Mooselutions

About this game

Latest news

• Patch Notes·14 Dec 2024Official

  Camera Behavior Improvements on the Steam Deck

  I've been porting Mooselutions to iOS. This occasion made revisit the game's camera behavior on the Steam Deck. I was never a fan of the player-centered camera on the Steam Deck version of the game. To be completely honest, it was thrown together rather quickly. Only after launching on Steam did I then realize the game has a player base on the Steam Deck. I scrambled to put something in as quickly as I could, knowing I would come back later and improve upon it. The old camera behavior was rather simple. It placed the player in the center of the screen and simply drew whatever was around the player. While this can work for many types of games, it's not ideal for a puzzle game like Mooselutions where it's very useful to see as much of the puzzle as possible. On the Windows and Mac OS versions where there is plenty of screen real estate, I just show the entire puzzle. I can't do that on the Steam Deck, however, because the game's artwork doesn't look good at smaller scales. Thus a compromise was born. The new camera doesn't show the entire puzzle, but at least it's no longer tethered to the player. Instead of placing the player at the center of the screen, the camera moves with the player to reveal the puzzle in the area where the player moves. I defined some hard edges for each level, spaces beyond which the camera can't move. This is helpful for keeping the puzzle in focus. You no longer have these situations where most of what gets drawn on the screen is outside of the edges of the puzzle. If you haven't played Mooselutions on the Steam Deck, I now urge you to give it a try. If you like what you're playing, leave a review. If the game gets enough reviews, it will trigger something in the Steam algorithm that makes them verify it for the Steam Deck, and it would be great to see the game with a Steam Deck verified rating on it.
  Read full article on Community Announcements (moosiedoestoo)

• Announcements·18 Nov 2024Official

  My friend Demetri plays Mooselutions

  We talk about puzzle design with some interesting banter about user interface / experience design.
  Read full article on Community Announcements (moosiedoestoo)

• Patch Notes·10 Nov 2024Official

  Steam Deck Graphics Improvements

  I was getting the game ready for Super MAGFest and the Turn Based Carnival sale, and I was testing one of my builds on the Steam Deck. I popped over to play some of my other favorite pixel art games (Axiom Verge specifically). I noticed the pixel art in that game and was impressed with how crisp it looked. I then took a second look at Mooselutions and figured something must be wrong because it wasn't quite as crisp. (For those of you who are super nerdy and technical, Mooselutions uses a pixel art scaling shader that does bilinear interpolation to blend ever so slightly, but only at texel boundaries. Inside of a texel, the shader samples the texel color, resulting in non-blurry pixel art scaling at non-integer multiples of the texture. It is very convenient because it means I don't have to letterbox the game and can arbitrarily scale textures so long as I preserve the aspect ratio.) Anyway, I thought something might be wrong with this specific shader, so I tried a few experiments to rule out the shader and found the shader not to be responsible for the slight blurriness. Instead, it turned out it was a problem integrating with the Windows API. My game's viewport wasn't exactly set to the window's content area size, so there was a teeny tiny amount of stretching which was fairly visible at much smaller window sizes. This latest update fixes that discrepancy, and the consequence is pixel art that is just as crisp as Axiom Verge is on the Steam Deck. I think you'll find it much more pleasing on the eye.
  Read full article on Community Announcements (moosiedoestoo)

• Patch Notes·7 Nov 2024Official

  Juice the Moose Update

  Since Moosleutions got into both MAGFest and the Turn-Based Carnvial sale, I thought it would be nice to improve upon some areas of the game that I found lacking. The main thrust of the update has been the desire to add more "juice" to the game, to make it feel more lively. With that goal in mind, this recent update includes the following juicy bits: - A totally new set of player animations - A camera shake effect when the moose hit obstacles in the terrain - A particle effect when the moose charge through grass and leaves - A particle effect when the moose hit trees - A bright new summer theme If you haven't purchased Mooselutions yet, don't buy it right now. Wait for the Turn-Based Carnival of the Steam fall sale, which we will be participating in.
  Read full article on Community Announcements (moosiedoestoo)

• Patch Notes·29 Feb 2024Official

  Steam Deck Controls

  I just uploaded a small update that makes the controls on Steam Deck fully native. They should just work right out of the box. Thanks to Casey Muratori for pointing out that you can just use XInput on Windows. When the game is running via Proton it will act as if the Steam Deck controller is an XBox controller.
  Read full article on Community Announcements (moosiedoestoo)