Hooray for Automation!

One thing I’ve learned over the years while running a solo project like BombSquad is the importance of automation.  If I can write a script to save myself 5 minutes of time each day, that adds up fast.  When that’s multiplied by 10 or 20 things that need to get done every day it can mean the difference between actually making progress on the game vs. being mired down in daily busywork (or simply letting things fall out of date)

So on that note, I’ve been working to automate a few things and I thought it’d be useful to share:

  1. Python API Docs.  A few years back I wrote a script to generate documentation for BombSquad’s Python API (for modding purposes, etc.). However this required me to manually run the script and copy results into a page here.  Hence, it fell out of date constantly.  I’ve now automated this process to run nightly on my latest code.  Wheee!
  2. Change Log.  I’ve now got a single detailed change-log that lives with my source code and is used to automatically update the change-log page on this site and elsewhere (as well as release notes on app stores, etc).  This will hopefully result in fewer “bug fixes and polishing” app release notes, as well as providing a useful reference for modders.
  3. Translation notices.  First off, a huge thanks to all the volunteers who have helped translate BombSquad to 27(!!!) languages.  The game would not be what it is without your help.  To this end, I’d love to make the translation process smoother for those who want to help out.  So as of BombSquad 1.4.133 you can now opt in under settings->advanced to be informed at launch if the language you are using contains new untranslated phrases.  Hopefully this will be useful!

22 thoughts on “Hooray for Automation!”

  1. Hi,Eric. I want to tell you that there are some kind of connection problems of BS, sometimes I need to restart the games several times to connect to the internet.

    And, as a loyal player for China, I would be truly grateful if you can solve the problem that Chinese can not be input on Mac or can not be seen on Win.

    1. I do plan to get full unicode (Chinese, etc) text display working on the windows version before I release it on Steam… I’ll also see if I can get text input working correct there and on Mac too…

      Thanks for the heads-up with the connection issues. I imagine its related to China’s firewall. There’s some things I plan to try to improve that too..

  2. I have one new feature you can add to BombSquad. In the campaign when you die and you press the “End” on the continue
    screen, a game over screen should show up ( it should have a game over music too), after 10 seconds the game over screen should disappear.

    1. And also, when you go to Settings > Audio > Soundtracks, we will be able to change the game over music

    1. Yes I’ll start making posts about it as it gets closer. I’m already working on it; I just don’t want to be *too* much of a tease 🙂

  3. Is there tons of new and exciting content coming soon? My brothers and I love the game, and would like to have even more maps and such to choose from!

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