WEEK OF 2023/03/06: FONKING...

ANOTHER WEEK ANOTHER SLIGHTLY LATE BLOG POST!!!

apologies.... was partly waiting for some things on Friday, but then the weekend rolled around, and figured I'd just wait til Monday!!!

This week has a nice handful of mini contributions from people here about what they've been up to, and as always, how progress in general has been going with the game!!!

POSTERS INCOMING SOON

by ninjamuffin99

A few days ago, the shipment of POSTERS arrived! As mentioned in last week's post, it's a small batch, but we should be able to get started with shipping posters out to people soon, along with having people be able to update their addresses and all that!!

Within the next week or two, posters shipments should start coming out and being sent to people!! Similar with the physical OST stuff (and pretty much all other rewards) to get through EVERY reward to be fully shipped, it will take time!! It's a whole lotta damn orders!!!

the testing shenanigans

by ninjamuffin99

over the past while, I like to hope we've been a lot more mindful of our WORKFLOWS. A major aspect that we've been neglecting a biiiiiiit has been TESTING the game. While we feel like there's a bit of a light at the end of the tunnel on the work we are doing, it's ALWAYS good to be constantly testing with not just yourself, but with OTHERS especially if they're on the team with you.

For a long while, it was really just me and Eric, the two programmers, alongside PhantomArcade, who would be testing the game and playing around with builds. Even with JUST that, things caused snafus!!!! Having more than one programmer working in a codebase requires a LOT more coordination. They both need to be able to understand each other, and understand what the goal of the project and code is. Know where to put complexity, and where to simplify shit. Basically, there have been a good handful of times when either me or Eric do something to code, and it busts up for the other!!!

plural programmers, singular source code

As what you can call the "lead programmer" I do let this fall into my territory of responsibility. I've never had a full software job or anything like that, I've only ever made small games where I was pretty much the sole programmer! I've always been cautious and a bit wary of working with other programmers. The classic saying of "what one programmer can do in one month, two programmers will do in two months." or someshit like that. Basically, adding more people onto code doesn't exactly means things get done faster!!! One thing however that I always feel haunted by is the bit of the cautionary tale of Yandere Simulator. This isn't hate post or anything lol, I really have nothing against him or his game. BUT when I was a teenager when he got a deal of sort with the publisher TinyBuild, where one part of the deal was to get a programmer to help him rewrite the codebase. But that lead to development issues it seemed, and they went their separate ways. ALSO DISCLAIMER, MAYBE THAT STORY IS ALL BULLSHIT LOLOL but anyways I always looked at it as a bit of a cautionary tale. Software is very delicate, and more cooks in the kitchen doesn't always lead to the best stew. However, after spending a lot of time on Newgrounds and working with people like artists, musicians, animators, AND on the rare occasion... another programmer... I've learned that collaboration IS a skill, and of course, collaboration between PROGRAMMERS is a skill as well (as seen by like... every major tech company obviously working decently well with more than one coder, lol).

So I think working with another programmer and getting through some of the growing pains will be good for not just the game, but me and Eric too. To get back on track with the point of this all, we are slowly making workflow strides together. Learning how to work WITH each other. One thing we've been doing (that really, we shoulda been doing FULLY from the start) is having the main github branch be protected, and having each others work need to be approved by each other. Working just 1:1 with another programmer it's nice, we both need each other and work closer with code that way, or I at least hope so! This week we merely started it though, the plan could be a dud, but I think it's always worth keeping an eye on these things, and trying out different strategies of like.... development workflows and shiiiiit. Code gotta be clean!!!

testing pipelines

this ones a bit less verbose than the previous part of testing workflow. To get test builds for the game, we use Github Actions to compile the game, and spit it out to private itch page. That was busted for a while tho!!! I did some research into lix, but it ended up bein a dud, so I just fixed the busted shit (and by that i mean a new haxelib version came out that fixed my issue, lol) SO now we have auto builds again yahoo!!!! also github gave us beta for the 64bit action runners and god damn those r fast.... lol

Here's Eric's Update!

by Eric

I haven't posted an update in a while! Cam got into a lot of the stuff I was going to say, but I do feel like we work well together, especially when we divide up tasks based on our skill sets (for instance, Cam is good at getting features off the ground quickly, while I tend to be more interested in architecting systems and thinking through what may need to be added in the long-term).

Most of what I've been doing in the past couple weeks is fixing bugs related to the game itself, as well as implementing stuff for cutscene and animation playback. We've got a lot of spicy stuff coming that would melt your computer if we tried to play them as a frame-by-frame spritesheet, so using a combination of videos and piecewise texture atlases is the solution to that. Further changes to how assets get loaded, cached, and unloaded will be needed too. Did you know that the web build of the game downloads EVERY character sprite before loading any song?

This week in particular has been heavily focused on a pet project of mine. I've been keeping it fairly secret since I started, but it's been going through months of development on-and-off and I'm really proud of how far it's come. Let's just say that a particular subset of the FNF community that has been starving for a while will be absolutely FEASTING after the update.

Input survey has been delayed because of the above work, but I'll be certain to get it out to people fairly soon.

Also since Shinji went on a rant about games here's my rant I heard Bloodborne was really good and I was like "I'm gonna go buy it and try it out" but then I learned it was one of those dumb shit console exclusives that I can't play and now I'm upset

About Changing Name in Credits

by Shingi

Yes - you will be able to change your credits once the new Backer Portal is done. (ETA for that is roughly a month from now)

In less interesting news, i just started Stardew Valley after being a long time fan of Harvest Moon (Friends of Mineral Town on the GBA to be more specific). Is it just me or do the newer HM/Story of Season titles not feel as interesting to play as that one? I think i might end up ranting about games one of these posts...

bdg is my best friend, reply if bdg is your best friend too

by Kawa

I have done many things recently, most of which are secrets or too boring to share. I did, however, make PhantomArcade watch this Brian David Gilbert video.

As far as my Thoughts About Video Games, either you want all of my opinions about Like a Dragon: Ishin and thus get stuck in a very long ramble, or you don't. Maybe next week, or if the people demand they want my feelings about "what if Yakuza, but Victorian-ish samurai with guns?"

Phantom Says: Testing, Testing, 1 - 2 - 3

by Phantom Arcade

Hello, one and all! Phantom Arcade here, for another Friday update. (I'm writing this at like 11:59pm on Friday night... it counts!)

I'll keep this one relatively short, so here we go! As I even write this at this very moment, Eric is breathing heavily into his mic, not realizing how close to his face it is, and how hard he breathes when flustered trying to solve a bug. Each breath is the breath of a man knee deep in hard work, I won't lie, I'm charmed. This week I wasn't even really drawing so much as I've been on a testing binge with some changes to the game's underlying foundations. One of the fun things about being a director is you get to visualize what you want and work with a team to bring it to fruition, wahoo! One of the bad things? Well, if things aren't right, you need to be on top of it to make sure it's all working as intended. When it comes to how the actual game plays and presents, if anything is wrong in that department, I take it as a personal failure.

Now that being said, if there's any issues it's often not really a matter of fault. No one's a mind reader, so it's just a process to make sure the things you build are implemented right. And we're not a large enough team to have a planner who's drafting down the ideas for a programmer, it's a matter of me sitting down one of one with everyone who's needed. This is usually done at the start of an idea, then people go and create that work with pretty much full autonomy, and then it's back to me to make sure it passes what's needed, and then worked into the game itself. So in instances like now, where grand changes have been made as we beef up to a stronger larger game, it means moooooore testing! But everyone on this team is a charmer, so these late night cram sessions are always chill.

That aside, all my creative work this week has been on the graphic design side, and I've had fun noodling around with fun new designs and banners that'll christen the return of Funkin, so while I'm excited to be back to drawing, this week of boots on the ground w the team definitely is satisfying seeing in-game progress move by leaps n bounds.

But importantly, while I haven't had much time for video games due to these things lately.... hah... well....

Demon Slayer season 3 premiered in America today, *IN THEATERS!!!

They showed off the final 2 episodes of season 2, the jaw dropping conclusion to tale of the Oiran, and then we got to see episode 1 of season 3... and wow! It was just as amazing as it was when I saw it during it's initial airing, maybe even better! The theater added so much to it all, and they had the sound in that bitch cranked up to fucking 11, some of that shit was makin me go deaf, but it was soooooooo juicy and satisfying. Season 3 seems to be off to a seriously crazy start, and having a full theater to hear and be apart of the reactions with, made it such a blast. It was just what I needed after a long week, and it helped get my mind off how sad I am we won't get a Puss N Boots Last Wish sequel for years to come... Oh lord, the theater's really had some good shit lately, not long ago Shin Ultraman was playing, and right before that was Shin Evangelion... what a time to be alive! In my greatest hopes and prayers, just like Demon Slayer coming back fills me with whimsy, I hope Funkin's return makes all fans eyes glow and shoot loads 10 miles high. That's my goal every time I sit down to work!

So much for keepin it short, lol. Enjoy the weekend! -PhantomArcade

closing thots fo the week

by ninjamuffin99

does feel like we are slowly and slowly making progress towards an end goal of not only getting a new lil update out, but also feels like we can somewhat see our path forward on working on the FULL GAME from here. Feels like our processes are getting smoothed out and all that. Only has taken a few years... but not bad for our first ambitious commercial game that most of us have worked on!!! We are really appreciative of the fact we have the chance to make this game, not just for THE PEOPLE but for OURSELVES. This is a game that we do want to work on, with people that we really enjoy working with, and doing it generally HOW we want to do it. The full independent dream... Does feel like despite the stumbling of working ourselves to this point, we are grateful to be able to do this for everyone. I look forward to not just the game coming out and being done, but also where I will be personally at that point in time. The experience and know how we all will get by the time that happens.... It's a lot to look forward to!!!

SONG OF THE WEEK (chosen by Shingi)