Motley Pixels

Game Dev Updates

My latest released game – Gravity Flux! Buy on Steam

About MOTLEY PIXELS

Motley Pixels is the psuedo-game-company name for Leo’s game-making psuedo-business. Motley Pixels makes a variety of games, for a fairly broad audience, not sticking to specific niches necessarily, but aiming for more of a “fun-for-all” approach. That’s the plan so far anyway. Sometimes I do game jams, where all kinds of concepts get attempted. The goal is to make games and release them on major platforms, Steam notably but others would be nice as well.

Recent Posts

  • March-April Update

    I’m definitely losing some energy for my gamedev stuff, after hitting that last milestone of adding 8 player support to Gravity Flux for Windows. But I’ve been doing a few little things:

    • Added shadows to Wizards with Rockets
    • Learning Blender
    • Recorded a video of me making a model in Blender
    • Made a little new demo game for my “Sentience” game with Godot 4
    • Created a YouTube channel!

    Shadows in Wizards with Rockets

    Yep, as it looks. I am trying to speed up this game and get it released (at my own rate, no rush). So instead of my plan to do this sort of thing with shaders, I just used a simple semi-transparent sprite underneath the character. In C, I’m treating each C file like an object (My brain likes OOP a bit) so I’ve got a character_shadow.c and character_shadow.h file which handles drawing the little shadows on players. The files contain an array of positions where to draw the shadows.

    Blender Stuff

    I’ve been learning Blender from the course on Udemy from Gamedev.tv called “Complete Blender Creator: Learn 3D Modelling for Beginners“. It’s good. I think my learning style is different to this course-based learning but it’s thorough and fun.

    I made this stuff:

    The first chapter model

    Just a little robot I made. Here’s the video I recorded: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tULnx5yk0oE

    Sentience in Godot 4

    The next big game I’m working on is slowly in development. I had to upgrade to Godot 4 which needs a new Trenchbroom/Quake map loader, I used godot-tbloader. I also used a third person character controller from GitHub to control the player in the little demo world. I managed to get physics objects importing from the Trenchbroom level as well.

    Here’s the demo:

    YouTube Channel

    Yep, I set up a YouTube Channel for Motley Pixels! Check it out, please subscribe!!

    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCguxHkHFJEvDNoX-fKDo0Pw

    What’s next?

    There’s a game jam, Linux Game Jam 2023 (May 27-June 6) which I am intending to participate in. This will set back my other gamed stuff, but I should push out a nice Linux game for the world. Yay.

  • More than 4 Xbox Controller Support in Windows in Godot Engine – How To

    For my February post, I’ll be writing about supporting more than 4 Xbox-style controllers in a Godot game.

    Summary

    The solution I’ve found to get more than 4 Xbox-style controllers to work, is to force Godot Engine to use the “DirectInput” API to handle controller input. By default, Godot uses “XInput” which has a hard-coded limit of 4 controllers. Maybe that’s to stop people from plugging more than 4 controllers into Xbox’s and developers to unofficially support it. Who knows, it’s a silly restriction. So we have to modify the Godot source code to downgrade to DirectInput, which has less features (you can read more here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/xinput/xinput-and-directinput) All I need is thumbsticks + dpad + primary buttons so it should do. If you need any of the features of XInput (like separate trigger inputs) and more than 4 controllers, unfortunately you’re out of luck (Linux users however don’t have such trivial limitations). Then build Godot from source (this isn’t as bad as it sounds, but not great I’ll admit – at least we have this option, unlike other game engines).

    Pre-requisites

    To do this you’ll need some familiarity with the Windows command- prompt and a little experience coding would help.

    First Step – Get Godot Source Code

    To get Godot to utilise 8 controllers, we’ll need to modify the source code of Godot Engine, then build it using it’s relatively simple command-line build system. I won’t waste time re-writing the instructions from the Godot documentation site – here is the link: https://docs.godotengine.org/en/latest/contributing/development/compiling/compiling_for_windows.html. I’d recommend using the “scoop” tool. Update: due to later needing to build export templates in 32bit and 64bit, I was having issues with MinGW in 32bit, so I tried Visual Studio and it worked fine. So I’d suggest Visual Studio to minimise future problems. A big download, but free and worth it to make things work better.

    Modify the Source!

    Using your preferred text editor, look for the files in platform/windows/joypad_windows.cpp and platform/windwows/joypad_windows.h.

    In joypad_windows.h, modify the line

    #define XUSER_MAX_COUNT 4

    To

    #define XUSER_MAX_COUNT 0

    Update: To make the compiler happy, you’ll need to change the following line (around line 126):

    xinput_gamepad x_joypads[XUSER_MAX_COUNT];

    To

    xinput_gamepad x_joypads[4];

    This will not let xinput take over the input of the controllers. If you thought like me, why not set it to 8? It’s because the proprietary “xinput.h” has a hard-coded limit of 4 controllers. However that alone isn’t enough. The code in joypad_windows.cpp will pick up that the controller is an Xbox controller and try to use XInput, but the limit is now 0 so no Xbox controller will function. In joypad_windows.cpp, modify

    bool JoypadWindows::is_xinput_device(const GUID *p_guid) {
static GUID IID_ValveStreamingGamepad = { MAKELONG(0x28DE, 0x11FF), 0x28DE, 0x0000, { 0x00, 0x00, 0x50, 0x49, 0x44, 0x56, 0x49, 0x44 } };
...

    And insert the line return false; so it looks like:

    bool JoypadWindows::is_xinput_device(const GUID *p_guid) {
return false;
static GUID IID_ValveStreamingGamepad = { MAKELONG(0x28DE, 0x11FF), 0x28DE, 0x0000, { 0x00, 0x00, 0x50, 0x49, 0x44, 0x56, 0x49, 0x44 } };
...

    Combining these two, it will force all controllers to work as DirectInput and not allow XInput to take over any controllers. Thus, with the higher limit of DirectInput controllers, you can now have 8 (or more – up to 16) controllers!

    Build Godot

    Using the link above, build Godot with scons platform=windows. It will take some time, depending on how powerful your processor is. On my home AMD Ryzen 5 5600G, it took maybe 10-15 minutes or so. The resulting Godot executable will be in the bin directory. It should just run.

    I could distribute my executable, but I don’t have the tools set up for signing executable files to be safe for distributing. But the steps in this tutorial shouldn’t be too difficult, especially if you’re a programmer.

    Now, you should be able to plug in and use more than 4 Xbox controllers in your Godot game! (With the previously mentioned limitations above).

    Motivation

    I designed my game, Gravity Flux, to support up to 8 players. But when submitting my game to Steam, I didn’t check if I could actually use more than 4 XInput/Xbox controllers in Windows! Oops, slight oversight. Steam’s tester monkeys people told me that the full 8 controllers didn’t work (despite me checking “Full controller support”). Odd that they actually checked that. Maybe it was a robot/script that checked it, but how could a script recognise how to play the game? Must have been humans. Which is pretty nice. Slight setback for me but nice. So I had to remove the “Full Support” and “Partial Support” for controllers on Steam’s store page. This means those looking for controller supported games (eg Steam Deck users) won’t find it in search results for controller supported games. So, to slightly increase sale possibilities, it’s in my interests to support the 8 controllers as advertised.

    My initial research into solving this problem lead me to think that I needed SteamInput incorporated into my game. So I tried that (using GodotSteam in Godot) but it didn’t support the more than 4 Xbox controllers. So I then did some more web searching, which lead me to this issue on Godot’s Github issue tracker: https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/19173. A closed thread requesting more than 4 XInput controllers. Obviously it didn’t get fixed. I read it further and made me look at the platform/windows source code. Played around with some code and after some trial and error, fixed it! As someone mentioned, a slightly smarter solution would be to use XInput for the first 4, then DirectInput for the remainder. I don’t need to do that for my game so I haven’t done that, plus this tutorial is much easier to follow. I might look into implementing that idea later if there are any requests for it.

  • Quiet Jan 2023

    Happy 2023

    I had a nice, relaxing break with family and friends. Not much stress or dramas. I had some time to play games and work on my projects which is what I generally aim to do with my spare time.

    December, being the busy/holiday month, I didn’t get a lot done on my games unfortunately. Gravity Flux was/is on sale on Steam for 50% off and sold a couple of units, woo.

    I’m currently focusing on an electronics hardware project, a virtual pet that tracks your health. I’ve been building the electronics and case to 3D print. Won’t post too much about it here as this is mainly for my game development.

    /https://www.instagram.com/reel/CmwCR_Vjhex/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

    2023 Plans

    So far I don’t have any solid plans for 2023. No games planning to be released. However I have a rough path forward for working on my games. The first priority is to get Steam Input API working in Gravity Flux. Then the game can officially support 8 gamepads of any type on Windows. As I originally intended.

    There’s some possibilities for my next game, “Sentience” to have it’s development boosted. Local games company, Secret Lab are planning to host a games incubator for narrative games. Not sure any details about it just yet, but it sounds like it may “accelerate” the development of the game a little, which would be nice. (For context, Sentience is planning to be a 3D 3rd person shooter set in a Sci-Fi environment with somewhat of a narrative story).

    I suspect my plans for 2023 will be ad-hoc, whatever I feel like doing. Which can set me up for slow progress if I don’t set goals. So I may have a think about what I aim to achieve, other than the above.

    This is a shorter blog post, but I gotta make use of the website I’m paying for..

    While last year I shipped a game, this year will hopefully be building on that milestone and at very least I hope to have some even more exciting game screenshots to show off!

    ,

  • Belated December Post

    A bit of a delayed post, partially due to less progress on games recently.

    Gravity Flux is still available on Steam and two patches have been sent out already.

    November

    Not much work was done in November, I have been taking a break as I have lots of other hobbies!

    However last weekend, on the 4th of December, I did some work getting the SteamAPI integrated into Godot Engine using GodotSteam. Previously, I was using an plugin that give me a sub-set of Steam features. It however does not support Steam Input, which is required for me to be able to support 8 controllers of any kind on Windows. So I built Godot from scratch as required. It wasn’t too difficult on the Mac and Windows, thanks to the scons build system which is much easier to use than CMake.. Just to test it out, I added the feature of getting the user’s Steam username.

    Next time I get time to work on it, I will be testing the Steam Input system. There is not a lot of documentation on Steam Input with Godot Engine. I’m not sure how it works. It’s possible it just works alongside Godot, and no new code is required? I will be testing it for sure. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment.

    Steam username provided by SteamAPI, built-in to Godot Engine.

    I don’t have huge plans for December, being that time of the year where everything is super busy. I may get some time to test Steam Input.

    Screen Australia

    I did however go to a meeting with a representative from Screen Australia! (Lee Naimo, Head of Online). Screen Australia recently announced they have funding for indie games, as well as TV/movies in the past. This was an extremely awesome opportunity to at least get a feel for what kinds of games get funding from Screen Aus, and what the people from Screen Aus are like themselves.

    The main take-aways were,

    • No guns. Apparently it’s a hard sell to the big-wig politicians and ministers who approve funding requests. So my next game, “Sentience” involves some guns, and that may not be suitable for Screen Aus funding. But I’m still going to work on it, and it’s not intended to be that violent despite having guns in it.
    • Know your audience. Lee said that if you think you know you have an audience, even if niche, they’ll be more inclined to support you. So if you’re just experimenting with no clues about audience, they may not be as supportive. For example, making a game similar to or another game which already has a known audience. Maybe a Minecraft clone for example, but different enough of course. I think I will need to do some more research into what’s successful in the indie games space for games similar to the next game I’m working on.
    • They don’t have a favourite genre or art style or gameplay type. Any game that as above, knows it’s audience has a chance.
    • The Tas game developer scene is much newer than Melbourne and other bigger states. So it’s been a slow start, building an industry down here, with not many great examples of successful studios. You of course would want a successful studio as an example, and there have been some notable ones, but nothing too huge yet.
    • They all seem to be very nice, approachable people. They also had a meetup the day before where the CEO himself came up to us Tas game makers ourselves and had a bit of a chat.
    • As above, they’re very approachable. You can contact them with any questions and I’m very certain they’ll do their best to help.

    Merry Christmas, Happy New Year

    This will be my last planned post for 2022. It’s been a pretty big year for me in my game development journey. Releasing Gravity Flux, working with Tas Game Makers more, meeting Screen Australia, going to several game maker meetups now that covid restrictions are easing. Feels like hopefully a good start to something more.. The ball has started rolling and it will hopefully keep rolling!

    Please have a nice, safe, pleasant Christmas and New Years break.

    ,

  • Post-Release Update

    Updates!

    It’s been just over a month since Gravity Flux was released, and, well I can tell you about the experience after releasing a game. It’s a relief, but also somewhat nervous and weird.

    Sales Report 📈

    I won’t give away exact numbers, but basically 25-50 “units” have been sold. Which I’m personally happy with. A lot more than if I’d put the game on a certain other platform (starting with I). Not to say that other platform is bad, it has other benefits. It’s just not as good if you want to sell as much copies as possible.

    Scammers! 🙄

    Yep, I’ve been targeted by scammers. I have had quite a few emails with the content saying something like:

    Hi, I’m streamer Jimbob and I have a streaming channel with 5K followers. I enjoy streaming of any genre. My streams get over 500 views.

    I just saw your game Gravity Flux and did check it out on Steam, I like to give it a shot. If you could provide a Steam copy it would be great!

    <Links to Twitch/YouTube>

    A few things, firstly they write it up in an extremely lazy and poorly-written way. Big red flag. Then, their email address sometimes doesn’t match with their YouTube channel (Mega big red flag). They don’t provide a way to authenticate themselves, like please send me the key via Twitter or something. There is no way I can validate their identity just by email address unless it matches some public profile. Which so far it hasn’t.

    My first response to the scammers was to send them a long email with some questions, of course it got no response. A game dev friend, Jon, suggested to make a “Review Key” form, which is now on this website. If you want a key, that’s now the only way you’ll get it. I will not give keys out in a reply email any more. Not even sorry.

    No Dosh From Steam 😭😭😭

    Sadly, Steam tells me they won’t send me the sales for the game as it has not made over a certain amount. Let’s just say I need to sell the same amount of units I’ve sold already since launch to make the amount. Double it. This is a bit crappy, since I never intended to make a lot of money from the game, but more than that other platform. They say it’s because of costs with sending and receiving funds (transaction fees?? How much are their transaction fees? Geez!). It may be more like, if you game doesn’t sell well, we don’t care about you. I’m not sure that’s it but it’s a theory. Oh well, please take this as an opportunity to buy the game if you haven’t already to help the chances I’ll get paid for the game..

    “Missing Steam Store Page Assets”

    Steam tells me I am missing the “Vertical capsule” store page asset. Well, I’m not super motivated to fix this as they are not paying me. I may fix it eventually, when I feel like it. Sigh.

    Achievements!

    On a more positive note, I am quite surprised that people are out there trying to get achievements for the game. Someone has managed to get all of the achievements, maybe that was a bug, dunno. Quite nice to see.

    Keep up the good work, gamers!

    Updates

    I’ve addressed some initial feedback from people who’ve bought the game, and implemented some other important fixes though official Steam updates. Notably around the “StatsDB” internal database file for settings and statistics. It will now be able to be “upgraded” with new variables and data loss will be minimised. I’ve also fixed some UI/text issues to help people know what keys to press and when in the menus.

    What’s next

    Largely, I am just taking it very slow in game dev in general. No rush now. I’m working on some other projects, like a “Tas Tech Talks” website which is for collating all tech talks in Tas into a calendar and mailing list. Also building a Z80 serial console for a home-brew computer I bought. And playing with Ham Radio, notably the digital FT-8 mode. Something a bit different. Rest assured, I will be releasing the promised features for Gravity Flux, when I feel ready to work on it again. I’m sure I will. The negative things above do not deter me too much..

  • Gravity Flux is Out!

    That’s the game on Steam!

    Get it HERE (if you want): https://store.steampowered.com/app/2072520/Gravity_Flux/

    The day is among us, where Gravity Flux is available to the world on Steam!

    11 or so months in the making, with a fair bit of help and feedback from others (listed in the credits) it’s now available. I went through so many tasks on Todoist. Making and releasing games, even one like this that’s relatively small, is a big effort. It takes a while usually. Every published game you see out there is the product of countless hours. The things you do to entertain people.

    Launch Party! 🎉

    I felt I needed to have a launch party for the game, because, why not? It is a party game and lends itself well to people coming around for a party. But I also just wanted to celebrate this launch with people. Mainly my friends turned up, people who share an interest in game development and family and several others who seemed pretty keen to check it out.

    The (free) event was allowed to start early, so I set up at 3PM and it went all the way to about 8:30PM (after the late pizzas). Reasonable turnout. People played the game, as well as ShapeVS on a separate machine. Some good feedback, people saying it was fun and well-made. Still finding bugs.. But the plan is to keep working on the game post-release.

    At 6PM I did a brief speech, about the game, the inspiration for it, the design and a bit about how I made it. Then some more gaming, chats, then pizza finally arrived around 7:30pm. Some people just came briefly, which was cool, was nice to see everyone that came.

    Kickstart Arts was a pretty decent venue, actually kinda perfect for this event for a few reasons. It had two screens, a projector for my game and a TV for ShapeVS. A bar kind of thing for the ample amount of non-alcoholic and alcoholic drinks I brought. The lighting was perhaps a little too bright for my laser light show projector I brought. Oh well, great excuse to buy it. Ample parking. A little tricky to find the entry, but everyone did without having to call me. The venue has a very “old school” vibe about it. Relaxed and rustic. While being upbeat and friendly. The venue organiser, Stefan was a great help and introduced me to the space very well. I hope to work with him and KSA again in the future for other stuff.

    Anyway, here are the photos!

    Going Forwards

    The game development is not over! I have a few more game ideas in the works. Some may have heard of my game idea, Sentience, a 3rd person shooter/stealth game for mobile devices and PC (equally). You’ve just got to pick an idea and stick to it. And Wizards with Rockets, which I’m thinking I will just release on itch.io initially. Making games is something I like to keep doing if and when I’m available. It’s a good challenge and if I can help “inspire” people to make games in Tas that would be a nice thing. I’m always trying to help Tasmanians produce more games and tech products. No reason why Tasmania shouldn’t be known to be a tech isle.

    Initially, a few bugs to work on for Gravity Flux but I may take a break from game dev for a little while to catch up on non-gamedev stuff, like electronics, web dev, planning workshops and talks, YouTube videos, and a software project I’m making. I have no shortage of projects to work on, that’s for sure. And I like that. Though sometimes you have to be careful how attached you get to projects at the same time.

    Early Responses

    Amazingly, I’ve had 3 streamers contact me, 1 games marketing company, and one game key giveaway prize organiser. Yeah, I’ll have to give the game away to people, but it doesn’t cost much so not much of a loss to me I guess? Some “promotion”? Probably a good thing. I suppose some people wish for these opportunities? I dunno 🤷‍♂️ I will tentatively investigate.

    Thanks for reading!

    Jump on it!
    ,

  • Gravity Flux + ShapeVS

    We are just over one week out from the launch of Gravity Flux and the exciting announcements are starting early! I am teaming up with SmashAttack who are releasing their local multiplayer game ShapeVS on the same day as Gravity Flux!

    It will be a great opportunity to demonstrate two local multiplayer games at the same event!

    Not one but two new Tasmanian games going live on Steam (hopefully for me) on the 30th of September. Leo here at Motley Pixels couldn’t be more excited for what the future holds for Smash Attack and like I mentioned earlier I am teaming up with them, which means I will have ShapeVS playable at the Gravity Flux launch party as well!

    Speaking of launch party, you can get your tickets here: (Fellow Tasmanians) https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/gravity-flux-launch-party-tickets-415748985407

    Wishlist ShapeVS https://store.steampowered.com/app/1575750/ShapeVS/

    Check our more details here and keep an eye out for more information coming soon.

    I am currently in the process of going back and forward between Steamworks, they are having controller issues, so I think just removing “Full Controller Support” will allow the game to be submitted to the store. Fingers crossed!

  • September – Launch Month 🚀

    In August I took it easy and didn’t burn myself out. I made a good decision of launching two months after the game was in a playable state (but needed some fine tuning). So there was no rush.

    A couple of major things done since last month:

    • Fixed the camera – so it moves more smoothly. People were saying that the camera was rather jerky and harsh. I though I smoothed the position, but the zoom scale wasn’t being smoothed. So both change with smoothing applied, and the effect looks a lot more tolerable to the eye.
    • I’ve added all the achievements to Steam. See image below of the achievement icons. I’ve almost got them all working in code as of this post, I just need to test them to make sure they all work. It was made quite easy thanks to a Godot addon: https://github.com/samsface/godot-steam-api (no need to build Godot from scratch with Steam SDK built in it)
    • Probably fixed an issue when re-spawning – player would spawn in the ground. Resetting velocity I think fixes it?
    • Generally improved controls so no more weirdness, especially with analog sticks
    • Added amusing game-over sounds: https://twitter.com/MotleyPixels/status/1566047026714148864
    • T-shirts! and other items available from RedBubble: https://www.redbubble.com/i/t-shirt/Gravity-Flux-by-leofebey/122773651.WFLAH?asc=u Super important of course

    Achievement icons:

    The game is still set for Friday, 30th September 6PM (AEST/Hobart time). I am currently working on booking a venue. I have contacted a certain venue, but have not received a response yet. There will be a venue, (I have some fallback plans) don’t worry.

    The remainder to-do list is getting a lot smaller.. Just forgot to get the stats page working, and finishing up the achievements. Then upload to Steam

    I still want to do some more testing. I think I have at least one more chance to test the game, which I hope will be valuable.

    Tas Jam

    It’s awesome to see the return of Tas Jam, the local Tasmanian game jam events. It’s happening on 9-11 Sept at University of Tasmania Sandy Bay. I will be attending in some capacity. I guess I should try to make a game (I’ve historically been good at that) or just chill and volunteer being on the Tas Game Makers board. Event details: https://tasgamemakers.com/tasjam/

    Other Projects

    I have lots of other projects on the go, and of course I’m already thinking what to do after Gravity Flux is released. My next game will likely be “Sentience” the 3rd person shooter for PC and mobile. It’s a story-driven game with levels made with Trenchbroom. I think I’m going to enjoy working on it. I have other non-games projects as well, like a custom music manager and player program for PC (Win/Mac/Linux) and a virtual pet electronic “toy” / health companion. Having experience with electronics, that should be lots of fun as well.

    ,

  • August – Getting there.. 🔜

    Gravity Flux

    More work has been done in July

    • Added players jumping in the menu
    • Improved input system to add/remove buttons pressed into an array (best way to do it)
    • Made both 2D and 3D particles for MacOS and Windows/Linux respectively. Godot says that Macs don’t do 3D particle acceleration, so I’ll take their word for it and make the game switch between 2D and 3D particles depending on detected OS.
    • Fixed small bug where player kept moving (falling) when paused. Oops.

    A few things left to do

    • Steam achievements! (many..)
    • Fix bug where one controller doesn’t work in controller join menu (need physical gamepads to test)

    As soon as those are done, I”ll do some more real world testing then hopefully start the releasing process (exporting and uploading to Steam). Could be earlier than scheduled date of Sept 29, we’ll see..

    Wizards with Rockets

    This game (that I’ve been working on since 2018) has been mostly on pause since early this year, but I’m thinking how to progress with it after releasing Gravity Flux. The plan is to finish the game up quickly. Not adding new features like physics, scripting and shaders. It’s just going to take too long and I want to learn a new programming language and graphics framework. Plus I’ve been feeling a little burned out from it being a long-term project that’s getting little progress.. Oh well, I’ve learned plenty about C.

    So the plan is to make WWR 2, using C++ and SDL! Not too ambitious, no! I plan to get better at CMake as well. So I can just build on any platform with ease. I’ve chosen C++ over Rust, as I think it’s important to know C++ well in my profession (software developer), and Rust is still fairly new. C++ isn’t going away any time soon. I’ve heard about the new Carbon programming language, designed to be a successor to C++, we’ll see. It may take some time to achieve that. Still keen to learn Rust well at some point, but perhaps learning C++ will only make learning Rust more satisfying, from what I’ve heard. And SDL because it’s pretty popular and well known, an industry standard. A little more complex than Allegro by the looks, but still not absurdly complex with boilerplate (Hello OpenGL/Vulkan). Then I’ll have the fun of incorporating other features, like map loader, physics, networking, etc. Add all the libraries!

    Sentience

    I’m very excited to work on the next big game after Gravity Flux. It’s going to be a 3rd person action/stealth game for mobile devices and PC. I want to make a decent first-person shooter one day. This won’t be it but it’ll be similar, and less advanced. Perhaps a prequel.

    I’ve given Sentience a bit of thought recently, and I have some neat ideas for it, some I want to keep secret until I’ve gotten close to releasing it. I’m going heavy with story and world building for what it is, and it will be a very art and story driven game, which will be an interesting challenge for me. I see some Blender tutorials in my future. I’m super keen to start work on it and show screenshots of my progress. I hope to get started right after Gravity Flux is released.

    ,

  • July – Gravity Flux on Steam and Steamworks Experience

    Steam!!

    Yes, Gravity Flux is now on Steam! (Available for wishlisting). It’s been a rather large effort getting to this stage. Getting the game ready to promote as a trailer, then jumping through the (not too difficult) hoops on Steamworks to get it ready for approval. And lo and behold, it got approved!?! Go wishlist it now!? https://store.steampowered.com/app/2072520/Gravity_Flux/

    Steamworks Experience

    I’m sure there are people pretty curious as to how the Steamworks experience is. Well I can give some rough details, it’s all under NDA so I can’t provide screenshots and such. But I’m sure it’s ok for me to explain some key steps.

    1. Registry – is pretty simple, all you need is a Steam account
    2. Application/game registry – As an Australian, you need to give evidence you’re not a US citizen living overseas, enter some tax stuff like TFN and photographic ID.
    3. Steamworks fee – this is US$100 per game/application. Sucks yeah, but I believe an actual human checks the game.
    4. Steam page setup – You’ll need to create some store and Steam library assets for the game. So any logos/promo banners you have (like Inkscape SVGs) will be required to be tweaked a little. I had an issue with approval as my logo didn’t have transparency. I fixed it and it was approved.
    5. Some other things like system requirements, description, set release date (required!), support info (contact details) and game icons.

    Then once approved, they’ll let you press the “Set as coming soon” button to publish the page publicly.

    Of course, I still need to submit a build of the game, they haven’t required me to submit one to put the page up yet. Which is fortunate, it lets me promote the game earlier.

    What’s next

    Still a fair bit of work to do on the game, but not too much. I’ve got to:

    • Fix the player stats functionality – currently a bit broken 😦
    • Fix an issue where 4 players were joining and one couldn’t join properly.
    • Steam achievements! Every good game has achievements. I’ll have to programatically add these.
    • And a few other small misc tweaks – nothing too hard.

    I’m definitely going to have a launch party of some sort. Remember to join my Discord to be informed of when that will be! See the links page of this site.

Newsletter

About Me

An English diarist and naval administrator. I served as administrator of the Royal Navy and Member of Parliament. I had no maritime experience, but I rose to be the Chief Secretary to the Admiralty under both King Charles II and King James II through patronage, diligence, and my talent for administration.

Recent Posts

Newsletter