Wonder if Al Lowe ever found Disks 2 and 3?

Happy New Year, friends!

Let’s start this year off with some fun and games. We’re doing an extended livestream this Saturday, Jan. 1, 2022 from 1 pm to 5 pm PST. As usual, we’ll be on Twitch at https://www.twitch.tv/transolargames.

Our plan is to play a bit of Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption from the beginning, talking about some of the design and development decisions we made, and things that went right and wrong with the game. Join us to ring in the new year and comment about what worked for you, and what didn’t!

The past few years have been rough for all of us. We’ve all been faced with different challenges and scary conditions. In our case, it’s involved extended illness, unexpected caregiving responsibilities, and more. For much of the time, our game development efforts have taken a back seat to other tasks and distractions.

We’re making some resolutions for 2022.  I’m rededicating myself to playing a bigger role in design, development, and promotion of our games. I’ll have fun too; I’m just not going to let the distractions take over my entire life as they have for the last few years. We’ll release Summer Daze at Hero-U: Tilly’s Tale by Spring.

Lori is similarly committed to completing the dialogue for Ifeyo’s Adventure in 2022. JP and Al have already created the art for Ifeyo’s game. The game takes place at Hero-U in the Summer after Tilly’s Tale (and after the events of Rogue to Redemption). Strange things are happening at the school, but the Harvest Festival must go on – This time, Ifeyo is in charge. He needs to balance making new friends and helpers for the festival, dealing with an invasion of Konks, and learning a ritual to summon his very own Familiar.

The next game we are developing in the Summer Daze series is Sami’s Story.  JP has created some wonderful art for this adventure tale of a Doggie who wants to be a Hero. We even have some preliminary artwork for Puzzleworthy. It’s just a Simple Matter of designing, writing, creating music, and developing the games. 😉 No problem… But it will take time.

Linux (and other) Regression Testing Needed

A few months ago, I received a report from a player of the Linux version of Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption about some significant new problems in version 2.2.1 on Steam. The reported problems are:

1. Switching between locations keep more time than usual
2. The main character often “stills” after performing an action. he does not freeze, nor the game itself does – you can still see the breathing movement and move the mouse pointer -, he just remains for several seconds in the same position.
3. In the very first sequence, Shawn is supposed to get scared by a passing drat: now, the drat does not appear and Shawn stays there for a long time – can’t even ski, just have to wait to the next scene, inside the study.
4. Dialogues: in almost any dialogue scene, the background goes blank, leaving only the characters’ portraits and text visible. It occurred in Terk’s office, the classroom and the training room. I didn’t play further, so I don’t know if this happens later in the game too.

As we have no Linux testing ability currently, and limited bandwidth for any testing, I’d appreciate it if some of our backers can help. If you have Linux, please let us know at support@hero-u.net whether you see these issues. Anyone with Mac or Windows, if you see similar symptoms, also please let us know!

If you see these or similar issues in 2.2.1, I can put 2.2 back up on the Beta channel on Steam for comparison (“regression”) testing.

I’d also like to line up some Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android testers for Summer Daze at Hero-U: Tilly’s Tale. I need to do some research on making the latter two versions available. Possibly we’ll initially launch just for PC systems, with Switch and mobile versions a few months later.

About That New Year

Our plan is for 2022 to be a much better year than either of the last two. We’ll release Summer Daze at Hero-U: Tilly’s Tale early in the year. Then we will focus on Summer Daze at Hero-U: Ifeyo’s Adventure for a 2023 release. In Lori’s copious free time, she’ll start writing Sami’s Story. And I’m going to start designing puzzles for our puzzle adventure game, Puzzleworthy.

We’ll continue to host Live Streams with games and prizes. Our new game is AlphaBot-ticelli. Like Botticelli, it’s a two-part game – Stumping and guessing. We come up with a name, tell you the first letter, and you try to guess it. But first you have to stump us. Each player is assigned the next letter of the alphabet, and challenges us to find a name or word starting with that letter that answers their challenge.

As an example, “My letter is Z. It’s a place you go to see animals.” An obvious answer is “zoo,” so probably too easy a challenge. But we might say, “zoetrope,” and that works if we can justify it. (We saw a zoetrope in Culver City that showed animated animals.)

If we get stumped, or if stream participants think our answer sucks, the challenger gets to ask a yes or no question about our secret name. If we answer “Yes,” they can go again or guess the name.

If the game turns out to be fun, it can become one of our staples for future streams.

We hope all of you have a magnificent – but also fun and challenging – 2022. After all, it’s human nature to love to be challenged; if the game (of life) is too easy, it’s hardly worth playing.

May your 2022 real-life games be worthy and fun adventures!