· 3 min read
Endless Hurdles 1.4.5 - The road to release
There is a story behind the new release that I felt was worth documenting, plus lessons learned.
It all started with a realization around 3 am as I tried to sleep.
Why have I not made an event to celebrate the Olympics?
Then, fully awake, my brain started to plot what the event might look like and how I could capitalize on the sports event in my game, which literally has you jumping hurdles, just like one of the Olympic events.
The idea
Create an event along the lines of the game’s existing Halloween and Christmas events.
Build the environment to look like a stadium with a running track, including new graphics and a scoreboard that enables players to compete for Gold, silver, and Bronze positions. The board should reset every thirty days to keep folks playing and not allow domination of the scoreboard.
The event should also have an achievement and still contribute to other achievements already in the game.
The Problem
I am already way deep in my rebuild from SpriteKit (currently in the iOS Store) to Godot (almost ready to release). Therefore, I will need to accept that I have to add to the existing production-ready version rather than the latest and greatest in development.
Dust off the code
Reopening a code base I had not touched in over six months was interesting.
After a couple of hours of trying to remind myself how I built the game using Swift and SpriteKit, I decided it was time to start the work.
When planning from 9 months ago pays off
Thankfully, the way I designed the game levels and events paid off. I was able to clone an existing SpriteKit scene and the custom Swift view controller I built for it and run the level.
The only other item needed to add this new event to the game was a button on the events page that loaded the SpriteKit scene.
With those in place, I had a running event linked inside the game, albeit a clone of another event.
The next stage was to open some apps and start drawing the new graphics to replace the environment. This actually took longer than planned as I wanted to keep the look of the new event within the game’s aesthetic but add a more 3D perspective to break free from the 2D side view currently in place.
After some attempts, it all started to come together, and the illusion of a 3D running track and hurdle, using the existing players, looked good and very playable.
Now comes the new game balancing; this is always challenging for me when developing a game. During the process of changing how hard the game played, I distributed a couple of TestFlight versions for feedback from folks in the chatroom (yes, I live streamed this whole development cycle).
End in sight
With everything in place, I uploaded a build to TestFlight for folks to try out and give last-minute reports.
While all of that was happening, I started working on new screenshots for the Apple AppStore to show the event and catch the eye of folks looking for a game to play.
I took the event from idea to completion within five days, thanks to some planning I put in place nine months ago and a determination to get the new version out before the Olympics.
Over to you
So that is the story behind this new release, now having passed review and released to the store.
It’s up to you to play it for free and compete for podium positions. See you on the track!