It's been a while since our last dev diary and we have certainly been busy! Apart from the level end screen and goals dialog most of the work this time was behind the scenes coding and testing, so there are fewer screenshots.

Here's a roundup of what we have been working on:

Goals

Jake made the goals code and dialog work properly including localised goal text. He also tested that all goal types trigger correctly mid-game, and on the level end screen, and show the goal complete particle effect in the correct place.

Level end dialog

There was a fair bit of work involved to finish the level end dialog, including things like:

• Checking the stars, gold and goals are calculated correctly.
• Making sure the failed goals dialogs work in both normal and hard modes:
  

• Making sure the "you didn't find the special item" dialog works OK.
• Drawing and aligning the correct stats in the correct font sizes. The stat labels and numbers use two different fonts.
• Investigated sensible amounts to award for star bonuses to keep the gold economy within certain bounds.
• Upscaled the hand grid and made versions with fewer slots for the tutorial chapters.
• Upscaled/sharpened the hand grid icons and aligned them on the grid.
  

• Tested hands get marked as completed and show the correct amount of stars/perfects.
• Made sure the goals display draws correctly.
• In normal mode the goals display now shows "Optional" before "Chapter Goals".
• Made sure that localised versions of all the labels will fit the space available
• Added the correct buttons to the bottom of the dialog. They are smaller than in Ancient Enemy so the text had to be modified.
• Checked and tidied up all the level end code.

Here's the final level end dialog:

Music

Music is so important to the Regency atmosphere!

We have plugged in temporary new level end music, and made the correct music play on the credits screen.

We then had a marvellous time listening to and adding back in all of the Regency Solitaire music, assigning appropriate music to each chapter. We usually pick a few tracks per chapter, so that players get a change when a new hand of cards is dealt.

We listened to each piece of music with the story, which triggers at the start and end of each chapter. This was to make sure it was in harmony with the mood of that part of the story.

(This also involved summarising the key story elements in a few words - Gossip! Romance! Intrigue! Bad manners! Resolution!) We also decided to sneak in a few tracks from another game of ours, for various story/world-building reasons...

Having done this, we checked that going from the game screen to options to credits and back triggers the correct music both ways.

It was also important to finalise the music volume in default.ini by testing that the sound effects can be heard clearly over it, and it's not too loud (or quiet).

We then emailed our musician an update as we are getting closer to coding the intro movie, which needs special music, and also so he can make the final mix of the new title screen and level end music.

Disabling old code/assets

Regency Solitaire II has now taken on its final form, as in the code base serves this game as other systems from previous titles are stripped out. For example Jake:

• Checked and adjusted the save/load system to remove the snapshot code from Ancient Enemy as it is not needed in this game.
• Fully disabled the Ancient Enemy inventory system game-wide.
• Fully disabled the Ancient Enemy combat system game-wide.
• Simplified the save data format to remove unneeded information.
• Deleted some unused GameText relating to Ancient Enemy.
• Removed unused fonts, particles, images, sounds effects and buttons left over from Ancient Enemy.

It feels good now that the game only has its own assets! Also, it's a lot smaller in terms of disk space.

Testing/Misc Code

• Checked Crystal ball works OK with all new card types e.g. tea card
• Checked all powerup screenshakes to make sure they are appropriate. Adjusted as required.
• Standardised button gaps on some dialogs.
• Checked the level end stars timing matches the sound effects exactly.
• Fixed various issues relating to hand starting 0 due to the previous Ancient Enemy code using a different map system.
• Fixed an issue with the Max Multiplier goal status resetting if replaying hand 1.
• Fixed a problem with wildcard order due to Ancient Enemy cards with face value 0  instead of 10!
• Re-enabled the in-game menu Restart button in hard mode.
• Removed Nightmare difficulty.
• Replaced the number 13 (King card value) with a constant called HIGH_VALUE game-wide.
• Added game complete screen slide-on characters.
• Increased the number of chapters in the game to support the extra Collector's Edition story/levels. This required various careful code changes in many places.
• Added in the Collector's Edition story and tested it works as expected.
• Integrated Helen's game end text including for the end of the Collector's Edition.
• Made a test plan to ensure everything is working properly.
• Tested everything with Debug mode on to look for issues to fix.
• Various other loose ends and checks.

Levels

Helen generated moar levels. We are now at the stage where we can pick these per chapter (which will be for a bunch of reasons, to do with aesthetics of the background as well as difficulty and features we need to incorporate, such as hidden story items, and tutorial elements.)

This is actually a fun process but takes a long time as we have over 200 levels to refine. We actually have more than we need but that's so we can throw away the worst ones, thus ensuring good quality.

Text

There has been some more story text editing, which meant diving into Regency lexicons and slang, and writing the game end text as mentioned above.

As this game is a 'Collector's Edition,' it has an extra story that unlocks once the main game is complete. This meant making some decisions about how to wrap up the Collector's Edition story and imagine what the characters did next...

Final countdown...?

It feels as though we have made great progress and it's coming together! There are still a few vital components that we need to work on and test. But the end (of development) is in sight. Then comes marketing...

We are really excited for this game! It looks and sounds great, and feels lovely to play.