Ducky's Delivery Service is Verified on Steam Deck and I'm doing game development streams again!

Ducky's Delivery Service is Verified on Steam Deck

Although I had heard from players that Chessplosion and Ducky's Delivery Service both run great on Steam Deck, Valve hadn't officially marked either of them as Verified. They don't test every single Steam game on Steam Deck, so if you want Valve to mark your game as Verified, your only option as a developer is to sit around and hope your game becomes popular enough for them to test it out. I assumed this would never happen with my games, but it was a relief to know that people were still playing them on Steam Deck regardless.

So I was completely taken aback when I checked my emails on Saturday morning and saw that Valve had marked Ducky's Delivery Service as Verified on Steam Deck!
I love how my games feel on Nintendo Switch, so I'm glad Ducky's Delivery Service is officially supported on another handheld system now. Both of my games already apparently ran well on Steam Deck so I don't think this changes much, but at least people know it's an option now!

I'm doing game development streams again

Back in the old days of 2021 and 2022, I streamed a lot of the game development work that I did on Chessplosion and Ducky's Delivery Service. I had a lot of fun doing it and it helped me concentrate on my work, but I slowly found myself streaming less and less for a few reasons: I wasn't super comfortable with being seen on camera or heard on mic (especially after coming out as trans), I had to work on code that I wasn't allowed to stream (i.e. Steam and Nintendo Switch features), and my laptop broke which meant I had to go back to a single-monitor setup.

But this week I got a second monitor and I set up a little avatar image so I don't have to be seen on camera, and I've been doing programming streams again! So if you ever want to see what I'm working on, I'll be streaming at random times during the UK/European work day on https://twitch.tv/CassMakesGames
Feel free to come and say hi if you're ever awake and around while I'm live!

I'm still getting my game engine ready for another game

I spent most of this week doing the same thing I've been doing for the last two weeks: going through all of my code and splitting it up into "engine code" that stays the same in every game, and "game code" that changes from game to game. This week I finished setting up all of the code for enemy AI, tile-based movement, projectiles, damage, menus and replays.

The code for menus was one of the main entries on my "things I don't want to think about" list, because its 8500 lines of messy code were a tightly tangled mess of general game engine code like how to create a menu and navigate it with a gamepad, and game-specific code like how to render the little character portraits that are drawn next to each player in a Chessplosion lobby. So I'm glad that's over and done with.

Now I'm at a point where my "things I don't want to think about" list is all that remains. It consists of my code for characters, levels, level editors, online multiplayer, and the generic "gameplay" code file where I shoved all of the random pieces of code that I couldn't decide where else to put.

My original plan was to work on my game engine code for four weeks and see how I felt afterwards. I'm now almost three weeks in, and I'm feeling pretty good! So I'm going to spend another week working on it, at which point I'll hopefully be closer to achieving the dream: all of my game engine code in one folder that I don't have to think about again, and all of the game-specific code in another folder that's easy to edit whenever I want to make a new game.


And that's how I spent my week! Outside of work I've been playing Guilty Gear and thinking about Mr. Driller. Maybe I could stream myself playing them sometime, now that my stream setup is working again. Let me know if you would be interested in something like that, and I'll see you next time!