Devlog 1/16/23: Progress?!?!

Hello again, everyone! It's been a while, and also I figure a lot of new folks have been drawn to this game, so I figure now's a good time as any to make another little devlog post!

First, about development: I'm nearly finished with all the puzzles! I recently got finished with a puzzle that was incomparably hard to design, and it turned out a success! So as to not spoil the specifics, I'll instead give a vague percentage, and say that about 95% of the puzzles in the game have been made now! Wow, so the game's almost done, then, right?

NO!!!!!!!!!

Well, I'm 95% done with the puzzles. But that's not all there is to the game. There's also the story, which while optional, I do think will go a long way towards the overall tone and atmosphere of the game. Also, I've still got a lot of assets and even some areas left to create, although none of them will really be puzzle-related. I'll be reworking the intro and ending(s) of the game, too, so that's more work to add to the pile.

Oh yeah and all of the options, accessibility features, and other game improvements that have been brought up since release.

All of them. I still haven't actually gotten to work on any of them yet.

So, let's move onto a fun segment I like to call "Your Bargaining Chips With Which To Torment Me (In A Family Friendly Way)™".

These are things that players of all shapes and sizes have asked for, that have become increasingly apparent as absolutely necessary for me to implement if I want to say in good conscience that I have left no stone unturned. If you see one of these stones, and they are unturned... Well, in that scenario, what you do is send an Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) to my location and destroy my house. It's only fair.

• Controls: The big one. I know full well that being able to set your own controls is important. Beyond just things like keyboard differences or gamepad support, I get this subtle feeling that the default controls leave a lot to be desired. The most common thing being Shift as the jump key. All I can really say is that I had gotten used to Shift being the jump key in all the hundreds of other I Wanna Be The Guy fangames I've played. But I think a wide majority of people who are playing this game are not even tangentially close to that community, so this oddball control scheme is even more jarring than usual. Anyways, half of the issue with implementing keybinds was that I was using hard-coded keybinds in many places instead of editable binds, and the other half was that Dear God I don't wanna code a keybinds menu that UI stuff is pain incarnate. But in reality it's probably not going to be that bad to actually implement everything. It'll just be a lot of work, and I'll have to set aside the necessary time to mull over all that duct-taped code. I'm slightly less sure about gamepad support, so I won't make promises in that regard, and also I don't actually own a gamepad, and also I'm not even sure if every button used in this game would fit on a controller??? There's like at least 50 of them, which means one for each letter. But I'll try regardless.
• The All-Glorious ESC key: This button quits the game! Instantly! People don't like that! This is another thing that I was just used to (another quirk of IWBTG fangames) that I'll probably change. My plan here is to take that nothing burger Pause Menu that you open up with the P key, and change that into an actual menu that you instead open with the ESC key! I get the feeling that at least half of the people who quit the game did so accidentally while trying to exit a puzzle (which is the Backspace key, for reference). I'll go ahead and put an actual exit level button in this new pause menu, alongside the old-fashioned quit game button. I'll also see about trying to program the options menu into the pause menu as well.
• Options: There are a LOT of things that fall under this umbrella. I'll cut to the chase and list them all: Colorblind accessibility, gameplay accessibility, progression unlocking accessibility, volume sliders, aforementioned controls, visual/display options, and whatever other stuff. This'll also include an option to hide the timer, since it can have an averse effect on gameplay and isn't really useful information anyway. There's a lot that I'll have to work on.
• About colorblindness: This is an issue that is a little bit harder to solve than it would seem if all you've seen is the first world of the game. There are a lot of key and door colors, and some of them are hard to distinguish (even for me, since I have f.lux active sometimes)! A route I definitely cannot take is changing the border colors and lock sprites on doors. World 6 uses those for something. I also can't change the shapes of the key heads, since World 3 and World 7 do something. So, that leaves me with the following options, and I'll probably try to just implement all of them (ideally with some internal feedback) and leave it to the player's discretion which ones they want to use. These are: attaching symbols to each color (Made harder by World 7 and World 9, but theoretically doable), highlighting matching-color objects when hovering over a key/door using the mouse, allowing the player to pick their own color tones for keys/doors, and possibly some attempts to distinguish colors with special colorfill patterns (checkerboards, stuff like that). I do want to try and make this work.
• Pencilmarking: I'm not sure if I want to make a full-on drawing mode for this game, but I hope this alternative should make up for it: By clicking on a key or door, you can assign a colored letter, number, or other symbol to it. I want this to be robust enough for players to decide for themselves how they want to use it, and use it effectively. I want the pencilmarks to save and load for every room, too, so this method happens to be very convenient when opposed to saving 200 screen-size PNG images in the local files. I've gotta draw the line somewhere, pun not intended.
• Level editor: OK, if there's anything that's very likely to not make it into the game, it'd be this, but only because it would be a hell of a lot more work compared to the other stuff. But, basically, everything you see in a puzzle in the game is something that could be made with a good enough editor, minus perhaps the visuals and tiles, which would probably be delegated to options at most. I have no experience with netcode, nor do I really wanna work to maintain a level hosting server of any kind, so the levels people make would probably have to be shared via other means. I know that there's a lot of potential with this game's concept, though, so I will see if I can make it happen, so that a new generation of level designers can encourage people to pick their locks! Y'know, like good upstanding citizens.
• Music: I don't actually have much to work on here, but I'll talk about this nonetheless: This game was built with certain songs in mind to enhance the experience and atmosphere of each area and the overall puzzle solving. However, people might want to not listen to those songs. The music can already be muted with Ctrl+M, but obviously I'll see towards making it a more overt option in the full release, as well as potentially adding volume sliders. (The sound code in this game is sorely lacking in organization, though, so that's a maybe at best.) I'll be trying my hardest to properly credit the sources of all external media used in this game regardless.

I think that's good enough for now! I've heard your voices, loud and clear. I keep hearing them. All the time. So many people have told me about the Shift to jump and ESC to quit thing. I am going to evaporate.

Before I do that, though, let's end by talking about the Release Date for Part 2, and by extension, the full version of I Wanna Lockpick!

Not anytime soon.

Yeah no I don't think anything has changed in that regard. I'm a solo developer, with a lot of different interests and a daily routine and the need for a proper work-life relationship. I do actively work on the game, and as you can see, I've (allegedly, at least) gotten a lot of work done, but I need to take breaks often. I can't rush development, even if lots of people are hyped for it or want to see certain changes made, or else that increases the risk of rushed development producing an unsatisfactory game, not just to you, but to me. So I continue to take it at my own pace, as I always have.

As for an estimated release date, though... Well, you saw that giant list above. I have so much stuff left to work on. If I was SUPER optimistic, and I mean really just GOING WILD, I would say you could see Part 2 in six months. But even the more generous possibility of a year-long wait is also not really a guarantee. It could take a very long time, or it could even not get finished! Although I don't like the sound of that. All I can say is that the more things I finish for this game, the more confident I will be about the estimated time until release.

P.S. I can't update the demo anymore, just to be clear. Also, I'm making the executive decision not to dripfeed any new teaser images or explicit Part 2 info this time. Even if it technically doesn't spoil anything, I figure that I should leave it to the community (since I guess this game has one now!) to use their imaginations.

So, thanks for reading! I've been happy to see a lot of new people enjoy this game in the past few months, so I hope I can keep up the good work and maintain positive relations with the community while the brutal wait for literally anything new continues.  Feel free to speculate about what wacky stuff Part 2 has in store! I can guarantee you that I'll still surprise you somehow.

Have a nice day!