The game started as a capstone project for college, thus here are some updates of progress over time

P3-Alpha Build:
TCY-Games – Tracey and The Magic Brush; P3 DevLog #1
7:16am, 20th-Nov-23
Grant Williams (@Daethtech)

Progress is slow, but 2/5 levels have completed layouts and near completed visuals.
We also did a lot of bug fixes and general QoL changes.

*KNOWN* Issues:
– The Player still slides on every surface, but all respawn points have been put on stable, flat-ish ground to temporarily counteract this.
– Levels 3 (Purple) and 4 (Red) are *not finished* and thus they are unlikely to be beatable. Play at your own risk.
– Dying by touching the Red color twice in succession causes the death animation to play twice
– Some lag spikes occur when entering specific triggers. Likely event related.
– Some sprites are still not drawn for Tracey.
– Some assets still do not have finalized textures.
– Most music and sound have not been finished.
– No cutscenes have been made yet.
– The Purple Level is missing most visual assets and sounds.
– The final level has not been started as it requires all 4 previous levels to be finished prior to it
– Tracey sometimes gets stuck in the ground when drawing into herself.
– The landing sound effect plays every time Tracey Respawns.
– The cursor still renders behind UI elements sometimes.
– Camera zones still have “jank” transitions which make some sections unnecessarily harder.

Changelog:
– Revamped Death event system to prevent various respawn related issues.
– Green Color has been cut from the base game until further notice. It is still available in the sandbox level.
– Levels no longer show a rank display, instead directly loading the next level. This will be replaced with cutscenes in the future.
– The Flower collectibles now actually can be collected, and the total amount of flowers collected is viewable from the pause menu.
– Adjusted the duration of the death transition as to give the player more time to breathe.
– Adjusted Wii Remote Cursor smoothing. Was unable to fix issue with “jagged” traces when using the Wii remote.
– Adjusted Jump height and gravity.
– Added a sprite to indicate where respawn points are, and which one is active.
– Added a Flame Geyser for the Fire level as obstacles, some are attached to the fire escape’s “fire wall” as well.
– Added 1-5 as hotkeys for color switching.
– Added a color meter next to the cursor to better keep track of amounts used while drawing.
– Added more sprites to make the jump animation more fluid and satisfying.
– Added a sound effect and BGM system, along with music for the first two levels and sound effects for jumping and landing.
– Adjusted locations of some respawn points in Level 1.
– Removed the ability to jump up very slanted walls.
– Removed Refill fountains in many locations in favor of the respawn flowers giving the player a set amount of paint for each section.
– Removed the efficiency rank and replaced it with a partially implemented speedrun timer.
– Fixed an issue where the player’s controls would not re-enable after sliding out of an active refill fountain’s trigger.
– Fixed an issue where the Tracey could respawn without the ability to draw.
– Fixed an issue where Tracey would “die” without any reason as to why.
– Fixed an issue where the UI would not appear after collecting paint while having none.
– Fixed an issue where the player would respawn stuck in an airborne state, preventing jumping.
– Fixed an “issue” where players would play the fourth level right after the first and have no idea what the previous level’s colors do. Reorganizing the level select menu should fix this.
– Fixed the ability to skip the bridge without falling into it in Level 1.
– Fixed the ability to draw while refilling, effectively giving the player unlimited paint.
– Fixed some menu shenanigans.
– Partially fixed a crash where disconnecting while using a Wii remote would not prevent it from trying to receive data while the Wii remote isn’t connected, causing a crash.

Motivation for Major Changes:
– Cutting the Green color and its respective level:
   Designing for something with such inconsistent bounce trajectory would be a huge pain, and a time sink.
– Removing efficiency as a rank:
   We felt as though it was encouraging slow gameplay too much, to the point of frustration by both us developers and the players.

Moving Forward:
In the following weeks we plan to finish the remaining levels (it takes one person 2.5 days to create a level, we have plenty of time to do this especially since 2/4 group members plan to continue work despite thanksgiving break.
We also plan to have music, sprites, textures, and cutscenes all finished by the next iteration of the game.
Once level layouts are built, they are to be version locked to not have anything but textures and visuals alterable.
Making a game is very hard work, but the TatMB team is dedicated to creating the best product we can, expect more updates in the following days!

-The TatMB team

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P3-Beta Build:
TCY-Games – Tracey and The Magic Brush; P3 DevLog #2
9:25am, 4th-Dec-23
Grant Williams (@Daethtech)

Game nearing completion, 5th level has been cut but the rest have had significant progress made.

*KNOWN* Issues:
– The Player still slides on every surface, this has been made intentional as it adds a little more challenge to the game along with making it so that bunny hopping off of slopes gives speed, which might make for fun speed-running tech.
– Some lag spikes occur when entering specific triggers. Likely event related.
– The Red Level was accidentally made with the wrong scale, causing it to be vastly larger than originally intended, will be fixed by the next build.
– Tracey sometimes gets stuck in the ground when drawing into herself.
– The landing and jump sound effects break your ears if you pause on the same frame they were invoked.
– The Camera Zones still have their bounds assigned to the same collider as the camera transitions, meaning that some transitions occur when they seem like they shouldn’t.
– There were some visual mistakes in the intro cutscene.
– Getting to the end of the Red level does not transition to the next level, since there is no next level. It has since been changed to take you back to the main menu, but this fix was not included in the build in time.
– The cooldown for touching the red color is not reset on death.
– While the death animation time has been lengthened as to give the player more breathing room, the player’s controls still reenable before this animation ends, thus allowing for unseen and confusing deaths.

Changelog:
– View controls screen has been moved to the options menu. The location on the
– Purple and Red levels are now playable to completion, although the red may not be very fun due to its length and emptiness.
– Flowers now are collected at a given (usually the next) checkpoint, as to prevent backtracking for an easier collection.
– Revamped the Main Menu.
– Adjusted some death barrier geometry in the Black and Blue levels as to make their tricky platforming sections easier.
– Adjusted wall jump height and range.
– Adjusted wall slide speed to prevent “falling up” on purple surfaces
– Added more visuals to levels, mainly Purple and Red.
– Added Fans to the Purple level, creating more dynamic gameplay and making the presence of wind zones more easily understood.
– Added more music, all music has been created.
– Added more sound effects.
– Added idle animations.
– Added more animation states such as sliding on ice.
– Added the intro cutscene, along with a way to skip it.
– Added flame geysers that come from the side of the fire wall in the Red level’s escape sequence.
– Added sprites to the paint fountain.
– Added more settings to the pause menu.
– Added the ability to reset color at checkpoint flowers (this was added before, but the script was accidentally disabled).
– Added a visual for
– Removed the ability to reset color in the air using checkpoint flowers.
– Removed the Green color from the color select menu.
– Removed the ability to draw by clicking the mouse while Wii remote control scheme is active.
– Fixed an issue where the Wii remote cursor would not render over UI elements or objects in the foreground layers.
– Fixed an issue where the death animation would play twice when dying to the red color.
– Fixed an issue where the player could get soft-locked anywhere without a paint fountain.

Motivation for Major Changes:
– Cutting the final level:
   There simply was not enough time to design, build, and illustrate the final level nor the boss fight. It may or may not be returned to after the college project phase of the game’s development.
– Removing ranks all together:
   3-Star style ranks were an outdated feature that only worked in context of small, single screen levels. Since the game is now more of an adventure rather than just a puzzle, the ranks have been deemed as unecessary and even distracting.

Moving Forward:
We are on pace to finish the Red level in time for the P3-Gold build in two days (December 6th 2023). There are still plans for adding a revamped cursor and overall improvements to the presentation of the main and pause menus. Hope you are as excited as we are for the finished College Project build!

-The TatMB team

(To answer the question as to why I mention that this is a college project: It is important to note that once the college semester is finished, that does not mean that development on the game will no longer continue, just with a new, more expanded and less crunched development cycle.)

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P3-Gold Build:
TCY-Games – Tracey and The Magic Brush; P3 DevLog #3
11:43pm, 6th-Dec-23
Grant Williams (@Daethtech)

With the game finally finished (for now). The team can (supposedly) finally rest. The game can be found here:

https://daethtech.itch.io/tracey-and-the-magic-brush-494-p3-version

*KNOWN* Issues:
– The second half of the gallery may be empty due to time constrains, will be updated in the upcoming days.
– The second half of the Red level may be too difficult.
– The escape section of the Purple level is not as engaging as it could be.
– If the Wii remote’s nunchuck disconnects after pairing the controller to the game, the only way to reconnect the nunchuck is to restart the program. This will be looked into to see if there are ways to remedy this.
– It is not made directly clear what colors you have access to after hitting a checkpoint unless you draw or open the color select menu.
– The only way to delete save data is to go to AppData/TCY-Games/data and do it manually.
– The balancing of colors in all levels is not fine-tuned.
– The final “cutscene” is unfinished.
– Level transitions are sudden with no time to take in what is happening or why.
– The active screen of the pause menu is saved between opening and closing rather tan returning to the base pause menu.
– The settings such as volume and difficulty do not persist between scenes.
– The volume slider does not affect the volume of looping sounds such as drawing or sliding.
– Manually messing with the save data causes crashes or freezing, it will be encrypted in the future as per standard.
– Cannot manually assign a directory for save data.
– Debug options were still left in when they were meant to be removed.
– Music does not properly restart between scenes.
– Sound effects have varying volumes.

Changelog:
– Red level has been implemented.
– Adjusted paint values at various points in all levels.
– Adjusted the amount of paint in that one difficult section in the Blue level.
– Adjusted the splash screen when starting the game.
– Adjusted the timings of flame geysers from the fire wall in the escape sequence of the Red level.
– Added some black color during second to last section in the Blue level to make it easier to collect the flower and to trach the player that you can switch colors.
– Added an end screen scene after beating the Red level.
– Added difficulty settings.
– Added volume settings.
– Added a save data system.
– Added a count to track deaths and collected flowers.
– Added a gallery of various images and concept art that is gradually unlocked by collecting flowers.
– Added a wall so that players cannot skip the bridge without paint without somehow having significant speed.
– Added a more cinematic ending to the Red level’s escape section.
– Added a more appealing and informative color meter next to the cursor.
– Added more assets to the Purple level and the Red level.
– Added more particles in many places.
– Added more sound effects.
– Fixed an issue where the sliding would would not stop if a respawn occurs when on Blue color.
– Fixed an issue in the Blue level where icicles could continue to shake after respawning as though the player is near them.
– Fixed an issue in the Purple level where the player could jump in midair when in wind zones due to accidentally labelling the trigger as “ground”.
– Fixed an issue in the Purple level where the music would not change properly after loading in from the Blue level.
– Fixed an issue in the Red level where the player would get hit by fire geysers that had their visual tell off screen by out running it.
– Fixed some menu shenanigans.

Motivations for Major Changes:
– Due to most changes being either aesthetic or balancing or finishing the Red level, there is not much to discuss here since the last log 2 days ago.

Moving forward:
– While most of the team is not interested in continuing work on the game, I (Grant Williams) plan to at least. I will keep more updates available on the itch.io page most likely. Stay tuned. I will also note that eventually the game will not be able to be downloaded from itch.io for free as there are hopes for a Steam release eventually down the road after more development has been put into the game.

We hope you enjoy the game!

-The TatMB team.