Station Architect coming Jan 31st 2019

Station Architect is essentially now finished and will be releasing at the end of the month! It’s been a long time coming, and I’m really proud of the work, bug fixing and optimisation that has gone into the new mode (and overall). I’ll post some patch notes on release day 😉

A few important things to note, obviously if you already own Station Generator you will get Station Architect as the update so you don’t have to worry about anything. If you don’t already own Station Generator, the price will be going up from USD$8 to USD$10 on release date so if you want the old price, buy before then!

And of course, the name will change from Station Generator to Station Architect, to reflect the new mode.

If you weren’t aware, there is a new mode in Station Architect called ‘Create’, where you can create your own space station maps from scratch with a simple drag and drop mechanic, or import stations from generate mode for those few final touches (Or entire rebuild if it comes to it). Generate mode remains so you can still generate stations with all the options therein.

There’s also a new trailer for Station Architect on the store page if you want to check it out which shows some of the features!

I hope you’re as excited as I am for this, and that it helps you streamline your TTRPG prep time (or even for on the fly map creation)

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#FF 3

There are plenty of amazing folks out there to follow in every field on every platform, but I don’t know them all, not have the time to talk about them! (Incidentally it’s hard to also watch Netflix on the side while typing on a mechanical keyboard, too loud)  Anyways, onward! These will be pretty short because 1) I’m bad at this and 2) There’s only finite space available (There isn’t, I’m just bad at this). Without further ado, I give you a list:

Natalie @ScarletCatalie

Natalie is super awesome, so awesome in fact, that she was recognised in GamesIndustry 100 in 2018 list. Natalie makes awesome games which you can find on her itch.io page and has a Patreon if that’s your thing. She talk’s a lot about games but is also fairly light hearted and fun.

BarryOne @BarrySkellern

Barry likes shooters. Barry also likes to chase the odd high score, or so I’ve been told. He’s told me that I’m the only person to have finished the demo for his latest game Thrunt XL and I believe him. Barry’s a pretty down to Earth bloke who likes to talk games and streams as well as devs.

Jemma @urbanneurosis

Lover of cats and variety streamer Jemma is super cool. Unfortunately for me she’s in Australia which means timezones which means I don’t get to catch her streams much, but when I do they’re always fantastic! If I ever get around to making an actual game I’ll be sending her a key as soon as I can generate one!

Craig Perko @craigperko

Craig is a really cool, chill dev. He’s working on a game called The Galactic Line, and a few other projects along the way too. Not only that but he streams dev and has a lot of interesting stuff to say about games and things in general.

Yunitex @unakavanagh

Yunitex is a cool Irish streamer, and not only does she stream in English, but also does some streams in our Irish language, or ‘as Gailge’ as we would say. Incidentally I don’t speak the language but that is a whole other (sad) story. She also talks a bit of Irish politics and generally likes to have a bit of craic.

Keith Evans @KaynSD

Keith is a really lovely guy, and I really like the way a lot of his tweets seem like he’s just thinking out loud, and we get the privilege of hearing what’s going on in his head. He’s working on an interesting non deterministic proceduraly generated game using koch curves (I hope I got all of that right), and you guessed it, he streams dev too! Well worth checking out his streams if you like watching dev happen.

Katie Aidley @katiesgamecrner

You know what? I don’t think Katie streams (I could be wrong, I an not good at paying attention when I should). But she does blog about a favourite pass-time of mine: boardgaming! Support Katie’s Patreon because supporting cool and interesting people is important!

Xavier Nelson Jr @WritNelson

Xavier is super cool and responsible for such things as the #BillyOceanGame at GDC 2018 as well as doing writing for Hypnospace Outlaw and PCGamer. I really liked his recent piece on Deus Ex and his piece on honouring loved ones in games. He’s also an endearingly positive and very likable chap.

CT Toth @IAmCJToth

CJ is writing, and writing and writing. I’ve read some of that writing, heck, I even own some of that writing, and for what it’s worth, I enjoy that writing. She also blogs, and a lot more regularly than me (I should fix that). I’m looking forward to her next game, known as The Fall, even though I know nothing about it!

Joost Kivits @Joost_Kivits

Joost (Pronaunced Yoast) runs Beggar Studios, and is working on a game called A Beggar’s End, and RPG set in a magical desert. We stream Divinity: Original Sin 2 together with the HyperGauntlet developer himself, Nick Udell. Joost is a really cool guy and great fun to stream with, even if I did ‘accidentally’ set him on fire on more than one occasion.

Seems to be a lot of streamers here, or is everyone just streaming these days? Heck, even I stream from time to time! As always if you don’t see your name here, it’s not because I don’t think you’re awesome, it’s because I don’t have the time or ability to list so many great folks! If you want to find more cool people to follow you can check out my previous follow Friday posts: #FF and #FF2.

Station Generator: Build Mode

Yes, it’s finally coming, Station Generator will have a build mode in the next update. No date as to when it’s going to launch but I am working on it. Here’s where I’m at so far with the update:

• Import a generated station for editing
• Change the size of the canvas
• Drag and drop rooms into the canvas
• Drag and drop corridors into the canvas
• Dropping a corridor onto a room will add the appropriate walls/doors configuration
• Added a satisfying (I think) click sound for when rooms and corridors are dropped
• Reintegrated the navigation, basic control and menu ribbons
• Added music and sfx
• Added the ability to save stations for editing later

There isn’t too much more I need to add before SG build mode is feature complete but I also want to add some more content to SG if I can to make the update even more meatier. I’ve a few things in mind, I just have to see what’s feasible in not too long a time frame. Once I’ve rolled some of the new features into the generation mode the last thing that needs to be done is to update the UI. At the moment it’s very programmer placeholder arty and that will need to change before release.

All in all it’s come a long way, but probably has a long way to go. Oh yes, the price will be going up to $10 (currently $8), to reflect the additional features but of course anyone who’s already purchased it will get the update for free. All the more reason to pick it up now 😉

Steam home page

Station Generator 1.0 Is Here!

Station Generator is finally finished, and is out nearly a week. It’s been on sale for the launch but if you follow me at all you already know that. I’m really proud of how much I got done with the app. It’s loaded with great features and it pretty danged robust.

Is there more I could do with it? Of course, but I’ve already sank 18 months into this more or less. 12 Months as a paid app. I’m ready to move on to the next project, excited to in fact. Of course I’ll continue to support SG with bug fixes and such. And maybe I’ll add more more content like extra tile sets and such.

I’m not sure I’m ready to fully let go, even if I’m moving on to other projects for now. I have a few things up my sleeve I’d love to do, but now’s not the time. I’m also getting excellent feedback from users which is fantastic. Every piece of feedback I’ve received has come with folks telling me how happy they are with it, even if they are requesting extra features and such which means so much to me.

As an aside, if you really like something a creator has made, be it artwork, a game, a story or whatever, it really makes our day when you tell us. So find a creator who’s stuff you like, and tell them!

I had 3 goals for the full version of SG, quite modest (and realistic) ones really. I wanted to sell at least 1 unit to a stranger ie. not one of my mates who is being supportive (though I really appreciate the support too). I guess that’s kind of a validation thing, when someone you don’t know who doesn’t know you just likes your thing for it’s own sake and is willing to hand over cash for it. The second was to sell into the double digits and I’ve done that on Steam (And treble through early access on itch.io and Humble) so I’m really quite happy about that. And lastly I wanted to sell at least as much on Steam as I have on the other stores, and since release last week I’m about 2/3rds there which is great, if the trend continues I could be there within a month which would be amazing.

None of this comes anywhere remotely near paying me for the work I’ve done, even if I paid myself significantly less than minimum wage. But that’s fine, that’s not what it was about. This has been a great learning experience both in terms of making a game in Unity (or app as it turned out) and trying to sell it, and working with the different marketplaces and everything that entails. Not to mention getting a taste of trying to market it too, now there’s an eye opener.

So Station Generator is a success, and I want to work to continue to keep it one, if that makes sense, but what’s in the future, what’s the next thing?

I’ve had several projects in mind, there are definitely a few I’d like to get too, but there are a few barriers. One game requires too much content to produce on my own, at least at my current skill levels, so that’s out for now. Another requires experience I just don’t have yet. So what have I settled on? A active turn based AG racing game. Think Wipeout, but turn based and with cards. Might not sound like a lot, but it’s getting me excited and I’m looking forward to digging into it. But before I do, I’m going to take a little break, and catch up on a few games I’ve not had the time to play as yet. Hope you’ll stick around for the journey!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Station Generator Beta 3 and beyond

Beta 3 is just around the corner, releasing this Friday the 28th of April 2017. Just a little over a month since Beta 2, which is a nice turn around for the addition of some solid features, along side the usual slew of bug fixes and optimisations. I’ve had to expand the menu again to take into account the new features and give the old ones a little more breathing room. There’s a lot to be said about negative space, which Station Generator’s menus don’t have a lot of. They could still do with a little work and I’ll be thinking a lot about that before it gets final release.

Diamond Station with vertical hex grid, coordinates, fog of war and max line of sight

Where we’re at now

So what’s been added? A full list will of course be available in the ReadMe file in the download but in the meantime I’ll give you an overview of the main feature, especially if you’ve not yet bought and want to know what’s in it 😀

I keep wanting to say the biggest feature is X and then say it again for the next feature, so I’ll just get on with a list of what feels like some pretty great additions to the app. You can now create, save and if you want delete your own room presets. For me this is pretty big, you can prep your game by creating the necessary stations types and then get your players to roll for things like size and type, so you can have control and still get the players involved in the creation of the station! I love this because getting the player involved in world [station] building can really help pull them into the game more and give them more investment in what happens there.

The next area I looked at was improving player navigation. I tackled this at two levels, which look at two different perspectives. From the macro level there is now a coordinates system in place so each room can be described in an x,y fashion with [1,1] as the origin. And depending on what you’re used to, there are a number of options as to where that’s located. At a more granular level there is also a number of grid types available to break up each room so players can more easily describe where they are in more detail.

I didn’t just look at making navigation easier, I also added an obstacle to navigation in the form of our old friend, Fog of War. You can now reveal to your players as much or as little of the station as you would like. Just turn on Fog of War by choosing either the light or dark option and click on a tile to reveal it. But if you want to go a little bit easier on your players, you can also choose to use the line of sight tool, which will reveal adjacent tiles (unless there is a wall blocking the way) to a level that suits you, maybe roll perception to decide how far the player can see!

Feedback in action

If you find a bug, want to give feedback or just have a suggestion I’ve made that easier than ever by including an in-app feedback form. An internet connection is required for this feature to work, however it should make contacting me to help make Station Generator better a simple and straightforward process which I hope you take advantage of.

There are plenty of other quality of life improvements, bug fixes and optimisations but I’m not going to get into them here.

Where we’re heading

Originally, and you may have noticed this in previous posts about Station Generator, the plan was for three Betas and then final release. I think it’s time to revise that plan to match what’s happening at the moment. It was a good plan when I made it, and took into account a lot of the features that are now in Station Generator. Happily, I’ve been able to over deliver where features are concerned and in keeping with that I think there are a few more features I could add before release.

So with that in mind I’m strongly considering doing a fourth beta before going to release. There are two other factors at play here. One is a strong wish to do another active feedback round (though of course I consider all feedback, whether I’ve asked for it or not!), in which I actively solicit feedback as much as possible, then review it and act on it as necessary. A fourth beta would really feed well into this and give me a chance to collate everything once the feedback has been acted on. The other factor is more mundane, though due to the continuing success of StationGenerator.

UI can be hidden easily

Unfortunately Station Generator hasn’t started paying my mortage yet, it has seen some relative success on both itch.io and the Humble Store, and I’m really happy with that. It has also had a successful Greenlight campaign on Steam! What this has meant in terms of development though, is that I have to get a bunch of tax stuff in order so that I can get the maximum profit out of that success. Station Generator is selling, but selling in pretty small numbers in the scheme of things, so while it makes me very happy to make those sales, I need to make sure I get every cent out of them.

I don’t live in the US so I need to get a bit of paper work in order to reduce the amount I’m taxed on sales. As you can imagine, a government as large as the US’s can be quite slow, which is understandable, if a little frustrating. Once everything is in order I will be moving ahead with a Steam release as soon as possible. My side of the paperwork is all done and sent in, so I’m just waiting on a reply now.

So while I’m waiting, I might as well work some more on Station Generator right? Before I make the final decision on that, I will see what the active feedback brings in (though I strongly suspect I’ll be doing a fourth beta, it’s always good to have all the data in before making a decision right?).

What’s next for SeveralBytes?

To look into the far future, beyond Station Generator itself, I’ve been thinking about what I’d like to do next. I’m not sure when that’s going to be as that depends on how long it takes for Station Generator to be finished but I do have an idea of what that’s going to be. I’ve been working on and off on a few ideas for a turn based racing game. I’ve worked out the general gameplay idea, how it will flow and the main mechanics.

Concept Racer

It will be active time based gameplay similar to Final Fantasy 7, with a card based mechanic for movement and weapons. Upgrades and cards will help fill up your time bar quicker and dictate what your deck looks like for movement, support and weapons cards. I don’t really want to talk to much about it as nothing really exists for this yet beyond a few ideas and the concept art above! But I can say I’m pretty excited by the concept, and am looking forward to getting to it, once Station Generator has been properly finished of course 🙂

Station Generator is Green Lit

Good news everyone! I got the email yesterday afternoon and now get to press this wonderful, big green button!

I don’t have a release date yet for Steam but it won’t be too far away. I just need to get some things in order first and create a Steam compatible version of the game files and do a bit of marketing etc. Looking forward to it all 🙂

Of course anyone who has already purchased a copy of Steam on itch.io or the Humble Store will receive a Steam key once the game goes live.

With the greenlight campaign now wound down, I’ll need to spend a bit of time getting up and running on Steam and then I can get back to spending more time on the next Beta, and updating this website as it’s been a bit quiet over the last few months. I do have a bit of content planned so will enjoy getting the opportunity to write it up!

Station Generator goes Greenlight

That’s right, I’ve brought Station Generator to Greenlight in the hopes that I can get it on Steam!

I’d really appreciate if you could take the time to go and vote for it! The success of Station Generator on Steam would mean more time for me to invest in making the app even better, more fully featured and generally more awesome

You can vote for Station Generator on it’s Greenlight page

Thank you for voting, it really helps!

Station Generator Beta 1 and Greenlight

After a ton of hard work and working out more than a few problems (mostly resolved), Beta 1 is almost here. Beta 1 will launch on the 5th of January 2017, and I can’t wait for it to be in your hands! There are a lot of changes, not the least of which is new dynamically updating stations as you edit them, and of course the promised UI overhaul. A lot of work has gone into making Station Generator more accessible, and more usable.

But not only will I be launching Beta 1, I will also be starting the Steam Greenlight campaign. I’m working on setting up the page and getting the word out now so hopefully we’ll all be ready to give it a bit of a push when the time comes. I think launching both at the same time will compliment each other nicely.

With that said, here’s the updated trailer with Beta 1 footage now added.

One year on

A year and a day ago I started this blog with the aim of posting once a week, either about games or gamedev. In my first post ‘Opening Gambit’, I talked a little but about where I was in my game dev and where I was planning on going. Of course nothing has turned out quite as I’d planned and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

I thought it would be fitting to talk a bit about how I’ve progressed in the year and how I plan to go from there, as a reflection of my first post.

Generating Progress

After getting Station Generator on the Humble Store I’ve been working on the next update, namely UI. This has been a bigger task than I had initially thought it would be. Getting a new basic design took a little time but I’ve had a few decent ideas which will greatly improve both the functionality of the generator and the usability.