I guess I can’t leave 2023 without some kind of wrap up for the year! Despite the lack of posts, I have been busy working on game development since my last post.

I have been running the weekly online co-working sessions on the Tas Game Makers Discord server, with a few other regulars. Slowly making progress over the year.

Some of the features and fixes for Wizards with Rockets

• Added and fixed player, AI and NPC shadows
• Added dialogue boxes with prompt keys
• More impact and death sounds
• Different colour enemies
• Freeze ability! slow down enemies
• Rocket smoke particles
• Separate hat from player and enemies
• Friendly NPCs with dialogue boxes
• Credits on main menu screen

The last bulk of work has been implementing the gamepad/joystick support, which is turning out to be more difficult than I imagined. It will take some time, especially with the fact that different gamepads map to received button numbers differently.. an issue with Allegro 5, not that great gamepad support as far as it seems. And also adding the ability to interact with each menu item, particularly settings with lots of options to tweak. But, the goal is to have full controller support for Steam.

In other Leo news.. I have started working more hours for one of my clients, so, that means a little less time for game development, but all going well I will still keep running the Monday night co-working sessions through 2024. And keeping progressing Wizards with Rockets until it eventually is ready for release! I am hoping it will be in later 2024 but don’t hold me to it.

My plan for the holiday break is to just take it easy, not do too much. Recharge and relax mostly.

I hope you have a nice time off over the holiday break, and Motley Pixels will be back in the new year!