to make a long story short, I failed to complete Rogue Dug. I got some basic gameplay in (level generation, A* pathfinding, turn-based movement, etc), but then I got sick, and then I felt bad I was behind, which made me not want to work on it, and bla.

tl;dr, I failed to participate in the 7DRL this year!

sorry about that. I delayed Mysterious Space work for this, and in the end I have almost nothing to show for it.

(though that A* implementation… hm… could come in handy…)

ANYWAY: I HAVE resumed work on Mysterious Space! I believe I already mentioned this, but last week DDRKirby(ISQ) put together a forest world song. I’ve also been working on the mini-boss – Regenerating Rigel – and I’m happy to say that it’s very nearly complete! what remains now is some balancing issues (Rigel’s REALLY hard at low levels, and I have not tested its strength in co-op mode), and to smooooooth out its movement. but broken parts regenerate; other parts fire… it’s awesome!

I’ll put together a video for you guys soon!

ALSO: a long-standing music/sound effect volume issue with MonoGame (the main library Mysterious Space uses to do graphics, sound, etc) is finally getting resolved. there was a report of this issue back in 2014, but it seemed to have been forgotten, so I basically “necro”d the report 😛 fortunately, someone quickly posted “oh, yeah, I’ve got a fix for that,” and it looks like things are moving along to get this fix implemented!

this is the latest thread on the issue: https://github.com/mono/MonoGame/pull/3629 you’ll notice it’s still an “OPEN” issue. once that’s closed, I’ll download it, and give it a try!

“but what IS the problem?” you might be asking. the problem is: changing the MUSIC volume ALSO changes the SOUND EFFECT volume… so sound effects play at a volume that’s a combination of music volume and sound effect volume, while music plays according to music volume only…

yeah >_>

I’m glad this is getting resolved soon. I’d prefer to release Mysterious Space with working volume controls 😛 haha. I had looked into other music/sound effect libraries, but they’ve had various issues: some were super-old and no longer supported, others simply did not work, and others still PRESUMABLY work, but had no documentation, so I was unable to figure out how to get them working!

WELL: again, I’ll try to get a video update out soon.

and sorry again about the 7DRL fail. (at least there’s always next year! :P)