Edition 24, Week 34: Expect the Unexpected
Well that was unexpected π
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Humbled.
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Working on Asobi has been quite eventful in the last year or so, but I did not expect this to happen. To think that one simple green button saying "Release to public" could have so much impact.
While writing last week's Sunday Report to only discover the news that the PlayTest was shared by media outlets such as Polygon, Eurogamer, Tom's Hardware, T3 and Push Square to opening Youtube and being greeted with a thumbnail of my Steam PlayTest build of Asobi to my Twitter timeline being swarmed. Leading up to even seeing that Asobi reached the Steam Machine of the most honoured Yoshida-san (for if you're reading: ζ¬ε½γ«γη²γγγΎγ§γγ πββοΈπββοΈπββοΈ).
In no way was this expected and it took me a couple of days to come to terms with this change. Im a sense: everything changed, but also nothing. There's still a lot to do, which bring me to the follwing;
The most humbling of course has been user response, which to me is who I'm doing this for. From the bottom of my heart: thank you πββοΈ.
Thank you for the kind words and support, I couldn't have done this without you πββοΈπββοΈπββοΈ.
Either way, let's get to it! Welcome to edition 24(!)the new adaptive trigger implementation on Apple devices, I wish I could've done the same for the haptics but that's not possible as of yet. I'm gonna try and poke Apple, see if they can do something with their API's.
That said, I intend to bring the same adaptive trigger tech to all the other platforms so you can finally enjoy the 1:1 experience there as well.
Asobi for Apple
As you might've read, I've split version 1.4.2 in two pieces since I really needed to get released. I had done a lot of big optimisations to it and I've heard you guys noticed it! So glad to hear that tbh.
There's a couple of big features coming with version 1.4.3, one of them is that I'm adding is "video filters" of which you can see "work in progress" screenshots in the attached gallery.
Currently there's about 16 different ones, which I might cut down a bit (or maybe not). One of them is cell-shaded mode, and I have to say I'm quite satisfied to see how well it looks while playing.
I'll try to share a video later this week showcasing some of the new filters.
These filters will also be coming to the other platforms at a later date.
I've also been able to further optimise the streaming experience, which might result in "game mode" making it's return next week as well.
Version 1.4.3 for Apple is scheduled for release in week 34.
Asobi for Android
Due to unforeseen circumstances (see intro) version 1.1 has had some delay, I hope you understand that what happened last week can have quite some impact as a solo developer.
Either way, I'm back on track: My Fold 8 was delayed a bit, but is now in hand so I can get to work on DeX support, I'm well underway to adding 2D->3D realtime conversion and split screen. Next to that it should have the adaptive trigger parity update as well.
After version 1.1 is done I'll focus on making Asobi work on Android TV as well. (incidentally, my NVIDIA Shield finally arrived yesterday.)
Version 1.1 for Android is scheduled for release in week 35.
Asobi for Steam
Although the steamOS/linux still needs some work and your first response has been overwhelmingly positive, there's still some work to do for niche cases. That said It's not stopped me from starting work on getting the Windows version out there. Plan is to have it out before next weekend, depending if everything goes swimmingly with my test devices.
Invites to the PlayTest are sent out daily in batches, once I'm comfortable with the state of both version I will open the flood gates until the full version is released.
Expect to see many Steam updates to come in week 34, and a Windows version should drop as well before this weekend.
Asobi for Meta Quest
The PlayTest for Meta Quest is in full effect, thank you all for the great feedback. I have quite some changes planned for the first Meta Quest store release.
The biggest issue I'm running into is access to the NPU's on the processor. The result is that this is holding back proper realtime 2D-3D support for Meta Quest. The moment I have access to that (Pretty please Meta, someone poke Mark please π) I'll be able to make it much better than it currently is. Which is why that mode will become an experimental toggle for the time being.
You'll see a couple of updates this week as I work to the full release version of Asobi for Meta Quest.
The full release is currently scheduled for week 35.
Midori for Apple (r/MidoriApp)
Version 1.0.4 of Midori is planned to be submitted tomorrow (Monday the 17th), which has a lot of bugfixes for any crashes and some Top Secret stuff for all of you to enjoy. More about that tomorrow.
In closing
I need to get back to work, loads to do before September starts.
Thanks again for everything, if you need me -> just ask ok? I'll get to you asap.
Thanks!