Penguin Thoughts #4 - Steam Deck Verified!
Oh look at that, this thing is still on. Jellybean! Juliet! Get in here1, we got work to do!
1And leave the bathroom sink alone, we wasted enough water already!
My Liege Schedule
I know this is hard to believe, but I may have been mistaken about my original plans for the post launch roadmap. The first patches went according to plan, but then life hit me. Between starting a new full time job and drastic improvements in my personal life2, I have less time available to work on My Liege than anticipated when I laid out my roadmap.
With these new developments in mind, my plans have changed somewhat. The expected future updates for My Liege are as follows:
One last major update
Any bug fixes that the above update causes or reveals3
After that, then I would be done. My Liege would be complete by my measure and while it could always be more in my heart, I will be content and satisfied with the game I have made for the world.
2Nosey little shit aren’t ya
3Obviously I never make mistakes though. I never even second guess because my first thoughts are so good.
One final update
Just like a good heist movie, I have one last update in mind and then I’m out. In this case, just out of working on My Liege, not video games hopefully4.
So, what do I want it to include?
Additional story elements to improve existing choices. Many choices do not stick the landing and need additional support to meet their potential. In most cases it is just going to be as simple as ensuring there is a call back or extra event that happens to tidy up the loose ends.
Additional choices for some story elements that are too narrow. There are several spots where players made it clear they wanted more middle of the road options or third choices. These are tricky because I don’t want to introduce a ton of scope5, but in most spots I 100% agreed.
Visual feedback for why a choice is available. I want the get positive reinforcement that the decisions or options they have currently are because of their previous choices. This is already happening but the player does not get sufficient feedback to feel like their previous efforts accomplished anything.
Easter Eggs and Hats. I like silly things and there just isn’t enough for the astute meeple to find. Also, if I’m going to compete with TF2, then I need more hats6.
4All I know is anything new will not be narrative driven, I’ve had enough writing for years.
5Ten bucks says I completely forget I said this.
6Little know fact, the TF in TF2 stands for “Thy Faithful”, people just haven’t got to the choose your own adventure part yet.
Steam Deck Verified
You read that right, the point of this newsletter, daddy Valve7 has deemed My Liege worthy of the Steam Deck Verified status! I am as surprised as a couple of you are too8!
To be completely honest, I was not expecting for Valve to review My Liege for compatibility with the Steam Deck. A while ago they changed things so they would start the process rather than accept applications for review. Based on their own criteria, my only assumption for why I was picked is enough of my players played My Liege on the Steam Deck, making Valve think it was worth their time to review based on percentage alone.
Overall, going through the Steam Deck Review process was a positive experience! It was a bit frustrating that it took 4 rounds of testing9 with them to get to a verified state, however with each failed result I learned about more areas that needed improvement. Their feedback was fair and honest, and it helped make My Liege a better product.
7Senpai noticed me!
8There are dozens of us!
9Its not you, its me… but for real, I was half assing a lot of the changes which made things take multiple tries to get it readable enough for their special eyes.
Changes Required
Over the last three months, I worked on the issues Valve presented and now I can confidently say that My Liege plays well even on the smaller screens. The biggest changes I needed to make were:
Updating the canvas scaling to expand better to the 16×10 aspect ratio of the Steam Deck. This was a general setting on the canvases that I didn’t realize would behave the way it did. After tinkering with things I got it to expand lefty righty better rather than prioritize uppey downy10.
Update menus to have larger fonts and button/fields in general. The drop downs in specific were particularly problematic, just not enough room devoted to them!
Fig 4: For the dialogue in particular, the Steam Deck uses its own special font to ensure the lines are thicker and cleaner. It is the only functional difference between PC and Steam Deck. Reorganize some menus to better utilize the space I already allocated for them. In some cases I had enough space, I just needed to use it more wisely. The main example being the character editor and repositioning the field titles11.
Fig 5: Original character editor. Vertical space was at a premium because I wasted it on the field titles. 
Fig 6: Updated character editor. Everything was able to be taller, larger, and still easier to read.
The most difficult aspect of all of this was admitting I needed to sacrifice some of the flavor for function. The original choices for menu design and font choice and sizing were picked to give the menus a specific feel. However, once it was clear that it wasn’t user friendly on the Steam Deck, I had to compromise and make the required changes. In the end, it will always be better to be approachable and usable rather than pretty but unavailable.
10These are professional Unity terms
11A rare non-sassy footnote, I was really surprised I made mistakes like this considering these are the types of things I worked on pretty consistently with FAST when designing fillable forms. I guess I didn’t learn as much as I thought on that job.
Until next time, stay classy San Diego
-SugoiAddison Gaming12
12 Err I mean your local game dev, Penguin Buhl13
13 Dammit, just call me Jellybean and Juliet’s dad
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