Devlog #2: itch.io Login complete

Game Concept Updates

This morning @whitevaultstudios and I spoke and honed in our focus for this game. Our current vision is to allow players to pick one of several differently themed cantinas. One of each type of cantina would be at each spaceport. Each spaceport will have various NPCs that will decide to go to a cantina, and then based on their experience, will form an opinion that will impact where they will go in the future.

The theme of the jam is “a matter of degree,” which we are taking to be simulating various aspects of managing a cantina. Your job as a player will be to try to balance each of those aspects to gain the most customers day after day. We are still dreaming up the specifics on what these knobs will be. Once we narrow down the first ones we are going to implement, we will report them on the next update!

Development Updates

Today I finished up getting the itch.io OAuth integration done. This entailed setting up a database to store “installations” and “accounts” (yes, you will be able to play on multiple devices… in theory even at the same time 🤔). I went above and beyond what I should be doing in a game jam, but I’m happy with the results. For any developers following along, here’s the pull request for these changes. To achieve the database migrations, I also open-sourced a small migration library I wrote. That project needs some love, but I’m setting it aside until after the jam!

The rest of the day, I worked on getting my UI framework set up. I realized when trying to hook up my log-in flow to my main menu scene that the design of my framework was just not as easy as I had hoped. It all ties into some of the same issues I spoke about yesterday, and so after dinner, I spent a few hours laying the groundwork for simplifying my framework’s UI approach.

Art Updates

Whitevault has been busy working on more amazing assets. I’m going to keep them hidden until (hopefully) tomorrow. I want to get them loaded in-engine so that I can show off the cute animations! For now, I uploaded the excellent cover image we’re using on itch.io.

What’s next?

Tomorrow, I’m going to have a significant focus on getting the game scenes running and simulating NPCs on the server and sending them to the client. The best part of that is that I will be able to upload a gif of the game coming together finally!