The Dope Game News

Hey there, fellers! It is that time again, you know the one; development diaries for both Haulin’ Oats and The Dope Game remaster. I’ll keep them brief, as is tradition.

[h2]Haulin’ Oats[/h2]

This week was a crunch to get the demo submitted for the Steam Game Festival and, by the skin of my ass, I made it. The demo is based on the alpha version 0.0.2 build that you early adopters will get access to soon (and on Steam, no less); more on that a little later.

The demo will be available at the start of the Steam Game Festival for the public to try. It limits you to just singleplayer, with only the basic five drivers, co-pilots, and pets. Encounter, Resource, and Incident cards are limited to the first 10. Everything else should function as normal. Oh, except you only get one lap before the demo ends; however, you can replay it over and over to get a taste of the whole board.

This demo will also be updated as alpha testing and beta testing continue. It will also turn into the game’s official demo at release.



Back to the next alpha build, I am currently doing one more big polish and bug pass before uploading it to Steam. I don’t have an exact date but I’d say very soon. Once that gets uploaded, the Steam keys for cast, crew, early adopters, and some other folks will be passed out. The bulk will be available through the Itch.io links you were given previously or in your Itch.io account. The small remainder will be e-mail individually.

A little bit down the road is alpha version 0.0.3 which will have multiplayer and Steam achievements. Hopefully this will also be the last alpha version before moving into beta as all the systems will be in place and just need tweaked.

Oh, and a trailer is being worked on too...

[h2]The Dope Game Remaster[/h2]

Honestly, not a lot happened with The Dope Game this week as almost all the time was spent getting Haulin’ Oats’ demo ready. Nonetheless, there was some work done though it was mostly bug-hunting.



Here is a screenshot of the main menu now. You know, for shits and giggles.

I was going to upload the new store graphics and Steam assets, as well as new achievement icons but after getting everything in place it just seemed a bit confusing. You know, considering it doesn’t match the current version that’s available.

That being said, the beta branch should get some love soon. Still hoping to hit the May 30th deadline and 4-year anniversary of the game’s launch, so I should get back to it.

See you next week for more!

Hello there, my dear friend. Welcome back to another development diary for Haulin’ Oats and The Dope Game remaster. As per usual we will dig right into all the newest things.

[h2]Haulin’ Oats[/h2]

With the Steam Game Festival right around the corner, much work has been put into getting the game’s demo ready. It does include, however, necessary work for the next alpha build too.



The screenshot here shows the implementation of the achievements and statistics; as well as the new menu layout which probably doesn’t look a whole hell of a lot different. It is now centered. Stats and achievements will be active in the next alpha but, obviously, not the demo.

Multiplayer may not actually be in the game until alpha v0.0.3 depending on time. Right now the focus is getting the demo and alpha v0.0.2 done by Valve’s May 15th deadline. That being said, if it doesn’t then v0.0.3 will be along much faster than v0.0.2 was / is.

The store page is ready as well but a trailer is also being put together before I make that live. Nonetheless, it’ll be ready for you to check out and wishlist by next weekend.

[h2]The Dope Game Remaster[/h2]

The Dope Game also got a lot of love this week. There was a lot of polish for the remaster beta testing and an update to the warning screen that Google loves so much.



All the main menu stuff got their face-lifts finished and systems tweaked. The major difference besides graphical is the leaderboards will now show the top five players in each category instead of the top player. Also Steam backed-up statistics were removed due to long-standing issues with keeping them synced correctly. The game will rely on itself and CoaguCo servers to track everything. Now that it’s all out of the way, the last push to polish up the main game loops is on.

Most likely the holiday events will not be active in the remaster version until the each holiday happens; then it’s back to normal afterward. Also the Russian translation will be delayed for a bit as new text will require new translations to be made. However, pushing some graphical elements to text elements (based on Haulin’ Oats design) will allow localization to be easier.

That’s it for this week. There should be much more to show next week thanks to a crunch session and quarantine!

Why hello. Here again for another quick rundown of things that happened during the game development process? Surely. So let’s get to it.

[h2]Haulin’ Oats[/h2]

This week was more revamping menu stuff because who doesn’t love fixing what ain’t broke, a new guest character, and more Steam Game Festival prep.



As pictured above, Maury is the new guest character; normally the guest characters have not been shown but eh. This shows his achievement icon, playing card, and character avatar. I’m sure you can guess who he is a parody of.

Some brainstorming was done on the game’s trailer, since it should probably be ready for the store page when that launches; which should also be up for the Steam Game Festival. Including a demo which will be based on the next alpha update and also updated frequently on the road to release.

[h2]The Dope Game Remaster[/h2]

Credits were tinkered with and more under-the-hood stuff.



This work-in-progress shot above shows the lovely dialog avatars from the current version of the game reworked to be character / actor icons for the credits page. That title clearly isn’t going to be in the final version, nor the background.

Also coding for the city loop and Stashware were worked on but no cool pictures of that stuff. It was mostly tweaking things and making it more efficient; also cutting out all the old 32-bit INT code and making sure it still works.

That’s it for this week!

Hey there, folks! Time for an even shorter version of the weekly dev diary. But wait, shorter you say? Yes, I didn’t get much done at all this week due to a very tall pile of projects, both digital and in real life.

I’m hoping this week is more productive on the game development front but nice weather and quarantine definitely detracted from that. For those that don’t know and might care, I live in the country so there are tons of outdoors things to do.

That being said, here’s some brief blurbs about what was done and some pretty pictures to go along with that.

[h2]Haulin’ Oats[/h2]

Coding itself took a backseat to some drawing and set-up for Steam’s Game Festival this summer.



The warning screen that shows up when the game starts was modified a bit. The banner is new the the text is more readable. Not a super important thing but hey.

More stuff was done for the Steam Game Festival, mostly in the Steamworks back-end. The store page needs to be active soon and a demo needs to be produced. Luckily, the next alpha version will be trimmed down into the demo; which I might have mentioned last week.

[h2]The Dope Game Remaster[/h2]

What very little time there I had for the remaster was spent on finishing up some character models.



As seen above, Pinky the gun shop owner, got finished. I also got the hospital nurse and bartender done. Sadly no additional code was finished this week, but most of it is just porting and minor changes from Godot 2 to 3.

A major one being the use of 64-bit INTs which did not exist in Godot 2 and was a big fucking headache when it came to any kind of financial transaction... which the whole damn game is based on.

Well, that’s it for this week. Hopefully next week will have more!

Hey there, folks! Time for another week of the seemingly ever-lasting development diary updates.

[h2]Haulin’ Oats[/h2]

This week was more under-the-hood multiplayer coding as there were some unexpected bugs in the lobby system as well as bug in my GodotSteam module. Nonetheless, that took up a lot more time than one would expect.



This week’s screenshot is of five unused character avatar assets. Unfortunately I didn’t have a good way of contacting any of these folks and am rather unknown myself. However, there are some guests that I was able to get a hold of and will be appearing in the game as locked characters. They will not be announced and you’ll have to find out who by playing.

Also, Haulin’ Oats will be part of the Steam Game Festival so those of you who aren’t in on alpha access can give the demo a try. The demo will be comprised of one go-around and locked to one regular character; and obviously no multiplayer.

[h2]The Dope Game[/h2]

More work on getting single-player ready for the beta branch? Yes. That mostly included getting all the code ported over from Godot 2 to Godot 3 and various performance changes made.



Last week you saw a work-in-progress of the loanshark’s crackhouse which has been completed. As I am working through each area, there are minor tweaks being made to interfaces which are borrowing some functions from The Dope Game 2. Those are mostly suggestions from the community about things they’d like to see added.

New features for the loanshark include paying down heat for each section of the city or everything all at once. Also the amount of money you get from new loans will depend on how many you paid back prior. The more you pay off, the more Sweaty Mike will let you borrow. Makes getting a certain achievement easier too.

That’s all for this week! See you again soon!