Hi! Welcome to another Agility Rush Devlog! Yes, It has been quite a while since my last post. That's because I didn't want to post another update, making it look like it was going to take forever to publish my game. But don't worry everyone, I have some good news as well as some bad news. I could have posted this 3 days earlier but was hoping that something would happen within those three days until it came to my attention that it wouldn't until a while (this may sound confusing but will make more sense when you look at the bad news). I hope you all enjoy this post!

The Good News!

The good news is, if you read the title, that my game has been released! There was a lot of stuff to do to prepare my game for a release. I also ran into multiple problems. What was expected to be a 3-4 hour process turned out to take me 3 days! Anyway, I learned quite a lot about the process of publishing a game on the Google Play Store. But yeah, I have now officially created and published a game release! I am extremely worried that I forgot something as I stopped doing detailed progress checks for this project (not a good idea I know). I promise that the shortcomings of this initial starter project of mine will be taken into account in my future projects, whether LibGdx or not.

The Bad News!

The bad news is that even though I have sent out the release for my game, Google has to do some reviewing of it, and from what I have heard from other people, I can expect this to take around a week. I was hoping that my game would be reviewed within 3 days of completing the release, which is why this post technically could have been posted 3 days ago as I had said earlier. If my game had been reviewed during those 3 days, I could write this post with no bad news at all! Unfortunately, that is not the case. But no sweat. I can probably still put up a signed APK of the game on this project's itch page, so be on the lookout for the file (I will probably make a small announcement about it)! 

In conclusion, I have finished my game, but it is in review and is still not available to you all. That wraps up the post itself in terms of the game's progress/update. However, right below this is a relatively short reflection of the game, discussing what went well, what didn't, what are things I need to improve on, etc. I highly encourage you all to read it!

The Reflection

So, what went well? Well, I was able to get the main part of the game pretty nicely down. The initial creation of the project also went very smoothly as I was able to see results very quickly and get a playable app real quick. Another thing that went very smoothly was the creation of different screens. Thanks to a little helper class I made, I was able to get screen creation down nicely. It now takes around an hour to create a screen, but of course, the time will vary heavily depending on what the screen's use is. Another thing that worked really well was my Code-Rework, where I re-did a lot of code for the organization which made my code much more pleasing to look at.

What went wrong? Quite a lot of stuff actually. I was stuck on my sliding feature for some time, especially trying to fix the part when the player attempts to jump while sliding. The thing that went wrong the most is probably when I actually lost a lot of my sliding code I believe and had to redo half of it. Another time something went wrong was just a few days ago when a lot of things relating to Github, Keystores, App Bundles, and Package names got messed up pretty badly. I was on the edge, just about to burst into tears at a point (slight exaggeration but only slight). Right now, the publishing process makes my code feel like it has a ton of holes in it, which things broken here and there. I really wanted to finish this project so hopefully, all of the stuff is sorted out.

Now, what can I improve on / take into my next project? Well, for my future projects, I must create a nice system for task management, and right now I can't decide between using Codecks or TickTick, probably Codecks though. Even if I am the only one working, such a system for task management really helps expedite the process, making sure that I cover everything, and helps organize my workflow. I can decide which tasks from which section do I want to work on. Do I want to work on a new feature? A new Screen? Or something else? Another thing I can take into my next project is the small package of helper classes I created, however, this only applies to my future LibGDX projects. It's a useful package, even if small. Everything I learned about the process of publishing a game will definitely help for my future projects as I can prepare for the publishment by making certain choices ahead of time. I even learned how to use Git and that skill is definitely important when moving forward.

That's all I have for self-reflection. I enjoyed this project overall, but am immensely glad that it is finally over. Before starting on my next project, I plan on doing a few more game jams to really brush up areas that will be important before I create a game. An example would be getting used to the Hyperlap2D software, as well as creating an iPhone project in addition to Android so that I can launch my next game on both platforms. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this post. Do not get confused, there will likely be at least one more post after this one, the one that will inform you all when my game has been reviewed and is ready to hit the Play Store! Farewell for now!

You can find more on Hyperlap2D here: https://github.com/rednblackgames/HyperLap2D or https://hyperlap2d.rednblack.games/!

Hyperlap2D even has a Discord server to join right here: https://discord.gg/vDek84yb!