The Dope Game News

Good evening. Time for yet another dev diary update for both Haulin’ Oats and The Dope Game remaster. So take a seat by the fire but please sit at least six feet away.

[h2]Haulin’ Oats[/h2]

This week was more multiplayer code and interface work.



Sub-menus have been moved into the menu bar, this is also true for all other areas like stats, leaderboards, credits, etc. More graphical assets have been created for the multiplayer sections too.

The code underneath should be done up to the point of actually playing with other folks. That will be the focus of this coming week as well as polish to the existing game loop.

[h2]The Dope Game[/h2]

This week was getting more of the scenes completed so that a working build of single-player was, well, playable.



As you can see above, the loanshark’s crackhouse is all updated and pretty much ready to go. This screenshot also showcases all the new assets in one place, as far as the dialog and HUD are concerned.

So far everything seems functional so I’ll be moving on to other areas where the NPC’s are and get those out of the way. Once all of them are done and the basic city area, a single-player test will be made available in the beta branch on Steam. Then I will move on to the multiplayer.

That’s about it for now. See you next week!

Hey there! Time for yet another weekly update on what the hell is going on.

[h2]Haulin’ Oats[/h2]

Networking, networking, networking. All that was done this week was getting the net-code added in; all Steamworks stuff. Even put together some crude interface for multiplayer.



Right now lobbies can be made and joined. Player avatars get pulled from Steam and displayed. Servers can even be joined. There are more tweaks, beyond the visual, that need done plus a lot of testing.

The next beta version is basically waiting on this to be done before it is uploaded, thus modes will not be changeable at the time.

[h2]The Dope Game Remaster[/h2]

This week I got side-tracked on working on multiplayer for The Dope Game and got bogged down in redoing all the Steam and Itch.io assets.



Here you can see the new capsule and game icon. Also had to go through the wide variety of capsules, titles, and icons for everything.

Also, I am aiming to release the remaster version on the fourth anniversary of the game (May 30th). That should give enough time to get it all done. I think.

That’s it for this week. Hope to have something more exciting next week!

A few days later than late but here nonetheless. Time for another weekly update.

[h2]Haulin’ Oats[/h2]

Mostly another week of graphical tweaks but there was also multiplayer…



You can see above, the main menu has some letter shadowing added to make it more like the newer logo. Also makes thing pop a bit more and easier to read.

More importantly, multiplayer stuff has been added in. A lot of the Steamworks functionality is in but nothing has been tested just yet. The first test, lobbies and servers, will probably be next week. Then there is a bunch of overhaul to make the game work with it.

[h2]The Dope Game[/h2]

More drawing this week. A never-ending onslaught of art assets to be converted.



As you can see above, the Sweaty Mike’s lair got a facelift this week; though the shading isn’t don’t yet. While the list of assets that still need swapped over is long, it is probably time to get the multiplayer up and functional too. Hopefully next week’s update will be more about multiplayer!

See you then.

Hello there. It is that time again for another weekly update on what’s going on with Haulin’ Oats and The Dope Game remaster. Enough introduction to a thing you may or may not read, let’s get into it.

[h2]Haulin’ Oats[/h2]

It was yet another art asset week and fixing up some minor bugs in the character selection process. Even hooked in the Steam username functions.



HUD trays were also updated; though in this screenshot they show up in their debug state. Now they will only show what items the player has and slide back under the top portion like they did in pre-alpha. There is a little animation where the slide back out when an item is received or taken. And, of course, can be toggled at any time. Granted there is a reason I switched it before, and surely that’ll come up again.

Now that the character selection process is fixed up and redesigned, all attention this week is to updating the last of the squares and testing them for bugs. Then on to adding in another win condition: placed wins.

[h2]The Dope Game[/h2]

The art just never stops. This week was more redrawing character set-pieces for each interaction.



As shown above, each character was redrawn with a lot more detail and some changes made; mostly because up-scaling never really works. Surprisingly, these character set-pieces take a lot more time than one would expect and will probably go on for the next two weeks of updates (surprise, surprise). The environment shots take even longer.

Nonetheless, everything is a 1:1 drop-in so no code needs changed out for any of this thus saving some time down the road.

Well, that’s about it for this week. Join me next week for another rather uninformative update on where things are at!

Hey there! Another day later than usual and another rather boring (for you) week of updates. This has been mostly a week of art and non-game development stuff. Let’s get to it.

[h2]Haulin’ Oats[/h2]

Art assets were the focus this week. Still a lot more stuff to draw for alpha version 0.0.2 and most of what I did was focus on consistency across sections of the game.



This was mostly making certain text match the new logo and updating all associated images in various parts of the game like the main board, main menu, and square interaction pop-ups.

Since the new guest characters have been added in, I also spent a little bit of time expanding, re-writing, and bug-fixing the character selection process right before turn selection. There are now even placeholders for the guest characters who do not have cards drawn yet but should before v0.0.2 drops on Steam / Itch.io.

[h2]The Dope Game[/h2]

This week’s Dope Game progress was also all art. Still slogging away at environment and character upgrades. Here is an example of the new versus old Alpheus Park.



Next week I hope to show off some of the character upgrades. Since the next major holiday in-game is Halloween, the seasonal environments and character changes will probably come after the game updates on Steam; mostly to save time on development and since it’s not really urgent.

Again, nothing too exciting and I’d wager nothing too crazy next week either as it is more drawing and less coding!

Cheers!