Lately, it has been hard to keep myself motivated. I think it's because the project is near completion. I have to get into this "closing" mindset, and it is hard. More than anything now, I want to get the game done and released. 

Steam Wishlist Trailer

At the top of my list was to get the first trailer done. I am glad that I got into the habit of capturing footage throughout development. Nevertheless, I still had to go in and play a bit more on a couple of stages. 

I am not a pro doing video, obviously. But, like many things for a solo game dev, you have to do it. 

Bugs Squashed

One of the goals for this month was to get rid of all the bugs I had listed. Throughout development, whenever a bug happened, I would add it to a separate list. The bugs would get prioritized, and I would tackle them as needed. 

I always strive to keep the bug count at 0. The reason is that if you are writing new code on top of broken code, there is a big chance you introduce even more bugs in the future. 

I am happy to say that I fixed all 20 bugs I had listed. Some were nasty to fix, while others were just a couple of lines of code. 

Database Improvements

For the non-flashy stuff, I managed to improve the database system I have. It is a simple in its design. The idea is: that most of my data for the game uses scriptable objects. The Database allows me to create tablets and reference scriptable objects. The Database is then responsible for loading the tables so it's available for the other systems.

All the audio, shop items, and even tutorials are loaded through this system. I had a lot of issues with how the IDs were set up. At first, I wanted to make them unique for the project. But since I used the IDs to create an enum per table, starting from 0 made more sense. Especially since I used the enum value to save. For example, when you buy something at the shop, I just save what ID of the item you bought.

The big change is that now I have a specific SO that each table can target. Any SO that wants to be in the database has to inherit from this database-specific SO. This ensures that all SOs referenced have an ID field that I can manipulate. 

Of course, some issues popped up, but for the most part, things went well. The table that caused the most issues was the Sfx table since it has 50+ entries. Some of these things are not 100% necessary, but they do make me feel good so in a way they are important. 

What's Next

I am still missing a couple of art assets. For the UI, most of it is still a placeholder. To be fair, the placeholders match what I want quite well. For the characters, I am just missing one. So next month, I want to get as many assets updated as possible.

I also want to focus on just fixing or removing things. I have to be very hard on myself and stop adding new features or refactoring code. 

The goal is to participate in Steam Next Fest February 2024. That is my focus!

If you like Yurei, please consider wishlisting it on [Steam]. It helps a lot with the Steam algorithm.

Follow my progress on Twitter @brightflask.