This week we moved forward and managed to fix the leveling problem with troops in the game which is super exciting! It was going to be a big problem if the players units weren’t having their stat lines saved properly. I worked on the Beast Master animations and got them triggering properly. It’s a good feeling, but I still need to add particle effects to his attacks. I need to buckle down and really focus on getting more development hours out each day.
I also spoke with a promotional company this week and found out that it’s likely I’m doing that to late in development. As expected it is going to be pricey and I needed to do some initial work ahead of time. They are supposed to be doing a proposal on what it will cost to put together some sort of trailer video for the game. I expect to see it next week. If I don’t I’ll message them once and if that doesn’t get through I’ll cut my losses and move forward. Still it was exciting to talk through the process with some professionals.
Most of what needs to be worked on is content revolving around the player and enemy troops in the game. It’s a lot more content authoring than I think I was prepared for. There’s multiple scripts that need to be touched and no easy way to do what needs to be done all in one place. I can see now why engines like RPG Maker are so good for the programmer illiterate as they offer a simple solution for building out content.
All in all I’ll say that I haven’t been as efficient and effective as I could or should have been right now. It’s funny to say this but after doing some stock market investing it helped motivate me to start lining everything up in my life. I was staying up late, playing mobile games, chatting with other people, and generally spending time away from working on my game. I took the opportunity to refocus today and schedule my time better so that it doesn’t get away from me. I built a spreadsheet that breaks down a schedule for my kids as well as for myself. I built in game development time, social time, and time for the kids. I’m really hoping that it improves my efficiency. I think that getting to bed by 10 PM alone will be a big boon to my productivity. The idea is that even if I work late I’ll have to pay for that time the next day and so it’s better to rest.
I also made a motivational video of myself to watch each morning. I’m pretty harsh and I use foul language often to make sure I’m shocking myself into getting the job done. It’s not like it doesn’t come from a real place because I am a little angry with my lack of discipline since the Corona Virus kicked off and I was stuck at home. I feel I have a good way forward now with the schedule and I hope that I’ll be able to stick to it.
The positive thing for you if you’re following me is that you will be able to hang out with me on my twitch stream for almost two hours most nights as I work on getting all the content built out. I’m working so that I won’t have to delay the game but I think it’s a strong possibility at this point. Let’s get this thing out by 6 Mar people!