Enigmatic Sale!

Starting Sept 1st Enigmatic will be 50% off exclusively on Desura for a month. Grab a copy for a buck and give it a go!

Dev Blog 41 - Feedback needed!

Have you played the Enigmatic demo or full version yet? Got some awesome feedback for us? Hit us up here: http://bit.ly/1oBGh8k 

Dev Blog 40 - RELEASE!

Enigmatic is officially released on:

• Kongregate (free demo)
• itch.io
• Desura

If you haven't already, checkout the gameplay promo video!

Had to deal with some audio and texture compression issues for the Kongregate version, but it's all good now!

Dev Blog 39 - One. More. Day.

All issues resolved, all tickets closed. Game pages on Desura, itch.io, and Kongregate are being prepared for release with lots of screenshots and box art and logos. Created a kongregate-specific version. Running through the pre-release checklist to make sure not a thing was forgotten!

Dev Blog 38 - 2 days left!

Today I cleared the remaining feedback tickets from the queue, and added a couple minor changes (such as the hint during final riddles playing the hint sound fx). All that's left to do by Friday is create a kongregate-specific version, run the builds for both versions, and upload them to kongregate/desura/itch.io.

Also forgot to post a link, I created a promo video yesterday! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIeeDaSvZSE&feature=youtu.be

Dev Blog 37 - Code Review

As we get closer and closer to release, today I decided to review all of the 36 scripts written for Enigmatic. The purpose of this review was to clean out old comments, remove unused variables, and delete forgotten TODO statements so that if anyone uses the publicly available Git repo as a reference or learning tool, they won't be completely lost.

After performing a code review of all scripts in Enigmatic, the following were cleaned up &|| edited:

• Player.cs - Added comments, removed unused commented out code
• PlayerAction.cs - Added comments, removed Debug statements
• ProjectileScript.cs - Added comments
• RiddleScript.cs - Added comments, removed unused commented out code
• FinalRiddle1.cs (as well as 2 & 3) - Removed Debug statements
• FinalRiddleQuit.cs - Added comments
• FinalRiddleText.cs - Added a commment, deleted unused Update() function
• levelSelect.js - Deleted, script is no longer used
• XOnRailsPlatformX.cs - Deleted, script is no longer used
• mainMenuKeyboard.js - Added comments
• IntroductionScene.cs - Removed an unused variable

Update: Fixed a small bug where the background music from the final riddles was bleeding over into the end credits.

Dev Blog 36 - New music, new sound fx, almost done!

5 days until release, the countdown begins! Today I added in 11 new music tracks, a few sound fx, and closed out a few of the remaining tickets.

Over the next 5 days my time will be devoted to implementing the remaining feedback and tweaking and tweaking and tweaking the levels until it feels juuuust right. Will also spend some time to see if I can take better advantage of Kongregate's dev API.

Dev Blog 35 - Closing in on release

Added some new artwork, sound fx, music, and updated credits today. Also closed out 2 more tickets so far.

Steadily closing in on August 15th release. Waiting on some new music tracks, closing out the remaining tickets, and then we should be all set to release on Kongregate, Desura, & itch.io!

Dev Blog 34 - Non-rant Post

I did complete other tasks today other than rant about Kongregate's API.

Added new artwork (the final riddles have an awesome background now!) and fixed a few minor issues. The middle mouse button was able to trigger deaths, disabled that. And the spacebar/mouse clicks could trigger deaths during finals riddles, disabled. The spacebar is actually never used during the final riddles, but I was afraid that if users thought they could use the spacebar to get hints (like they can in the previous 20 levels) they'd frustratingly die a few times.

Currently working on an issue I noticed while testing Enigmatic on smaller screens (laptops) in Kongregate's cinematic mode. I think all I need is some basic resizing code.

Dev Blog 33 - Kongregate API useful? /rant

So after implementing a basic integration of the API, I made sure it was working with the JavaScript console:

Seems good, right? The messages are being sent! Well today I poked around the Developer Center to see where I could view these statistics. The whole idea behind implementing this API was to track which levels the players were dying most in (AKA the most difficult levels) and what score players finished the game with (AKA gauge the overall difficulty).

In order to gauge these things, I would want to be able to read the statistics being tracked. But guess what? According to this forum post, you can't! The statistics get sent over to Kongregate, and you never see them again. Kongregate can use them to make badges, leaderboards, and whatever else for your game, but any useful statistics a developer might use to tweak difficulty or design won't be a badge or a leaderboard, so they will apparently never see the light of day.

All of this is of course solved if I were hosting the same on my own servers and used API callback URL's to fetch the statistics. But I'm not hosting the game myself, nor do I have plans to. Most forums have suggested using third-party systems, I'll give those a shot.

And now I'm failing to see what the point of the Kongregate API even is. Shiny badges and leaderboards are all fine and dandy, but if I can't take advantage of user statistics to improve my game, why bother recording them?

Update: The only way to "view" the statistics is the have them posted to the publicly available leaderboards. I enabled this, just so I can see them, but will disable them at some point.

Dev Blog 32 - Integrating with Kongregate API

Today I spent some time reading the Kongregate API documentation and integrating it. For now I implemented 2 basic statistic saving functions, one when death occurs (logs the level it occurred at) and the other when the game is complete (logs the final score). With these I can identify which levels are troublesome and gauge the overall difficulty of the game (or see if people are even finishing the game at all).

Time permitting, some statistics to be added are:

• When the game is started
• The time difference between when a riddle is shown and solved

Dev Blog 31 - Workin' the queue

Completed 3 medium priority tickets thus far today, improving the intro and reworking the pause screen.

Update 1: Completed another 2 tickets, reduced gravity and address the issue where falling deaths would frequently occur in the beginning of certain levels. Also began writing up a reflection of the development process thus far.

Update 2: Quickly kicked a low priority ticket, added a link to the feedback form in-game and updated the Kongregate version. Only 10 more tickets to go!

Update 3: Fixed a timer bug, closed yet another ticket.

Dev Blog 30 - Medium Priority Queue, Bug Discovery

While working on the medium priority queue of tickets today, I discovered a bug with the new redesign of the hint system. If the player read a riddle for a while (>20 seconds) and then hit spacebar to continue to the level, the first hint would show up immediately. This has since been fixed.

Also made the dissolving platforms in levels 10, 19, and 20 bigger in size and dissolve faster so that if they player ignored them and didn't jump over them, it would be guaranteed death.

Update 1: After completing a couple of tickets I updated the credits scene so that the GUI was the same as the rest of the game. Not a ticket but did need to get done.

Update 2: Completed 5 medium tickets, started work on a 6th (removing non-essential text in the pause screen) in addition to 1 low priority ticket.

Dev Blog 29 - High Priority Issues Done

Over the course of Friday/Saturday/Today I've completed all of the high priority issue tickets. I even ended up adding 2 additional high priority issues that I subsequently resolved.

With the completion of these high priority tickets comes:

• A hint system redesign
• The fixing of 4 bugs
• The addition of a requirement for players to hit spacebar to continue past the instructions as well as every riddle (to make sure they read it, and can read it at their own leisure)
• Implementation of new ambient sound fx (enemy dying, level complete, hint showing up, menu interaction, platform dissolving)
• Implementation of a GUI timer

Next up is to begin working on the Medium Priority queue!

Dev Blog 28 - Addressing Feedback all day

In order to address the 23 feedback tickets from yesterday, I've begun going through in a systematic fashion and addressing them by priority tags. I of course started with the High Priority tickets and managed to get 7* done today.

My goal is to get at least 5 tickets done per day. At that rate, I should be done with this feedback in no-time and have plenty of time to implement the last bits of music and art I receive before release.

*Updated to 7 issue fixes for today