Build 'Em Up
We're now to the part of our story where your hero (uh, that's me, I guess) valiantly scrambles around to figure out how the heck to release a game. Back when I started this I envisioned having just a Mac and Windows build (and maybe Linux some day if I set up a VM) and that was it. There are lots of things you never think about: a development build with a bunch of debug stuff so you can easily muck about with bugs or tweaks. Then if you distribute the game on Steam having some integration with Steamworks is helpful. Also there's Mac and Windows versions of everything now. There's a reason larger game companies have build engineers to deal with all of this stuff, because if you are even on two or three platforms it becomes confusing. I can't even imagine doing launches on consoles or mobile at the same time.
The least exciting part of making video games?
Add to this that I basically have no idea what I'm doing and I am using my personal computers to do builds and it's all just kind of crazy. Also my poor foresight didn't allow for more than one build per platform, so if I want to upload the Windows version of game to itch.io and Steam I need to build one version, deploy it, then build the next version and deploy that. Then I have to do that all over again on my Macbook for the OSX builds. At some point I'm probably going to push an incorrect build somewhere.
There's also still a fair degree of manual stuff that's sure to ruin my life one day. When uploading to Steam you can push any number of platform builds at once, but since I only build Mac and Windows versions on separate machines and also deploy from those, it's a lot of running around and editing config files. There are ways to make this easier on myself, but I've locked myself into a launch date next month so I don't know how beneficial it would be. Maybe for the next game!
Early next week I'll be releasing the trailer and hopefully getting the Steam page up soon as well. It's the home stretch!