I disappeared for some time into Amazon's New World, and while there I didn't do anything here. But I've emerged from my New World addiction, and I'm back to working on this. I've built, discard, and rebuilt the entire thing just to gain more confidence with the system. I tried Unity 2021.2, but after winning or losing the entire game (except the skybox) turned black, so I gave up on that. My focus now is on making some actual gameplay. As in, something that isn't just a game with cool looking objects sitting around and enemy robots that just hang out. I'm nerfing the starting pistol, adding in more of the Unity-made assets, and putting actual thought into what I place into the game and why. Once I get somewhere, in that I have at least one or two interesting systems, I'll throw in a bunch of random building and robots just to flesh it out and push out a new version again. With all of my practice I've been able to use NavMesh agents to move robots in an acceptable fashion. I'm getting better at modifying the FPS Microgame that I'm asset flipping. I'm still stumped as to fixing the landmines, and I'm becoming convinced it is the mesh I purchased off of the asset store, so I'm planning to try making my own (much simpler) mesh. Possibly even just a blinking red light that pokes out of the ground and is barely visible. Looking at my Steam statistics almost no one cares about this game. Which is fine and expected. It does suck! Someday I think it will be better, but not now. I had originally planned to put in lots of stupid Steam achievements. But then I thought about it, and lots of stupid Steam achievements aren't useful. So I think I'll have very few achievements, and they will be meaningful. So no Steam achievements will appear anytime soon. One thing I definitely need to work on is the art assets for the game. Art assets are hard tough...

I have successfully made a new version of the game and uploaded it to steam. This is a very experimental phase for me. I'm still learning more about navigating through Steam than I am about game development. But progress has been made. In terms of game play, the major update is that I made robots patrol. Some patrol very fast, and are quite dangerous because of it. Other groups patrol very slowly, and one of them is homing in on the player continuously. The entire game was rewritten from scratch (not that there was a lot there) because in my first version I made some very poor choices about using git and laying out my Unity project. I fully expect a third rewrite from scratch is coming soon, because while I did better this time, I still didn't do well. My original content is still the land mines that I coded up. All the rest of this is just asset flips, mostly the Unity FPS Microgame. There is now only one cluster of landmines, around the sniper rifle. The grass is much more normal sized, so you can see through it. I remade the map in the spirit of the old map, but it is different now. The pistol still has a tremendous range. The Unity provided jetpack is in the level, but there are no clues as to where it is, and it isn't needed yet. Assume that in a version coming soon that the sniper rifle will be moved to the top of the construction skeleton, and the jetpack will be required to acquire the sniper rifle. The final version playtested on my mac, so I'll reenable the macos version. The previous version worked on my mac at one point, but I never playtested the final version. I added a quit button to the pause menu while in game, so you are no longer trapped in the game if you play it! And since you aren't trapped, it now plays full screen. It was windowed before because I had no way to exit it. You're still trapped in the game at the win screen and lose screen, but I'll fix that eventually. My plan is to just remove those screens completely. There is only one resolution, which is one step down from max resolution, mostly to prove that I could do that. Now that I can, I think I know how to make windowed or full-screen optional, and how to let the player select the resolution they want. The linux version has some weird stutters for me at the start of the game. They don't happen in the Unity editor, just in the executable. I have no idea what they are being caused by. Coming soon changes in my mind are making the skybox more interesting, making the pistol into a short range weapon, providing more of the weapons from the Unity FPS Microgame, and more interesting terrain and structures. I had planned to put a steam achievement in this version, but I gave up. I'll try later. As for what I actually do for the next version it is hard to say. I didn't think any of my plans for this version were overly ambitious until I attempted to implement them. Then it suddenly seemed like I was trying to swim up a waterfall. I need to take smaller steps here. Lastly, at no point should anyone be nice to me about the quality of this game. I'm under no illusions about it. I want real critiques because I need to improve, not a participation award because you're afraid of hurting my feelings.

Now that this is finally on steam, and some people have played it, and some people have failed, I'm working hard on a new release. The choices I made with regards to git version control and my project layout back in May have not worked out for me. So I abandoned what I had, and started over with hopefully better choices made. By this weekend I hope to release a game that is very much in the spirit of my initial steam release, but slightly better. I also, despite being an Apple/Macintosh users myself, failed to confirm that the final build I uploaded worked correctly for macos. At least one person out there tried it, and it failed. So I took macos off of the steam store for now. I develop under linux, and I test under linux, and I put too much faith into things just working. I can test on both windows and macos, though, so for version 2.0 I shall. Version 2 should have a steam achievement in it. It already has the new Unity input system (although it doesn't use it yet), and I'm remaking all my buildings to try and do a better job on them. I'll put lots of robots in to fight, but they won't be final versions. Hopefully I will have time for implement some experiments, such as random patrols, differing weapons and capabilities, stuff like that. I do hope to include the nerf for the starter blaster which will limit its range and accuracy by a lot. That should force people to find and use the sniper rifle.

Back in late May, I started the process of publishing a game to steam. I didn't have a name for it at that point. I came up Ningakki XXVI FPS. Nin is Sumerian for lady, often used in the name of a diety. The gakki part is just a made up word that sounded cool to me. The Roman numeral XXVI refers to my plan to place 101 robots into the world, as 101 is the 24th prime number. FPS because this is a first person shooter game based on the Unity FPS Microgame example project. Yesterday the end of the waiting period ended, this game was supposed to enter early release. I can tell that it did, but I don't have a download button. I'm not sure why. I'm still trying to figure all of this out. Once a get a download button, the game will be playable finally! It has a good ten minutes of content in it currently. Some robots, and old factory, the structure of a skyscraper. There is a sniper rifle hidden near the skyscraper, surrounded by landmines. And the game can be quite hard without the sniper rifle, so you want to find it. The landmines are the most original thing in the game that I created. My terrain and scenery are just assets purchased from the store and rearranged or used by me. But the landmine I had to modify to make it work with the Unity FPS Microgame. Once I have this up, and someone can play it, I have grand plans for learning more Unity. Ultimately, I need to make this into something that isn't clearly an asset-flip. Clearly, it is currently an asset flip. My immediate plans are to add a steam achievement, begin converting the game to the new input system (to get controller support fully working), and try to get things like windowed mode versus full-screen working, as well as some resolution options. Also, I need to delete it and start over from scratch. I thought I had some good ideas about using git and laying out my project back in May when I started this. I was wrong. And now seems like the best time to try to fix it, when restarting the game isn't an unthinkable solution. Learning Unity in my spare time has been hard. Learning Steam in my spare time has been hard. Having any spare time at all is surprisingly hard! But I shall persevere. This will probably never be a great game, but it will be a game.