Focus

Game Update

We keep moving along slowly but with intent to finish this project. Last week we did a play test to better understand the changes that we had been making and how they were impacting the player. We also looked for some quick fix items as well with the play through. I’m now worried that the player isn’t gaining experience fast enough. This has been a bit of a fine tuning exercise as originally the player gained levels way to fast.

The big change is that we have surfaced the descriptions for the abilities assigned to all the player characters in the Force Organization screen. This is a big deal as our area of effect damage abilities vary widely. Some of the abilities only hit the center 3 columns while others randomly hit the entire enemy squad for instance. It’s always a balance when thinking about how much information to give to the player compared to trying to use affordance instead. (Yes affordance is a real word there’s an Extra Credits video that explains it well)

We’re also looking at giving more visual cues during combat to ensure that the player has a good grip on how their squad composition choices are effecting combat. This might prove to be more difficult than originally thought because the combats are pseudo-simultaneous. It might be to overstimulating to have to many particle effects launching at the same time.

Personal Update

The last of the boxes in the house are cleared out in the common areas and I will be dropping what’s left off with family nearby to use in an upcoming move of their own. It’s nice to have the house finally come together although there are about 100 different little things that still need to be accomplished to bring everything into alignment.

I have been socializing off and on, although it hasn’t been a major focus for me. That said I recently made a difficult decision that will allow me more life focus. It’s important to be decisive sometimes, but also compassionate with our life decisions. I hope to have the ability to speak more specifically in the future but it’s probably to early right now. I will say that I’m very happy.