April 2023 Progress Report
April showers bring...bug fixes, I suppose?
Infinite Level game discussed: The Future Project
I've got a fun announcement for you today. The Future Project is officially in the beta stages! In other words, all the content that is supposed to be in the game is in, the game is one hundred percent playable from beginning to end, and we are officially in the polishing stages. This is a pretty big deal! While I still can't share any exact date, this does mean that the game is very nearly complete. The goal hasn't changed, this is still releasing sometime this year. To be fair, it would have been...let's say, impressive, if I had to delay the game further than that. But the game's current progress has solidified the 2023 release, which is a relief for me personally. Now, what all has happened over the last few months that's led up to this point? Allow me to share.
So, it's worth noting right away that, at the time of this writing, the game hasn't actually been in beta for very long. Just a little over a month, in fact. This means January and almost all of February was spent getting the game's remaining content in place. On top of that, we also had Steam Next Fest during the early part of February. Factor in the preparation done before hand, and Next Fest took up a decent chunk of time. But, the results were worth it. A lot of people got to see The Future Project for the first time, and many people wishlisted the game. On that note, I humbly request that you wishlist The Future Project on Steam if you haven't done so already. Doing so will alert you of the exact moment the game releases, so you won't have to wait to play it any longer than you need to. That aside, the game itself saw me putting together all the final moments of the game, including the final boss and the game's ending. I opted to go all out on the final moments and push the game's design to its limits, so I hope you enjoy the finale when you get to it. I'm quite happy with how it's all come together, and I wish I could show you the results. But alas, I can't just spoil the final moments of my own game. You'll have to experience it for yourself.
In terms of new content, the final boss takes up the bulk of this report. I did spend almost two months getting it just right, after all. But, that's not the only thing I did. There's also the inclusion of difficulty options to allow both replayability as well as an option for players who want to focus more on the game's atmosphere and story rather than the combat. The options in question are casual, normal, and hard, with normal being what I'd describe as the intended experience. If you're not sure which difficulty to choose or are maybe uncertain how skilled or unskilled you are in these kinds of games, normal should be a solid place to start. Meanwhile, if perhaps you know you're pretty good at first person shooters, hard may be more to your liking. The opposite is true for casual. The big changes between difficulties is currently the amount of damage you deal versus the damage dealt by enemies. For instance, a single missile does thirty five points of damage on normal, whereas on casual it will do more (about 50) and on hard it will do less (about 20). Meanwhile, all enemy attacks will do more damage on hard and less on casual. Alongside that, I've also got the complete original soundtrack implemented into the game, a handful of new animations for bosses (most notably Forest's Greed), and perhaps most strange to me, a TikTok. Yes, I've officially braved that social media world, and I must say the results have been surprising. I kicked it off with a handful of experimental videos around the same time as Steam Next Fest, and got several more views and likes than I would have thought for being a nobody on the platform and for barely marketing its existence. Admittedly, it's hard to know how many of those views have translated to wishlists during Next Fest, but at least it was more eyes on the game than there was before. I've paused the TikToks for the moment as I didn't want to exhaust all my videos before the game releases, but feel free to check out what's there and give it a follow. I don't have video content in many other places, so it'll be a good place to see more of the game in action than you would through screenshots and GIFs. As for when I'll upload again, I'm hoping to start that back up soon and consistently upload until the game is finally released.
Past that, everything has been bug fixes and balance adjustments. I assembled a crack team of playtesters to help me out with seeking these out, and through their combined efforts there have been a lot of things discovered that need fixing. A lot of them are simple, such as weird holes in the wall that aren't supposed to be there or small adjustments made to an enemy's strength. But of course, there's also plenty of tougher bugs riddled throughout the game that need to be taken care of. I'll be honest, I had thought I was doing a good job of cleaning up bugs as I went and genuinely thought that there wouldn't be a whole lot of crazy bugs during the beta phase. My ego was mildly wounded over time as the list of big bugs to fix got increasingly large, to the point where I have a large pile that will take some time to get through. But, that's the nature of the beast. Every game I've made has been similarly buggy during the finish line, as I imagine every video game on earth is. It simply comes with the territory.
What kinds of bugs am I fixing? Gosh, I don't know where to start with that one. Here's just a few that have cropped up during playtesting:
The player could repeatedly fall into the same gap without being placed back on land.
The maps will just...not work.
Enemies will spin wildly when confused about player position.
Multiple menus being opened at once that should not be simultaneously opened.
Being injured by defeated foes.
...and the list goes on. A part of me feels like some developers would be embarrassed to admit this stuff, but I don't mind. I hope the kinds of issues developers have to tackle will at least be interesting to players, and may even enlighten them on some of the difficulties of game development. In my experience, it's not uncommon for the final stretch to present all these whacky bugs and problems that you simply didn't know about before for one reason or another. Something about knowing the game is almost done has a funny way of revealing a lot of new problems to fix. Perhaps it's that all seeing eye of the developer suddenly sharpening their focus, knowing the finish line is near. Or it could just be that I subconsciously knew of these things and simply put it off. There are certainly a few situations like that. These aren't bugs necessarily, but I've added several new sound effects over the last couple of weeks to enhance the atmosphere of some late game worlds. You would think I would have done that ages ago, but I guess my focus on rounding out the content clouded my judgement on that one. When you stare at something long enough, the flaws stop being flaws and are just part of the scenery. That's why playtesting is important, and while playing it's good to look at things from the perspective of a new player. This is also where a QA department like large developers have would be very nice indeed…maybe some day.
For this polishing stage of The Future Project development, I've come up with special "modes" of playtesting for myself to help me find the most bugs and fixes possible. My first playthrough of the game has had me play typically, like I'm a regular player just enjoying the game. This will likely be how a lot of my playtesting goes. I also have a speedrun mode that I'll use to see how the game works from a speedrunner's perspective. This is a metroidvania at the end of the day, and metroidvania players love their speedruns. There's an in between mode where I gather up as much stuff as I can before proceeding into the next world, giving me a chance to see how overpowered I can be before an incoming boss fight and possibly adjust the game's balance accordingly. Finally, there's a break mode where I'm not really playing the game so much as I'm intentionally trying to break it. I'll come up with some scenarios and see what happens if you actually let it happen in game. This can be anything from pressing a bunch of keys at once to seeing what happens if you let an enemy push you into water. These should act as handy stress tests to make sure the player can't soft lock the game or otherwise negatively affect their experience. I'm currently still making my way through a standard playthrough, which is taking a little longer than expected since I keep finding things to fix. Hey, best to have a longer playthrough and fix more bugs now than release a buggy game into the world.
As you can imagine, talking about exact progress in later progress reports might be a little difficult from here on out. It can be hard to talk about a game's development when its content is all in place and you're just ironing out the kinks. Even so, I'm sure I'll have the odd bug story to talk about here and there. At the very least, I can give you an idea of how many bugs I've fixed and adjustments have been made. There may be other things that come up that make for good blog material too, but as I can't see the future, I can't really guarantee that. I'm now at the point where polish is all I'll be doing from here on out, effectively the final step in a game's development. And once the game is ready, I can finally release it upon the world. Hope you're ready for it!
Until next time!
-Lance T.