I'm still obsessed with mybacklog and stuck with erik. Sorry to the people who miss my rpg work. But I'm nearing some form of end goal for my game manager, and once I hit that I won't be able to work on it anymore and it will force me back to the game :P

Today I fixed a few more bugs (it's amazing how many there still are) and revamped the gog api to work with their new better system. Rather than scraping html and doing regexes, I'm not able to query their server and parse json. Much easier. This means all of the gog games in my library finally got their proper titles - but I had to double check that nothing got screwed up in the process.

Humble is also working again. The changed package/bundle support had some issues there.

I've thought of a really simple method to handle syncing the game database. It's called dropbox :P Since the local information and the syncable game information are in separate files from the refactoring of the data I've been doing, it's as simple as configuring mybacklog to store the db in a shared location. I'll have to test out how well this works in practice, but it's a lot easier than coding some complicated method to handle syncing. With only a little bit of extra effort, I could even add a per-game config for where the save files are located, and have it copy those files to the dropbox folder when you click to stop playing a game. Boom. universal cloud saves. Minimal coding.

That leaves:

• clunky game editing
• hardcoded purchase location options (steam and gog are ok to hardcode since they use an api, but you should be able to record that you bought a game from wherever)

As the remaining features for MVP (minimum viable product.

What makes this project more fun than Erik: I have a clear understanding of what the MVP looks like. When I return to that in force I want to strip it down even more and figure out what that mvp should be.

I spent most of the day socializing with my fellow gamedevs rather than actually getting any work done. One thing that became clear is that I am not sure what game I am making, because as the ideas flowed, I didn't have any clear guidelines to say "no that doesn't fit this game, because...". It was just like, "well, maybe... doesn't sound right but, I dunno?" Going to have to think about that some more in the future, but keep focusing on the stuff I know the game/engine will need from a technical side for now.

It sort of feels like it was a sidetrack, but perhaps a sidetrack that needs to happen every so often. Like, what the heck are you building?

There were a few small concrete tasks I did complete:

• Redesigned the opening area so it feels more like a game. I don't know why a realistic* open woods with grass and trees dotting the area is boring, while arranging the trees to form a maze is not completely stupid and seems natural; but that's how it is. I'm still pretty slow with the map editor so it's good to flex those level design muscles a bit.
• Made it so you have to actually press a button to interject during dialog. This allows you to move around and abandon the dialog if you want a lot easier. Someone asks you a question - you walk away - they have there answer**
• The npc path following function works great from a data perspective. They get to their point efficiently while navigating around obstacles. This took a year to get where I wanted it! Visually there is a weird quirk where for some directions, they oscillate between facing directions. They will be moving straight north, but the sprite shows up as facing east, then facing north, then facing east, etc. It looks bad. People I showed it off to pointed it out. It made me feel really embarrassed like I should go sit under a bridge and eat bacon or something*** I spent some time trying to tweak this behavior, with limited success. The artifact happens less frequently now. Hooray?

* I use the broadest definition of realistic here.

** They have the answer to the question of "is the player character a dick"

*** OK, not this bad. Maybe we can skip the bridge. Never skip the bacon. ****

**** And I don't even really like bacon that much. I mean it's OK, but I'm not like "BACON! WOO!" or anything.