Sakawochi development thread

Wendigo

I did some adjustments to the rendering code that will hopefully fix the flickering which occurs on some devices.
Please tell me if the game runs better now.
Little incentive: The linked version already contains a new unreleased feature

You can download it here:
https://www.magentacloud.de/lnk/gQk5kuWa

Install it with this command in the Ubuntu Touch Terminal App:
pkcon install-local --allow-untrusted sakawochi.wendigosoft_0.2.9_all.click
(You can later remove it like any other App)

advocatux

@wendigo if you want people testing your app, you can posted it in the OpenStore group too

Cesar Herrera

This post is deleted!

Cesar Herrera

@wendigo I was not able to get the file correcly (and with .click). @advocatux gave it to me. I have installed it and it goes. Thanks a lot.

matteo

Thank you @Wendigo I installed your app on my BQ E5 and now it works perfectly! Nice job

Wendigo

Version 0.2.10 is now live on OpenStore

Changes:

Fixed a bug that caused flickering on some devices
Fish food is now a limited resource and needs to be collected by catching snails, that appear in your aquarium from time to time.
Reduced price for crabs
Blowfish now grows a little faster
New sound effects

Next on the roadmap is a revamp of the localization system that makes it easier to add additional languages.

I wish you much fun!

advocatux

@wendigo hi, thanks again for your work! The sound of the snails dying is pretty funny XD

I have a question and a minor issue.

Question. Once you've read the instructions the first time, is there an easy way to access the instructions while playing your game?
Minor issue. I think this starting screen is confusing because it says "Please wait while loading" but you can see it's always "Loading...", and you can press the START button at anytime, and the game starts.

Wendigo

@advocatux said in Sakawochi development thread:

@wendigo hi, thanks again for your work! The sound of the snails dying is pretty funny XD

I'm glad you like it. It was also much fun recording. Didn't even have to raise the pitch afterwards. ^^

Question. Once you've read the instructions the first time, is there an easy way to access the instructions while playing your game?

Currently only by resetting the game (which removes all you progress). But I could add a button somewhere that shows the tutorial again. I need to tidy up the settings screen, it gets more and more convoluted. The credits also need a dedicated screen. Need to think about where to put it all.

Minor issue. I think this starting screen is confusing because it says "Please wait while loading" but you can see it's always "Loading...", and you can press the START button at anytime, and the game starts.

The whole loading screen was only made for Android since I was told that web games only start playing music after the screen was touched. But GDevelop only lets me check if the game is running on Mobile or Desktop. I found a way to read out the browsers operating system via navigator.userAgent or navigator.platform which outputs "Linux armv7l". But I still need to investigate what (if at all) the UT browser App returns when running a local web game.
I think I should rename it on Android to something like "Tab 'Start' to begin".

arubislander

Hi @Wendigo

Thank you for the very sleek looking app. One observation. The verb is 'Tap' when interacting with a touch screen via finger presses, not 'Tab'.

Great work otherwise, keep it up!

Wendigo

Thanks, good catch.

Wendigo

Version 0.2.11 is now live on OpenStore

Changes:

Fixed a bug that prevented the activation of the fish food button when only crabs were in the tank.
Fixed a bug that limited the size bar of fish to about 3/4 of its full size.
New feature: Earn some coins by collecting plastic waste that floats through the tank.
Reduced price for decorations.
Reworked the localization system to make it easier to add new languages

Due to the first mentioned bug which I consider game breaking, I had to push this Update a little earlier than intended.
But at least the background work for the localization has been done.
If you like to contribute an additional language, you can edit the json file linked at the end of this post. (I need to create a repository for this later)
Looks like I don't have permission to upload text files here so please save the text into a file and name it for example "en.json" for English.

Unfortunately the format doesn't support line breaks, so please insert a "\n" manually whenever you want to start a new line.
If it is too cumbersome for you just eyeball it, I can adjust things later.
As a license I have chosen CC-BY-SA. Please stick with it since different licenses for different languages would make things complicated.
If you later intend to edit an existing version of a language file just add a new line (\n) to the "translator" field with your name.

Template file:
https://pastebin.com/M7cPHJci

matteo

It seems I am also not able to attach here text files. However, I pastebined the italian translation here below. I hope I didn't misinterpret the fields to be translated; if so just let me know, I will update the translations once I'll be back from my holidays. In addition, consider I didn't pay attention to the lines segregation (by \n) since I don't know how it will render in your game, so feel free to change it as you prefer.

https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/KHsCkNJ42b/

Wendigo

Wow that was fast. Many thanks for taking the time to translate the game.
See you on the credits screen

Lakotaubp

Possible plastic bottle bug. Three bottles only got coin on first one.

Wendigo

The garbage bin slowly turns black for every collected plastic part. After collecting 4 parts it is full and you get a coin.
There is currently a bug that grants the player a coin after collecting the first plastic part instead of the 4th. The bug only occurs once when the very first part gets collected after the update is installed. It isn't triggered for new players that just installed the game or when the player resets the game. I need to investigate what causes this behaviour.

Lakotaubp

Thanks for the explanation. Quite addictive.

advocatux

@Wendigo this is the Spanish translation https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/mSgVGFpg75/

Characters & lines counted

Wendigo

Thanks a lot @advocatux .
Now I can start drawing the flags.

advocatux

@wendigo you're welcome!

Wendigo

Version 0.2.12 is now live on OpenStore

Xenial support
Add Italian and Spanish localization (BIG thanks to matteo and advocatux)
Add backup save game for more reliability
Sea grass now adds another snail for additional fish food
Fix save every frame bug in fish food logic
Fix fish sometimes turns multiple times
Fix wrong order in choose language flags spinner
New fix for screen flickering on some devices

The backup save game was originally made for the Fairphone2 where closing of the browser or Web-Apps sometimes makes Unity or the whole phone reboot. Occasionally this seems to wipe the browsers local storage where the game is saved. Unfortunately the patch didn't help against this issue but it should make the save games more reliable on other devices.
I need to find a way to fix this issue on FP2 though. Since the local storage seems to get wiped about every two weeks when the memory bug reboots the phone I have to find a way to save the game to the file system instead. Unfortunately the Ubuntu Touch documentation lacks information on how to do it.
Maybe I could wrap the game in an Electron container. This would indeed give me access to the file system but it would also increase the file size from about 3.5mb to around 50mb, save games wouldn't be able to get ported and I'd need to run the game via XMir (need to test this first). If I'm really lucky Xenial might fix it but I couldn't test it yet since I'm still waiting for the upgrade to show up on my phone. If you have any problems with the game on Xenial please let me know.

A bug in the fish food logic made the game save every frame when spoiled fish food was lying on the ground. After the fix the game should run much faster.
However the new fix for the flickering / black screen issue is said to cost a little performance so it might not be noticeable that much.

Unfortunately the sea horse didn't make it into this version since I got carried away and spent a lot of time adding new features to the GDevelop game engine instead.
I decided to use the sea horses as test candidates for the upcoming breeding system. In the next version (if there aren't any bigger issues in 0.2.12) sea horses will be able to mate when they are grown up and have children whose colour varies a little from that of their parents. So you will be able to breed individuals of different colour.
In the next step the economy will get an overhaul and I'll add a quest system where you get asked to breed a certain kind of fish to get a reward. Since this will be a really big update, it's going to take a bit longer to release.

So please be patient and stay tuned.