I found that I had a little trouble staying focused on the project this week. There was more than one thing that distracted me. Still, I managed to work on the game a little each day. I started working through some ideas for text that I want to have on the towns, and some before I go into a stage. I’m a little worried about being judged or having the internet twist things into something extremely negative. Then again who knows how much attention my project will actually get.
I listened to a lot of Rami Ismail this week, and he has had a lot of insight into some of the things I’ve been working through. The plot line that I’m developing seemed alright, but when I stepped away from it there was a situation in which I asked myself, “why did I write this? I don’t really know this type of situation because I haven’t lived it.” I decided to make a small change to what I had written, and I think that it was for the better.
The enemies leveling at the beginning of the stage is still an issue that I didn’t quite get solved this week. When I was working through it with Chris I had to laugh because one of the programming patters we used had come up with a recent programming test that I took. I had never encountered that syntax before and so it was interesting that I’m going to likely be using it in my game to fix this issue.
Working through my Steam settings, I added a soundtrack section for the game and set prices today. I changed the names of the tracks from Level 1, Level 2, and Force Organization to “Leaving Home It’s Time”, “Leaves Fall As Do We All”, and “Choose Your Destiny.” I thought those names would be a bit cooler. It also made me realize that I need to put together some legal paperwork for it as well.
Today I took a look at Rami Ismail’s Press Kit software, and realized that I already pay for a website which could handle what he was doing, although Squarespace is a bit more expensive than his method for sure. It was still a good idea to look at his page to template my own Press page on the website. It isn’t live yet but I’ll probably set it loose after I make some sweet game screenshots. I put a little bio for myself in there talking about my methods for developing games, and some of the trials and tribulations. I made it pretty personal mentioning the fact that I’m a single father, and that I’ve had plenty of failed relationships. I’ve had my share of hardships to get this far for sure.
So far of the 30 beta testers I sent a link to I’ve only had one give me feedback. He said he enjoyed the game though, and so that’s a plus. Rami said that it might be impossible to enjoy your own game because you already know all it’s tricks and hidden stuff. I’m not sure, I did really enjoy sitting down and playing the game on Thursday. I had to check some code that’s supposed to display the average level number of troops in it. In order to level them up I had to play a stage and finish it. I had a lot of fun just setting up the units, which was a big deal when I first started working on Six Aspects. I’m planning to make beta testing a bit easier soon.
I really hope to have this leveling troop problem squashed on Tuesday. I started looking at the code but started to think that I wasn’t utilizing my time to the best of my ability. I’m still looking at a different way to handle the data as well.
One step closer!