Reflex – Dev Diary 77 – Tweaking

This week continues the final stages of development for Reflex. The focus this time has been on Achievements for the Steam and Google Play versions of the game.

First up was to get an official build ready for submission to Google Play. Thankfully YoYoGames has a reasonably helpful document about setting up a game and integrating the extension. The downside is the supplied game project that is supposed to explain how it works is badly documented. Anyway, the process for signing up to be a Google Play developer is a long and particularly complex affair. And once again required a whole new set of graphics and the achievement icons all needed to be saved out at yet another resolution. After about 4 hours the process was complete and I had set up Reflex on Google Play for internal testing.

Next came the process of getting a build onto the Google Play store so I could install it on my tablet and try it out. 12 builds later and I had adapted the game to sign in to Google Play and start to post achievement details.

Previously, the achievements were saved as a part of the settings for the game. After implementing the functionality in the Android version I realised that they needed to be synced rather than using local data. This is because, if an Android player decided to sign out of Google Play and then sign in as a different user the achievements would match up with the new account.

So, after a lot of fiddling about (thanks Google), the Achievements are now synced when the game starts or the player signs in for both Steam and Google Play.

After getting a nice and stable Android build I sat down and played through most of the game (yikes). This highlighted a couple of very minor issues that needed addressing. Here’s this weeks changelog:

• Android achievements work a bit differently to Steam. Incremental achievements do not automatically unlock when they reach the 100% mark.
• Attempt workaround for QOI decompression (GMS slowdown issue on Android)
• Hide achievements when Google Play is not available
• Remove early access display block ready for final release on Steam
• Don’t display trophy notice on Android when Achivements are synced
• Fix Ruination trophy – wasn’t counting up
• Fix reactor 4 showing lights at the wrong angle
• Sync Steam achievements both ways
• Adjust intro/outro textfader to fit better
• Fix camera not being active (no_camera variable misplaced)
• Add in some more savegame instances to fix it so you no longer need to redo level 24 of a world if you didn’t do level 1 of the next.
• Fix tutorial animation outline
• Add texture prefetching to hopefully help Android performance for sequences (QOI issue)
• Add in No Google Play notice when needed
• Trophy award notification display no longer shown if Google Play is active (same as Steam if overlay is on)
• Trophy ping sound no longer plays if steam overlay or google play is active
• Fix level ranks not being reset on new game start
• Fix save after a world is complete and if the player immediately quits the game
• Fix Android achievements by actually using the correct codes – grr
• Reduce screengrab size to help performance on Android
• Set up app on Google Play
• Add Google Play Services
• Add GP Achievements and signin
• Fix tutorials constantly creating themselves – opps