steam

Halloween Forever game dev: Steam SDK first steps and some new level tiles

Getting started integrating the Steam SDK into Halloween Forever

This week I started spending some time with the Steamworks web panel. There are a lot of fields and tabs to fill in but focusing on one section at a time seems to be manageable. I was using this Gamemaker tutorial that I mentioned in a previous post as my guide so far:YoYo Games Ltd. – Using The Steamworks SDK With GameMaker: Studio

Using that I was able to get the Steam Community widget popping up when I launched a local build of Halloween Forever. Success!
https://www.instagram.com/p/_DdyIgP2H4/

Spooky Church level tiles!

For my Wednesday night Twitch stream I worked on some new level tiles for Halloween Forever. Still prototyping, but I think this spooky church tileset may have some potential. Also my friend Dan was requesting a frog enemy to appear in the game. Could be they’re the ones inhabiting the church! You can watch the stream via my Youtube account below. Follow me on Twitch so you can be notified of when I go live: twitch.tv/imaginarymonsters

Here’s a square screenshot of some of the additions that are shaping up for this new tileset.
https://www.instagram.com/p/_GTU1SP2O5/

Further noodling with the Steam publishing settings

After even more fiddling around with the build submission settings I was able to submit a build (not final, just for testing still) to Steam and have it appear in my publishing account Steam library.

I can’t actually launch it yet since Steam returns an error of “Failed to Start Game (Missing Executable)” even though I did set my .exe as the launch file. Curious thing! I’ll look into it and it might just be a wrong setting somewhere.

My goal for this weekend was “get a testing version of Halloween Forever on Steam”, so I can safely tick that off my list.

Halloween Forever got Greenlit on Steam!

Awesome News!

The morning after Thanksgiving I was checking my email and I saw this message in my inbox:

steam_greenlight
Halloween Forever had been Greenlit and approved to join the Steam catalog! This immediately snapped me out of my post-feasting stupor. I think I might have danced around a little bit too. Awesome news. Since then I’ve been collecting some necessary reading on getting a Gamemaker build ready for Steam integration. Specifically these three so far if you’re interested:

So What Comes Next?

Firstly I’m going to make sure I can get the current version of Halloween Forever up and launching via Steam. I have a short to medium list of new features and some content I would like to add to make the game more packed with cool stuff and polish for Steam. My tentative list, no promises:

    Some menu polish and refinement. Sound and music toggles
    An additional world or two plus bosses.
    Some new secrets, but trying to not largely change existing world designs. I’m not sure if I will spread the 6 secret runes out through all the worlds or keep them all in place for worlds 1-3.
    Additional music, ideally a custom level theme per world. Currently talking to Robert Mostyn about this!
    Some control remapping would be awesome (at least for keyboard, also possibly for gamepad). Better gamepad support than is currently in too (works with xbox 360 format usb controllers but maybe not other things).
    Switching to 16:9 instead of 4:3, or even view size toggles.

On top of that list I’m considering making the current version of Halloween Forever available via Early Access while things get tweaked and additions get made. Ideally it would be a short Early Access run, maybe 3-4 months, and I’m interested in trying it out on a small scale with a game like this. Must learn somehow!

I’ll be continuing to post updates and info on how things are progressing here as it goes. Looking forward to it!