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Game Design Game Development Geek / Technical

Freshly Squeezed Progress Report: Toy Factory Fixer Updates Finished, Toytles: Leaf Raking Is Next

In last week’s report, I was delayed in my ability to create and publish a new update of Toy Factory Fixer for iOS and Mac due to MacOS and Xcode taking so long to upgrade at the end of the week.

This past week, I focused on finishing my update and started work on the desktop ports of Toytles: Leaf Raking.

Sprint 74: iOS update

Planned and complete:

  • Create updated SDL2 libraries for iOS

Now that I have Xcode 13 up and running, I found that to build the latest SDL2_image, I needed to use the tip of the branch from GitHub rather than the latest officially released version (2.6.2). It’s a little annoying, but oh well.

Once I got the SDL2 libraries built, I could build the app, test it in the simulator and on my actual iPhone, and then submit it to the App Store.

And you know what was a nice surprise? Within moments, it was reviewed and available!

Meanwhile, I was still waiting for the Google Play review to finish, which finally happened after about a week.

So now Toy Factory Fixer v1.0.2 is officially published everywhere for Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, and Mac.

Whew!

Now I will stop looking at Toy Factory Fixer and start paying attention to Toytles: Leaf Raking’s desktop porting work.

Sprint 2022-1: Desktop ports; new mobile requirements

Planned and incomplete:

  • Create updated SDL2 libraries for iOS
  • Create itch.io page
  • Create Linux port
  • Create Windows port
  • Create Mac port
  • Update Android port with new Google Play requirements

Unplanned and complete:

  • Add button sounds to main menu for consistency

Technically, Toytles: Leaf Raking isn’t part of the Freshly Squeezed Entertainment line of games, but rather than create a separate blog post for From Concentrate, I’ll just piggyback on this post.

I haven’t updated Toytles: Leaf Raking since exactly a year ago, and I started by figuring out what differences there were between the CMake build scripts of this project and Toy Factory Fixer, then updating the scripts to match where it mattered.

I then updated my GBLib files, which are not quite a framework or engine so much as a bunch of code I’ve been writing, tweaking, and leveraging for all of my projects. I realized that this is the first time I had to put in significant effort to take my latest changes and backport to a previous game. The main changes were related to animation and sprites, so nothing too substantial, but when I get a third game and need to support them all? It makes me wish I had GBLib as a separate versioned project.

Anyway, I didn’t want to spend time doing any substantial feature development, but before I added an in-game privacy policy (not exactly a Google Play requirement but that’s where it falls under), I was unhappy with some of the menu visuals. The main menu has a colorful screen, but the credits menu and the options menu had black backgrounds? It’s jarring and inconsistent.

Toytles: Leaf Raking

So I added some color to the background instead, and I think it is still readable. It’s not as crisp, but it contrasts enough, and it fits the game a lot better. And now that I think about it, I should increase the font sizes so that it is definitely easier to read.

Toytles: Leaf Raking old options screen

Toytles: Leaf Raking new and improved options screen

Another inconsistency that finally bothered me enough to do something about it? The main menu was silent. You click on buttons, and it doesn’t sound like anything happens, but in the game, clicking on buttons has a distinct sound.

So I added sound effects to all of the menu screens, and now the game feels a lot better.

And then I remembered that the ending screens are similarly not the same color as the rest of the game, so I changed it, too.

I didn’t start any of this work until Wednesday, and by the end of the week I had not worked on the privacy policy.

Once I do, I believe I should be able to quickly build the game for every platform since the scripts are so similar.

Thanks for reading!

Want to learn when I release updates to Toytles: Leaf Raking, Toy Factory Fixer, or about future Freshly Squeezed games I am creating? Sign up for the GBGames Curiosities newsletter, and get the 19-page, full color PDF of the Toy Factory Fixer Player’s Guide for free!