[GRUEDORF] Grue's Sully Updates Thread

bengrue

Okay, okay, okay. I’ve been losing Gruedorf since the end of August. I promise I’ve been busy though:

I mean, October was a little light but LOOK at all those COMMITS!

Anyways, can’t talk about all that. Let’s see, what have I done?

Since the last update I’ve:

Worked with Ustor to debug some pipeline issues building the Sully Demo
Recruited Demo Beta Testers
Set up infrastructure for testing feedback
Done a bunch of legal stuff for the company
Recruited an illustrator to work on the marketing assets for Sully

Wow, did you know there’s tons of stuff to game making that ISNT making games? I hate it!

Out of professional courtesy I won’t post WIPs of the marketing art. It’ll be done soon! :3

bengrue

What have I been doing this week?

I’ve been turning my beefy windows machine into an automated build machine!

And boy is it frustrating!

https://github.com/ilammy/msvc-dev-cmd/issues/63

Whee.

bengrue

Build automation tasks continue!

Did you know that github no longer provides free branch protection for private repos? It’s true!

Just $44/year for everyone who’s a collaborator if you want this useful feature!

…so if you got an email saying you were disconnected from one of my projects this week: I still love you.

bengrue

@bengrue Update: I think I fixed the website in the hackiest way possible.

I neither know why nodebb stopped serving the its critical js/css files, nor do I particularly care after spending way too long fixing them by stapling them into place.

Internet.
Of.
Shit.

bengrue

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/D31SGqZV-9o

Breaditor UI Progress!

bengrue

Today’s gruedorf: I spent like 10 damned hours figuring out what was wrong with the nodebb install ;_;

(an upgrade made it so it was no longer upgrading to HTTP2 to stream in the js/css. The web was a mistake.)

bengrue

And I added some buttons to the bottom of the main page!

Of note: the “V” is a link to the (very barebones) VERGE Repo.

bengrue

It’s been an annoying few weeks for me, but here’s some stuff I’ve done:

Spent way too much time learning about the horrible state of sending email in these hellish after-times
Set up a new mailing list and ported all the mails over from the old service
Updated https://breadbros.com/ with links to wishlist Sully and to join the mailing list
Updated the site with more videos and put the videos higher up and added calls to action for wishlisting
Collected all of the pre-orders into a list finally (This… was a 10-year outsatnding task)
Collecting new screenshots and videos to start actually making some noise

So. That’s… me.

Edit: oh, I also almost fixed the account verification/recovery stuff but that’s all tied into “wow it sucks these days.” So that’s… still in progress

bengrue

Almost done with the transaction email work for vrpg
Captured video fo Sully’s Attract Mode and Second Trailer

bengrue

Started posting videos on video sites…

https://www.tiktok.com/@breadbros_games/video/7310402346960440619

https://www.instagram.com/p/C0o2ZBhNWtg/

bengrue

Wrote the first draft of the first-ever Breadbros newsletter post!

(Should be coming out early next week after Ustor gives notes/feedback)

bengrue

…wtf how did a new thread get made I am bad at internet

New post here:
https://verge-rpg.com/topic/259/the-gruedorfing-must-continue

bengrue

Did y’all know running a business is work?

This past week I’ve:

finalized the Breadbros Logo
done a lot of project management/triaging from internal testers
done some hiring of new art contractors
done a LOT of removing business-related services from my personal cards to the company card
designed/ordered some stickers for conventions
set up my laptop for development again
set up a new ubuntu build machine (ongoing)
posted some social media
(please follow us on https://www.tiktok.com/@breadbros_games )

and… I’m sure I’m missing so many other things!

And wow I need to start listening to my monday calendar even to post here

bengrue

@bengrue Today’s gruedorf…

…getting vrpg back up, once again

bengrue

Of minor import:
Got vrpg back up again. What a precious little baby this site is (if I upgrade mongodb it gets sad. sigh)

Of way cooler import: we’re getting more animations into the game! Woo. Check it out:
https://www.tiktok.com/@breadbros_games/video/7395356916173638955
https://www.tiktok.com/@breadbros_games/video/7406824522042641706

Of major import:
I’m on two panels at PAX this coming weekend:
https://west.paxsite.com/en-us/schedule/panel-information.html?gtID=864566&panel-name=Great-Developers-Steal-The-Influence-of-Multimedia-on-Video-Games-13-andhttps://west.paxsite.com/en-us/schedule/panel-information.html?gtID=864824&panel-name=Eating-Wall-Turkeys-A-Retrospective-on-Food-in-Games-

…and as such I’m working VERY hard to get the Linux Demo for Sully up before then so I can do a public demo release

Let’s see if it happens

bengrue

An actual Sully Update: been plugging away on getting public windows, linux, and OSX demos out for Sully!

https://x.com/breadbros/status/1828902157984379004

Also… I was on two panels at PAX over the weekend!

https://www.twitch.tv/pax/v/2240811227?sr=a&t=7364s

bengrue

(•_•)
<) )╯  we are finishing up
/ \
(•_•)
\( (> a public
/ \
(•_•)
<) )╯ Sully Demo
/ \

Aiming at end of month, let’s see how this goes

(might just be an open beta demo to collect crash reports from people, but that’s still good)

bengrue

Sully’s beta is now fully playable on the steamdeck as a native linux app

Working right now on getting the Demo builds building and setting up a deployer to Steam as a private beta

bengrue

Been tackling a lot of errors on the Linux build of Sully / fixing up the build scripts so they work on Windows and Linux for both Release and Demo builds of Sully!
Two nights ago my Windows Buildbot decided that it no longer liked custom git commands outside of the checkout Github Action so I’ve been diagnosing that! (My Linux Buildbot is perfectly happy still)
This is all in preparation for an OSX build (which dozen of people will use. Dozen!)

(The Linux build will be much more popular due to the Steamdeck)

Also Ustor has been doing a lot! And our animator Val has been killing it lately! Check out this WIP!

6c4853e8-f427-46a0-a77b-266b935fe321-froglodyte swallow WIP2.gif

bengrue

I queued up 3 weeks of social media posts in Fedica in prep for an imminent Demo announcement! It was 2 hours for 13 posts which is less than 10 minutes per to queue up (which is pretty good) but it discounts all the image/video collection time too

The less glamorous part of gamedev -_-

I mean: look at all them!

https://x.com/breadbros
https://bsky.app/profile/breadbros.com
https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@breadbros
https://www.instagram.com/breadbros_games
https://www.threads.net/@breadbros_games
https://www.tiktok.com/@breadbros_games
https://www.youtube.com/@BreadbrosGames

Oh also did some build system work and tried (unsuccessfully) to diagnose the OSX auto-crash problem