Spacefarer Newsletter: May 2020

Hey everyone! I’m trying a new thing. :) Welcome to the first monthly Spacefarer Newsletter. These might get a bit snazzier in the future, but for now, behold:

It’s been a while since I did anything on any gamedev project, so I needed to ease myself back into it.

I started by doing some maintenance on StudioSpacefarer.com. I hadn’t ever added ProtoDungeon: Episode II–the change was only in my drafts, lol. So I added that. I did some touch-up on the CSS and some link repair (The Waking Cloak discord has been the Studio Spacefarer discord for some time now).

I also requested access to the GameMaker Studio 2 v2.3 beta. This has a ton of features such as sequences, tags, try/catch logic, and so on that I’ve been really longing for. Lots of stuff that will improve both my workflow and performance of the game. And… at the end of the month, I received access! I have a list of several things I want to get to that will take advantage of these new features, but the main one will be converting my cutscene engine to use sequences. This means the logo, the intro/outro scenes, and even the menu and transition animations! These are currently pretty fragile, so I’d love to make them more solid.

I freshened up the Studio Spacefarer Discord server channels with some emoji. Thanks to Mazzymon, a regular and mod, for the suggestions. I also did some other maintenance on links and freshened up bot powers to keep those pesky spammers and meanie heads out.

AAAAND…. (drumroll please): I wrapped up level planning for ProtoDungeon: Episode III! This took a lot more time than expected (as usual, lol). This hasn’t been the most creatively fertile times… lots of stress with the whole coronavirus deal, taking care of family, etc. Also Episode III is larger than the first two episodes, and I daresay I’ve put lots more effort into this one too. I’m pretty proud of it. It’s closer to my final vision for The Waking Cloak’s level design, at least for a single self-contained level (whereas TWC will have a lot more interconnection between areas).

After that, I moved on to enemy design. I’ve got two bad guys planned for this episode, not including the boss or passive traps. There might be room for one more enemy, but there’s already enough going on that I’ll probably keep the scope down here. :)

And there you have it! May!