Hey everyone! With the first draft of my thesis successfully handed in, I finally have time to do game dev stuff again - and I already have some progress to report.
One of the first things I did was booting up the Artificial Selection demo on my Steam Deck. And I noticed that the controls were absolutely horrible, so I decided to do something about that.
The game is now comfortable to play with a gamepad! Though since some of the controls might not be self-explanatory, I decided to finally revamp the help screen. It now has an image rather than a list of button names most people don't even recognize:
Unfortunately, as is pointed out, the escape rooms cannot be played with a gamepad since the sticks aren't configured to work like a mouse - they rather "latch on" to the closest button in any given direction (and since the buttons basically cover the whole screen, it can never really move around as intended). Making the sticks act like a cursor is apparently on the to-do list for Ren'Py (the game's engine), but it likely won't be implemented for quite a while.
However! The game is fully playable on a Steam Deck - including escape rooms - since the trackpads are configured to work just like a mouse. I'm happy with this compromise, since desktop gamers can probably afford to switch to the mouse every 1-2 hours, while the Steam Deck doesn't require any additional accessories, making the game playable on the go.
Since I already gave one part of the help screen a beauty treatment, I went ahead and did it for the others as well:
Did you even know about all of these? Well, now you do!
Last, and admittedly least, the mouse help screen:
I know, it's a lot to take in. Take your time.
Either way, I haven't updated the demo and the beta yet, since I still need to work out a difficulty with the main menu and the save/load screens. For some reason, the navigation is wonky as hell and it's impossible to reach the file slots on the right with a gamepad or keyboard. But once that's taken care of, you can see the changes for yourself!
I'm also considering adding a customizable shortcut for both the gamepad and keyboard. Some players might save a lot, while others periodically adjust the settings, and yet others want to stare longingly at Kydan in the profile menu from time to time. Since this behavior varies from player to player, I want to give you the ability to decide for yourself which shortcut you want. Implementing that is the next thing on my list.
That's it for today's rather technical update.
As always, thanks for your support!