Unicorn Training: MORE Save Bugs & Features

     I'm really treading on eggshells here with these saves because I found even more variables I missed, a bunch of mismatched file types, and even file some naming convention mistakes. While I was at it I changed up a few other features involving save data.

     Now whenever you die there is a penalty of losing 20% of your current experience points (up to zero) and pressing the quit button exits to the game's menu while save will allow you to quit and come back to the room you last entered. I even put an erase button on the main menu so players can erase old saves because I noticed that once all files were full there was no way to start a new game.

    This stuff allows players to use the pause menu's Go Home feature, escape from battle if they retry, or leave a boss room and come back with items. With these features out of the way I can do the final additions (music, then scripted intro and ending) and finally be done with this thing so I can watch other people play with it.

Unicorn Training: Cleaning Up The Save System

     Things are as busy as ever. School is back full force and I spent most of the day either in class or in a textbook. I used my few hours of gamedev time sprucing up the save script and rechecking it for important data values I overlooked (there were a few). As of tonight the save system works great and is easy to edit. It' important to get this down now because my mobile project is going to have a ton of variables to keep track of.

Hopefully more gets done tomorrow!

Bug Hunt, Scripting Saves, & New Video Editor

     Yesterday was all about fixing bugs and testing the data save features. I made another disembodied script called Saves to go along with Globals that handles all the save info in a central place. With this I can focus on saving the game at certain points rather than on the fly like I did with DragCore which caused some minor performance issues. I was surprised that there really wasn't much data to keep track of for this game. I hope my future games have data this easy to manage.

     I also got to try out Lightworks which I will now be using instead of Windows Movie Maker. Unfortunately I'm not able to transfer the edited file project to it and remaking the whole thing is more trouble than it's worth. I'll just take it as another lesson learned and make future videos with this free professional tool. For now, I just recorded some gameplay (using my phone as a controller instead of a trackpad) and played around with some ideas for the official trailer.

Unicorn Training Development Video #18 (Alpha 2.0)

     I could spend a couple paragraphs explaining all the details and things I added to the game overnight, but I think a gameplay video will work better.

     This video is actually a recording of an edited project in Windows Live Movie Maker so there are a lot of skips, blurry visuals, and some lag throughout. If I can get the file to compile into an uploadable form without Movie Maker crashing I'll reupload a higher quality version. Until then...

Here's a tour of the populated world of Unicorn Training! 

(Click YouTube Link!)