Monthly Mewsfeed – Apr 2025

Last Month

I’m quite happy with the progress during April, even though I have to admit that getting sidetracked is way too fun. The automated testing definitely suffered, but some other unplanned things got done.

✅️ Real UI for Around The World
✅️ Real UI for Call Three

I’ll lump those together because they both got done, and they turned out quite similar to each other too. Only ATW’s custom win screen is still on the To Do list, as I expected.

✅️ Write/Translate rules

Totally didn’t get pushed off until literally the last day or anything. *cough*

I’m excited to see what players think of the rule descriptions once it goes live! Once you see it, don’t hesitate to point out what isn’t explained well!

✅️➡️ Testing, testing and testing

This one ended up suffering a lot from all the distractions. I have several tests in place, but some got broken again after a big change to how the game display behaves on turn changes (see below). There is a lot that still needs to be done!

✅️ Easter time!

We had a great time with family! It could have been slightly improved by not raining on exactly the wrong 2 days though, I have to say. The timing was something to behold 🤨️

✅️ Additional stuff

• Godot version update
  While doing the UI for Call Three, I ran into a bug with button sizes that annoyed me into updating the Godot version. Pleasant surprise: it went really well!
• Updating some scripts with the Godot version’s new features
  Since the version update didn’t eat that much time, why not jump into playing around some more? My UI theme generator and project automation scripts got a little overhaul and can now be triggered via buttons in the editor. UI theme settings should now be easy to access within the project, too.
• Visual delay when changing turns in Count Dartula
  This was a Big Deal ™ and took way more time than I hoped, but I think it will be worth it. Before, and in Count Dartula V1, the game UI would immediately switch to the next player when a turn was finished. This can be confusing since you never get to see the 3rd dart in a round displayed, possibly leading to mis-clicks slipping through.
  Now, before moving on to the next player, the UI will update to the state after the 3rd dart, linger for a second, and only then show the new turn for the next player.
  Annoyingly, Darty didn’t enjoy this and is back to flickering. Can’t let it get boring! They are back on the To Do list as well.

Next Month

We have 2 long weekends coming up, so I should have more time than usual and hope I can push closer to a release. For that, I want to have at least V1’s 3 game modes implemented, have most features covered by a test to avoid random things breaking during updates, and have a pretty enough UI. Not all of those made the Top 5 To Do’s yet, though.

➡️ Implement x01 logic

The most important game mode finally made the list. Some of the logic should be re-usable from V1, other things will probably have to be adapted a little.

➡️ New x01 UI

For the UI, I don’t think that much can be taken from the old version. With some luck, I’ll have some time to give the win screen some love with game stats that never made it into V1!

➡️ Write/Translate x01 rules

x01 is the most complicated of the 3 game modes. I hope I can do it multi-lingual justice!

➡️ Win screen ATW

I have seen some very cool pictures of boards online, displaying the count of attempts per number. An app should probably give a screen like that, so people can share their brag-worthy runs, or see which areas of the board need more practise!

➡️ Testing, testing and testing

Yep, I’m doing this as a catch-all task again. With more time on those long weekends, I hope to finish what I started in April. Whatever gets left will be done in June.

Have a lovely May, everyone, and enjoy all the bank holidays if you also have them where you are!