Hey everyone 👋🏻,

I hope you’ve all been enjoying the latest beta of The Costumemaster: Reloaded! I’ve been enjoying adding much polish to the game the past few days with the core experience almost complete.

To recap on what I’ve worked on recently:

• Ubuntu Touch click packages are now available for both the armhf and arm64 architectures.
• Snap packages are available via the Snap Store (snap install costumemaster-reloaded).
• A new final level and ending cutscene have been introduced (yes, the cutscene is skippable!).
• UserDefaults is now a singleton class that is universally accessible; this is a change on the developer side, so most players will not notice anything different.

With these changes in mind, I’ve been working on polishing the game up more and getting ready to release a public stable version that everyone can play on Windows, macOS, and Linux, along with betas for a mobile version of the game. What I’ve been doing so far is:

• Upgrading the rendering backend from GLES2 to GLES3. This should see some graphics improvements on other devices, with fallback compatibility to GLES2. This shouldn’t affect desktop builds or the web version but will pave the way for future releases on mobile devices.
• Adding more languages to the localization option. Currently, English and Spanish are implemented into the game (special thanks to Alex for the Spanish translation), but I’m looking to implement at least a few more languages such as French and German.
• Fixing minor inconsistencies and bugs. The map labeled tschmb_10 had a misaligned ~~1500-megawatt heavy-duty super-colliding~~ pressure carpet due to the child collision box being moved, but not the actual input. Additionally, on the macOS builds, players couldn’t use the controller due to the sandbox entitlements being misconfigured and not allowing access to USB or Bluetooth devices. Both of these issues have been fixed, but I plan to keep finding and resolving any issues like these.
• Refactoring bits of code. I’ve taken the SaveUtils class that provided functions to load and save states to a save file into a singleton like UserDefaults, which cleans up the code a bit. I’m also making things clearer and easier to read as I go when necessary.
• Tweaking the on-screen controls. This is more applicable to the mobile versions (including web and Ubuntu Touch) than it is to the desktop builds, but I’ve replaced the directional pad with an analog joystick, which should offer better movement and control over the player. This can be turned off in the settings (Debugging › Enable joypad) for those that either prefer the older D-Pad or are having issues with the joypad. There’s also a button for cloning the USB drive, making other levels possible to solve on mobile devices, which also fixed some issues surrounding mobile input.

There’s not much that needs to be done for the public stable release on desktops and the web, so I expect that I can release the game via Itch.io by mid-August. I do expect some hiccups here and there, namely pertaining to macOS since I’ll need to notarize the software (thankfully, Godot and Xcode 13 make this way easier than what happened with Unscripted thanks to Godot enabling code-signing and Xcode 13 introducing a new notarytool that simplifies notarization quite a bit). Additionally, I might also experience issues with pushing the game to the Mac App Store, since that’s a different beast altogether (not to worry, however; I have a backup plan for this).

After releasing the game for the desktop, I plan to focus my attention to mobile versions of the game, starting with iOS. Ubuntu Touch has served well as a testing ground for me with a mobile version, and it seems to work well, especially with the new joypad (minus some visual glitches on older hardware); additionally, I’ve been testing on iOS with deploying local copies to my phone, and it works much more smoothly. The visual glitches there had been easily resolved with the upgrade to GLES3.

On that note, there are a couple of things I’d like to do for mobile:

• Create a TestFlight beta for the iOS version. I’d like to make sure that the iOS version feels solid enough for release, and if it does make it to the App Store while the desktop version didn’t, make it compatible for M1 Macs.
• Improve mobile controls when necessary. The mobile controls are functional, but sometimes the targets are a bit harder to tap. I hope to fix this issue soon with better targets and visual feedback.
• Provide a PWA for Android, at least for now. Android will be a little bit more difficult for me to fully test and develop at the moment, so I’d at least like to make the web version a PWA that can be “installed” on Android devices. PWAs function like regular apps but take advantage of what the web has to offer.

I’m excited to get The Costumemaster: Reloaded up and running in the hands of many players, both current and potential!