff:
(Click to expand)
Update 1.0.5: Spanish translation, faster loading times and more screen ratios
Hi.
This is the first 'important' update. Probably, the Spanish translation sounds like 'the big feature', but the improvements in loading times, bug fixes and the overall better optimization make the demo much more stable now.
The Spanish translation
It's not just a text translation. The demo has been 'rewritten' in Spanish and many extra efforts have been made to make it as good as possible. Including:
Manually adding the 'Ñ' and the rest of the latin characters to the game's font. ('á','ü','¿','¡','º', etc…)
Making again all the visuals and animations of the UI in Spanish (which uses pictures and not text, so… really fun!)
Making a system that dynamically replaces English graphics with Spanish ones! (I'm kind of proud about this one… it's really not that hard, but adds a lot to a translation!)
(*Example of English graphics being also translated. I'll try to keep this consistent with future translations!)
Optimization and screen rations
Sadly, the demo launched with no much time for testing, so it was not possible to properly optimize it or make it compatible with every screen ratio… until today!
Some of the improvements included in this update:
Save file loading times have been reduced from 10 seconds to 2.
The game no longer needs to load the first time is launched.
No loading times between different sets.
Sound no longer "bangs" after loading a save file.
Apart from 4:3, EVERY screen ratio should be now compatible. (And I'm working on the one left…)
Bug fixes
Many bugs have been fixed, but the most important ones are:
Music no longer fails if loading on the second floor of the cinema. <*> Car animations are now always synchronized with the police agent's. <*> During the battle, it was possible to break the game doing "something". It's impossible now. <*> You can no longer take the empty glass with you if cheating (that could also break the game, actually!).
___
Please, let me know if I broke something else. Or if I should fire the translator…
Update 1.0.4: Both demos stay, more screen ratios supported and bug fixes!
Hi.
After an "interesting" weekend of work, I finally managed to fix the issues the demo had with non 16:9 resolutions, so they're now available again! I hope this works fine, but please, let me know if I missed something (because I tend to do that).
Also, I finally decided to keep the "2 demos in one" model. This way, both of them can be played and I won't need to officially choose between one of them. A win-win situation…! (For me.)
Please, remember that in order to play the old demo, you just need to press “Launch the original DEMO” on the main menu and… yeah, that’s mostly it! Easy as pie.
Just don’t expect anything too fancy. The demo literally closes itself and launches the old one (annoying resolution screen included!). I really tried to properly merge both demos, but that has proven to be extremely buggy and difficult, as many assets share names and they run on different engine versions.
(Also, this way Steam achievements and save files can work separately without messing everything up!)
This is now available for Windows and Mac while I'm still trying to figure out how to make it work on Linux. For the time being, the original demo can be found in the installation folder under the name "[Original DEMO 2019]" and can be played by running the executable inside (x86_64 or x86).
So… yeah! Not too classy, but does the trick…?
Bug fixes and changes
v1.0.1
While testing the new Linux build I shamefully found that the x86 executable was somehow missing, so I guess some users have had issues trying to play. That should be fixed now. Please, let me know if that's not the case. Sorry.
v1.0.2
Fixed a bug that made it possible to break a puzzle if solving it in a specific order.
Fixed a bug that allowed the pause menu to be used during an animation where it was supposed to be VERY locked.
v1.0.3
Fixed a bug that made the cars on the road disappear after leaving the cinema.
v1.0.4
Fixed the bug with the interfece that wouldn't allow for screen ratios different from 16:9.
Fixed a bug that made the music of the cinema stop playing after loading if the player saved just before the song had time to start looping automatically.
Discovered and fixed a really unlucky situation that would have left any player unable to pick up a movie voucher if given a very specific combination of conditions.
Fixed a bug with some triggers that were not stopping the player from starting different interactions when they shouldn't. This one's actually not my fault and took a lot of time to circumvent.
Locked the pause menu during the ending cinematic.
Minor visual glitches.
The main menu looks a little better now.
Anyway, thanks for playing!
___
PS - Also let me know if something explodes.
So new gameplay DEMO for the Steam Game Festival!
Hi!
It’s been a while. So better have some news, right…?
…
Yeah!
Development is going great and is getting more and more ambitious every single day. Sadly, I can’t share things like a release date yet… but I can do something else to let you know how things are looking.
Joining the Steam Summer Festival, I decided to take some of the new content from the game (and many hours of sleep-time!) to make a temporary exclusive gameplay DEMO showing some new levels, puzzles, the new User Interface(completely reworked from scratch!), animations… and overall look of the game at the current state of development!
A demo with all-new content focused in gameplay, animations, mechanics and the new UI.
Should be… around 1 hour - 1 hour 30 minutes long? Dunno.
Most probably a temporary demo. The original one will be re-uploaded after the Festival.
Known bugs and considerations:
As I wasn’t counting on making a new public demo until around a month ago, there are a couple of bugs I just had no human time to fix. Sorry!
16:10 Resolutions crop the Bottom part of some menus. It’s still playable, but… yeah, please try to stick to 16:9 (1920x1080, ideally) for the intended experience (pixel art and screen resolutions don’t exactly get on well together!).
The save system is a little laggy on load and may not work properly at some very specific points. I strongly recommend playing the demo straight to the end to avoid issues.
Only English this time!
Probably some typos here and there. I hate it when ith appens.
Anyway, have fun!
So there’s a Hint System™ now
Hi.
Okay, this is something I wasn’t really planning on adding originally.
After seeing some (many) people struggling to get through the very first puzzle of the demo I thought it may be a good idea to help them out instead of just letting them drop the demo in frustration while cursing me out (this seems to be a bad thing in game development).
And how does the system work?
Nice question! (I know you didn’t ask.)
I don’t especially like boring hint systems that outright tell what the solution is, so I decided to give it a little tweak.
If you choose to enable the HINTS in the OPTIONS menu, you’ll find a very special item in your inventory: An overpowered fortune cookie.
Every time you use the cookie, a clue in the form of a vague cryptic prediction will appear inside. So yeah… you’ll have to use you brain in order to advance anyway!
If you have many fronts open, it’s possible that the same hint will be repeated once or twice. If that happens, just keep insisting until you see a different one. I'll do my best to prevent this from happening with a future update.
But please try to play without hints unless you get too stuck, okay…? That's kind of the fun.
And thanks for playing!
Port Valley [the competent DEMO] is (finally) available for Linux!
Hi.
You may have suspected something by reading the title, but, surprise… [the competent DEMO] is now available for Linux players!
- Okay, so why didn’t it happen earlier?
Because of the way I handle some resources and features of the game (including videos and translations), a Linux port always resulted in a sad broken mess of unexpected bugs, compatibility issues and tears.
All those issues required to be identified and fixed one by one, so, with the demo out, I finally had the time (and patience) to make it work. (Or at least that's what I think.)
This was the last milestone for [the competent DEMO] so, excluding probable (*guaranteed) bug fixes… I now consider it to be stable and its development finished.
So… who knows, maybe expect news soon.
Thanks for playing!
So [the competent DEMO] is finally here
Hi.
Over the last few months I took some decisions that basically changed the core of the game.
For good. I think. (…and hope.)
But that also meant the original Demo was no longer a good representation of the game, and that's why, well… That's why I made it again.
Forget about the old Demo. That NEVER happened. And say hi to [the competent DEMO].
