Silk: Wilderness Adventures

Silk Kickstarter Fully Funded!

After an incredible final day of the Kickstarter, I'm proud to report that Silk is fully funded! It's a huge step forward for the project and we're very excited to be bringing the game to all our wonderful backers, and all the other players who are going to discover the game in the future. Our infinite thanks to everyone who supported us over the last month, and watch this space for further updates as we continue development of the game. 

GDC Speed Dating

Right about now, I have my first meeting with publishers at GDC. I have a solid ten-minute pitch deck, and Switch demos of two games, Silk and another project not-yet-announced. With only thirty minutes for each meeting, it's going to be hectic, but that's the carnage of the publisher pitch. Securing a publisher for Silk will be a big step forward for the project, and depending upon what the publisher offers it might even be enough to complete the game. We'll have to see... publishers have different levels of funds, and you can never count on them picking up the tab for the whole of development. Anyway, wish me luck!

Leaving for San Francisco

Off to California today... It'll be the first time I've done GDC since 2007. I was on the speaking faculty for four years in a row then, and intimately involved in the IGDA, for whom I ran a chapter and set up the Game Writing SIG. But the GDC organisers and I had something of a falling out and I decided to give my support to different events, like Gamescom and Develop, which I'm speaking at again in July. Anyway, I'm only going this year for the Expo, which is a great opportunity to go speed dating with publishers. Silk is one of two projects I'm pimping there... wish me luck!

Chris Bateman interview for Scene World

Could there be anything more fantastic and fantastical than a Commodore 64 diskmag in the twenty first century? Scene World is just such a wonderful oddity, and they have a podcast interview with me talking about Silk and retro games, and the games industry in broader strokes out now. Check out Episode 61 now!

Silk on Switch

It's been a great pleasure to see Silk runninng on Switch for the first time. There's a video of the game on Nintendo's console as part of the latest update. The game works smoothly in handheld mode, and has been build on the last released demo version.

The controls are mostly the same as the original design document. The shoulder buttons (L, ZL, ZR, R) do the same job as 1,2,3, and 4 on PC, selecting Advisor portraits. One big difference is that all movement is on the left stick. When originally designed, I was concerned that having 'up' on an analogue stick trigger forward movement would carry too high a risk of moving by accident. Instead, 'A' was to move forward. As it happens, the analogue stick works great, and there was no need to worry.

Sadly, you'd need to have a Switch devkit to play the demo, although if you're a publisher with one on hand we'd be delighted to send you the file to install. Everyone else will have to wait until later in the year to get the game on console - the PS4 and Xbox One versions will be out along with the Switch sometime next Winter.

Feedback on Events, and Silk on Switch

GDC is seriously breathing down our necks now, and it's made everything in the ihobo games office rather hectic! However, we do have a new version of the Silk demo in production. I don't know if we'll be able to ship it this week, but we'll try. 

• Icons now show on the Advisor text box when an item or items are affected by the choice (red is a negative effect, blue is positive)
• Improved script efficiency in certain areas to avoid hang times
• Some improvements to the code organisation and optimisation
• Fixed a bug where the player could activate the Advisor screen mid roster transition, this would cause the Advisor to be stuck on screen unless a mouse drag intervenes
• Added a missing AND to the Silver script

In other news, we have Silk running on Switch! We hope to get some video footage of that and share it in the next Kickstarter update.

New Silk Demos for Windows, Mac, and Linux!

Pleased to report that we have a new version of the demo (v004), now for all the demo platforms. You can get them here:

• Windows demo
• Linux demo
• New! Mac demo

Mac and Windows has been tested by us, but we need to rely upon your assistance to check if the Linux version works. Check it out!

New Demo Builds: Wednesday

Hi all,
Our trusty programmer has pushed a new build to our repository, and we will be able to build all new PC, Mac, and Linux demos on Wednesday for sharing with everyone. The PC and Mac versions definitely work - the Linux build still needs testing. But since the Mac build definitely now works (hooray!) we are hopeful about the Linux Build.

Here's the high points:

• OSX and Linux(Maybe?) Patch, should now be able to build and run on both platforms
• Updated CaravanseraiGuards and BazaarSilver scripts to fix the known problems here
• Added RosterTrade function to SilkSpeak  (improving trade results when the Soldier requests a trade by having a Merchant trade on his or her behalf, if there is one in the Caravan)
• Added DestinyWar functionality (adding new dialogue options based on the chosen Destiny that didn't show up previously)
• Added "Press and hold 1, 2, 3 or 4 to select a portrait." to Destiny screen. Some players (those who did not read the manual... we know who you are!) were lost on the first screen. We thought it polite to provide a prompt there.

Pending Bugfixes

We have our Silk project meeting tomorrow morning... Among the bugfixes I know are pending:

• Fixed the gap in the Guards script that meant the game locked up if you had no Silver when hiring Guards
• Added new cases to the Bazaar Silver script, giving Soldiers more reasons to ask for Silver there
• Reviewing the prospects for adding visual language cues to the Advisor screen, so you can see what is at stake in a decision

There'll be a new build available at some point later in the week, which we'll flag both here and in a KS update.

Linux Demo Link Fixed

Not sure if the old link prevented download or just made you jump through hoops to get there, but I've updated the link so it should download the Linux demo on a direct click with no messing around.