Hey! We've almost made it to the end of the first half of 2023! Holy crap! Hi! If you're new here, you may call be Colbeala, or shortly, Cole. I am making this thing called "Stramedia: my_MISADVENTURE", and it's a game, and somehow I am still working on it! Still got it! Unbelievable. I am having a very hard time trying to think of a good sentence to start this blog post off. In fact, this year's been probably the nuttiest so far, in both good and worst ways imaginable. [spoiler]The balding P man is still breathing, sadly, but at least I know where he lives now.[/spoiler] First off, let me start off with something pretty exciting. Since Stramedia's been getting a huge 3D makeover this past year, I have finally overhauled the entire Steam store page of the game so it's finally up to date! And I probably will do it a few more times as the game continues to develop. So now, this game's store page has got: newer screenshots; newer thumbnail art; the cleaner 'About the Game' section, now with the obligatory [strike]distracting[/strike] animated headers that you can barely escape from nowadays with some of the more recent games! Also - also, I ended up whipping up a new teaser video you can watch that may or may not have accidentally originated from the latest "Development Video Chequ Grumbles" entry that shows off the stuff I've been doing over the course of the year! [previewyoutube=XKRErewLiSs;full][/previewyoutube] But now here's another thing I've been wanting to talk about. The alias change. "What the %&(# is a Polyvishap Productions??", I hear nobody asking, "What happened to Retroey Doofery Productions?!?!?!"-- that alias is dead. sorta. Well, I thought it was a necessary change, because - let's be honest for a moment. "Retroey Doofery" is a stupid alias to have. Especially when one may assume if retro-styled stuff is all what I really strictly do, when it really isn't the case in reality. Though I do enjoy mixing things up together and seeing what comes out as a result of said experiments. Plus, I code, draw, (somewhat) animate, make weird music too, I kinda fit the description of what people would refer to as a 'polymath', which explains the 'Poly' part is 'Polyvishap'. (Vishap is just literally Armenian for 'dragon', because I like dragons. and my fursona is a dragon. I know, I live a very exciting life being this "creative". But the person is still me - I didn't go anywhere. Yet. Though, I am in the process of finally graduating college and acquiring that Programmer's Degree! (just a step further away from the meat grinder and closer to doing many things I love! Drawing, babbling like a nerdy idiot, and mostly programming-programming-programming...I might have to find time to figure out a schedule for when I can focus on potential job work and devote the rest of it to my hobbies, including development of Stramedia...) Also, if you're not really picking up on any clues yet, allow me to ram the upcoming highlight home with my to-do list as of May 2023:
So yeah! I am actually sticking with Unity this time around!...if it wasn't clear the first time. (and considering just how much shit I've done and have to do next) What do I think of the engine itself? ...Eh, it's alright! John Riccitiello is still a twat though, but the engine itself? I sorta have gotten used to it. I honestly have found myself preferring C# over anything like C++, which is weird to say, cos before college, I've been more of an HTML, CSS and visual coding type of a person. Now look where I am right now! On my way to get the Programmer's degree! Been having fun figuring out stuff I've always wanted to program into the game, and it's been somewhat fun, now that I've got my brain wrapped around this sort of stuff! So! While I was absent from Steam...

• ...I got gamepad controls to be reconfigurable! They follow the same process as keyboard controls reconfigurations (they are processed through the same script, which already has been hell setting up for the player controller object script, so that takes care of that), and here's the real kicker: the reconfigured gamepad controls are saved separately from each other! Meaning that if you reconfigure controls with the DualShock 4 controller, the rebinds will only apply to the designated DualShock 4 controller action maps and are ignored by Xbox and Nintendo Switch Pro Controllers. However, there are action maps that are shared between any other gamepads that aren't Xbox, PS4/PS5, Nintendo Switch Pro Controllers and otherwise considered by the game's input system as a "Generic type", so do keep that in mind!
• I am not scrapping puzzles, mini-games or anything like that! Puzzle functions are finally in place, so I can... uh... wait, what can I do with these-- OH YEAH, MAKE PUZZLES AND MINI-GAMES. DUH! WHO WOULD HAVE FIGURED!?!? I basically got the main puzzle handler system ready! Though I do feel like I could also implement some kind of a hint system...? I think I will figure that out later. (Also - gameapd cursors for puzzles are in, too).
• Currently improving the combat system and exploring how to work melee weapons in aswell!

And that's all I can say, for now. The priority order keeps on changing, which is...woah. It's a bogus thing. [hr][/hr] Now, I really don't have anything else to say, other than that I am absolutely sure Stramedia's development will definitely continue onwards with Unity - definitively - full-stop, and I still have quite a lot of stuff to do, which is honestly very exciting!!! Though, it's probably gonna be a long while until I make a lengthy post such as this one. And since I like making smaller dev clips to share, well... I figured you guys may wanna know where I like sharing that stuff. Did you know that Stramedia had it's own Twitter that I once deleted? Well, I recently reinstated it, and I will be using it to post short devclips there (@stramediagame). I plan on expanding that towards my YouTube channel's "Shorts" section, so it's not just a few occasional bullshitty memes, I'm still working on figuring out a more suitable Mastodon instance for everything I can do, but right now, there are plenty of development clips of Stramedia on the People Making Games instance (RetroeyDoofery@peoplemaking.games), but after I move to a new instance, given the new alias change (and since Mastodon currently doesn't allow for username changes...), you will still be able to view the archived posts on there. So, I guess that would be all, for now! Thank you once again for putting up with my another session of rambles, and I hope to see you again very soon. Be kind to each other! (...Sure, a bit of teasing is allowed, but still - be kind to each other.) Make love and videogames for the better tomorrow, not war and NFTs. -Nickolai Cole/Colbeala/Retroey Doofery Filipanov