God is a Cube: Programming Robot Cubes

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• Announcements·7 Jul 2025Official

  DevBlog #9 - automated testing

  TLDR automated tests to be sure I'm not breaking anything cleaned the code by deleting 23,000 lines of unused code worked on several cutscenes I am working again on God is a Cube. I am aware that last years I only worked a few days at a time on the game, and that it was mostly because everything is a mess. So I am documenting everything, as I reinstall all software on my new computer (such as Unity), to make the whole process easier. I struggled at some points, then realized that I just needed to read again all previous devblog entries. With hindsight, some of this stuff is crazy, but at least, I can build on the effort I put in the past to make things better. MonoDevelop I wanted to use Visual Studio, but I still don't find a way to connect the debugger. So I will have to use MonoDevelop, at least for debugging. I want to use the dark mode for MonoDevelop, but MonoDevelop has custom themes. Tools > Options > Text Editor > Syntax Highlighting I realize I did not make a save of the MonoDevelop dark theme I created last year. A mistake. But I can get it from my previous computer, if I find the directory with all themes. It looks like MonoDevelop integrated themes do not appear on Windows file system (I'm looking for their names, but I find nothing). So I create a random style with an easily findable name, and I use Everything to find its directory. Here it is: C:\Users\me\AppData\Roaming\MonoDevelop-Unity-2.8\HighlightingSchemes. Back on the old computer, the directory gives me my custom theme. I put the theme on the new computer on the correct MonoDevelop folder, and it does not appear. The trick is to restart MonoDevelop to see the theme available. This time I save a copy of the theme in the repo. Testing framework I always missed a testing framework on this game. The purpose of a testing framework is to automate tests such as checking the result of a part of the code. I also wanted to have an "ingame" testing framework, to simulate navigation in the game to validat...
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• Announcements·10 Feb 2024Official

  DevBlog #8 - Humble Bundle info

  TL;DR Steam Cloud Saves will be added Humble Bundle backers list Steam Cloud Saves For the Advanced Features "Online Save feature", it will be provided through Steam Cloud Saves and available to everybody. When I announced an Online Save feature, back in 2015, I did not know about Steam Cloud Saves. I can read it exists since 2008, so I guess it's my mistake not knowing about that. Currently, the Steam Cloud Save is not active, and the game saves its database in your AppData directory. You can easily find your save by launching the game and look in the Options, there is a button to open the directory where the save is. I edited the Advanced Feature page product on Steam to remove mention of the Online Save feature, and I will implement Steam Cloud Saves with their developer tool. Mini crowdfunding When the Early Access was launched in 2017, people could prebuy the game on the website, like a mini-crowdfunding. There were various tiers (early bird, get your name in the game, etc), which can be bought with a Humble Bundle plugin window integrated in the website. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33668735/f7c8cf37a24e2f5f3d3a4f1109d067fb3e0763c6.png Every people who get the game at this time will be contacted and get special rewards, like having his name in the credits. Humble Bundle info As I need to get all emails from backers through Humble Bundle, I was reluctant to do so, as I got some problems with lag, but it was already 6 or 7 years ago... everything is running fine today. For every product, I display all sales with a starting date of 2011 (far before anything was available) to be sure that all orders will be displayed, and I click on the "send csv to my email button". Hopefully, I gave every product an unique name like "reward15" for the $15 reward. Still, I rename the csv by adding an intelligible name like "Alpha" or "Alpha-Early Bird". Why not use Humble Bundle crowdfunding tool? Humble Bundle has a crowdfunding tool to send an access to a download page, but you need to p...
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• Announcements·3 Feb 2024Official

  DevBlog #7 - sound design, ending cutscenes status, smoother camera zoom

  TL;DR remove popup ad update the website sounds added smoother camera zoom better dark cubes percentage ending cutscenes status Remove popup ad to join community I removed the ad to join the Steam community, which was launched after the cutscene for completing a chapter. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33668735/d8526bdcc34e6b5a2026e6160ad8d68e0810a6c6.png Back in the day, it was an ad to vote for the game on Greenlight. Now that I look at it, I see that some icons are not clear (like already done), and that there is no way to actually say "no" or "don't bother me again". On the plus side, removing this ad was really easy. The game relies on a "playing phases" system, where every part of the game is a phase: editing a solution, playing the solution, displaying the galaxy map, etc. And all transitions between two phases are managed with a specific function, which allows to add custom code for this transition only. The main purpose was to avoid a nightmare of "if" tests to activate specific code. Almost all transitions are as simple as that: public void from_phase_cutscene_to_phase_galaxy_map () { end_phase_cutscene (); begin_phase_galaxy_map (); // display_ad (); } Thanks to that, any logic specific to a unique combination of two phases is entirely managed in a specific function. The code file containing all those transitions is more than 900 lines of code. That's a lot, but thanks to that, I never got any confusion going from one phase to another. Humble Bundle As I removed Humble Bundle buy options from the website, the money threshold cannot be attained to transfer the funds, and so I asked them to transfer everything. I also asked them to give me the full list of all buyers, but they did not do anything. So I will have to manually get those data from the website. It's clumbersome, as I need to go through all time periods for all buying options, and it crashes when there is too many data for a period. But I will do it anyway. Clean directories I tried to clean some directories ...
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• Announcements·2 Aug 2023Official

  DevBlog #6 - game cache, website, new payment, special thanks

  TL;DR update the offline cache for level results update the website new payment by Valve a special thank for DevBlog readers Level Results offline cache In case the server is not reachable, there is an offline cache of the levels results inside the game. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33668735/4166f9144182320a948ae2ca954f1ca535eb5552.png The offline cache is really old, as it dates from 2016 October 4th. I replaced it with a recent version. To generate the cache, I had to call an online function on the server, from Unity editor. It was rather complicated, as the game needed to load real data ingame before using the editor menu to call the server. Hopefully, Postman makes the whole process easier, as I can use it to call the server in post mode, with binary files (containing the requested level and version list) attached to the body. I can even use the "Save Response" button to directly save the server's data to the cache file. https://i.imgur.com/4HlC6KV.gif With this new cached file, offline results are far much better! Note: it looks like Steam cannot host this gif (maybe because it is too wide, with its 1610 x 1101 px size?), so I am using imgur.com with an img tag. Trying to switch to a https website I never set up https on the website, thinking it was not necessary. But I see that some browsers are using https by default (at least with autocomplete), so I simply thought that I will set it fastly and be done with that. As usual, a simple action like this makes me fall into a rabbit hole of nerve-wracking configuration hell. I want to set up https I go on OVH (the web hosting solution) OVH tells me I "added multisite hosting within the last two hours" I did not change anything at this point, so I guess I can ignore that I see I need to activate SSL I find how to activate SSL on a tutorial OVH cannot activate SSL and does not explain why I find that it could be caused by the multisite option (to manage the website with and without "www") OVH cannot activate SSL on any multisi...
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• Announcements·16 Jul 2023Official

  DevBlox #5 - Player stats, new release date

  TL;DR new release date is first half of 2024 the server still records data people are still playing the game Player stats Part of my real life job consists to work on data, mainly to create automated reports. So here are a few reports to see the health of the game's data. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33668735/4ca6568df519333ed69e9f3c9b0591e80a771037.png On the last 12 months, there is an average of 14.17 different players every month! As those are stats from the server, it also includes stats from pirates. But as pirates often use the default name saved in the hacked game, it shoud not impact the total stats too much. This being said, I have no way to clearly distinguish Steam players from pirates. And Steam does not provide stats from players at all. I know there are websites recording Steam games activity, but they seem to look only at certain time intervals, and the game's numbers are too small and sporadic to be recorded this way. No matter what, I'm glad people are still playing God is a Cube! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33668735/46484df9de53255650b7126a6f4e07238cffd14b.png Players have found 6604 distinct solutions over the years! As there is a finite number of solutions, players should find all the most common solutions over time. It's true that the number of players influences the number of solutions found, so I displayed both distinct solutions and monthly active players : {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33668735/b8fff78629ef6f4ec9ed801c988df212b12cde14.png I think that over time, a bigger amount of players does not necessarily create a bigger amount of solutions found (we can see that around 2021 and 2022 the number of solutions does not become really bigger). I can generate stats for all levels, to see if there are still completed. Here is an example with the first level, to see how many times it is finished per month: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33668735/0eab9cb6d0d08b59e3a736724ba25d6467cc0c92.png And here is a gif showing all levels of the game to see how many times they are finished per mont...
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