Steam Cloud and more

TL;DR:

• Steam Cloud available for existing and new saves.

• Universal macOS build with native Apple Silicon support.

• SteamOS/Linux build enabled, see below.

• Storage and performance optimizations.

I finally completed the basic Steam integration into the game, the first bonus of which is support for Steam Cloud. After you load your save game, you can enable Steam Cloud in the popup dialog.

If you don't enable it, you can do it later through the load menu (click edit and select your save game).

You can also disable Steam Cloud here later, if you want your save game to be available just locally on that computer.

The option to use Steam Cloud now appears when you're starting a new game as well.

And to easily see which save game you're currently on, you can see the floppy disk in the bottom-right corner of the pause menu.

The save files on your hard drive now get compressed on load (including backups, which are also pruned to the last 10 days the game was run). The save games themselves are not very big (mine is at 8 MB currently), but the backups could add up if you ran the game often, so this now limits it.

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While I was working on integrating Steam into the game, I also improved other aspects of my build process. The game is built with Electron and I've now updated to the latest version, which might lead to a performance boost, but more importantly, allows me to use all the latest browser features in the future.

An even bigger improvement should come to players on macOS as the app is now universal, meaning it ships with Apple Silicon binaries (no more Rosetta translation on new macs).

I also enabled the Linux build after testing everything on the Steam Deck. The only thing is, to enable the native build, you have to go to Properties and under Compatibility choose to force the "Steam Linux Runtime 1.0" option. The default is Proton, as chosen by Valve during initial testing, and I'll try to get that changed with them (no idea how long that takes though).

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No video devlog this time since there's no new game content, but hopefully this quality-of-life update will also be welcome.

Now I'm off to do the last new feature for the shape element of art, a new project to make sprites for!

Best, —Retro