The trouble with spending lots of time fixing bugs as a solo #gamedev#indiedev: you can start to hate your game because you're always focused on what's wrong with it and the limitations you face in the fixing problems.
Working on the high score system. Thinking about the best way to pack/unpack six high score initials into pico-8'a very limited persistent data storage.
Update on #gamedev for #picofender: A friend – top ~1000 globally on a few arcade shooters on Xbox Live – will be taking a look at #picofender to share some opinions about balance/difficulty/scoring.
I've also cleared ~400 tokens for what I hope is the last push. #buildinpublic
#picofender now has two parallax layers of stars that clip against the foreground as well as a functioning radar/scanner system. This is starting to have enough elements that it's fun to play! Looking forward to sharing soon.
Check out how this bug completely maxes out #pico8 CPU and memory very quickly. It keeps bleeding the humans forever instead of mercifully killing them at once.
After another round of token optimizations, I've saved >1,000 tokens w/o losing any functionality and now have ~1,300 tokens remaining to try and complete #picofender for #pico8 soon.
Here's some footage of me testing the newly rewritten collision system #buildinpublic#gamedev
I'm approaching, but not yet at, the feature set I want for #picofender, but I'm also using 96% of the maximum token allocation for #pico8 right now. So, it's time to do battle with the token monster to get what I need to do the features I want and polish/balance.
This is how hard #indiegame#gamedev is: merely finishing a game is considered a “success” by more indies in this survey than all other financial and non-financial metrics combined.
Founders: people who betray you rarely experience guilt or shame. Instead, they gaslight, rewriting history to make a monster of you and to self-justify what they’ve done.
This can be more painful than the betrayal itself.
Earliest terrain that's in the current version. I set #procgen aside and hard coded a series of vertices with lines. I suppose I could have just used a big sprite, but this seemed more flexible.