Game Update
Still getting used to my schedule with the boys in the house which has reduced my work output substantially. I was only able to get work done with my mentor on our regular meeting time this week. We are testing to see how long it will take to finish one stage, and we got sidetracked in a good way.
We found that we had tied the stage achievements to a script that holds all of the stage names. Those stage names populate the map and are supposed to also come up on the summary screen when the stage is over. They are the boss town names on each stage. Because the job could be batched we ditched our “finish one stage” and just spent the time coming up with names for each stage.
I will confess that coming up with so many stage names can be a daunting task. Often I find that I take some references that I know and work those in while changing a small piece here or there. I wonder if anyone will get it in a few years. We had a discussion about the worry of infringing on other artistic work, but honestly the game is so underground that I don’t know it would be important enough for the big companies to care about it. We’re still a very underground project even though it is public on Steam. I always tell people it’s hard to be completely invisible on the internet just like it’s hard to get popular on the internet.
Personal Update
My family had some milestones for my sisters daughter this weekend which was nice. It was even better because my girlfriend was able to visit. It’s getting more difficult to deal with the distance, but I also think that we were pretty spoiled over the summer time. I also think at times that all the travel and time spent probably hurt some of my productivity this summer.
It’s likely that the next big step will be starting an Ebay account to get rid of some of my old nerd stuff and then push that money into my investment accounts. I’ve been pretty focused on a lot of the lessons from Rich Dad Poor Dad and so I’m trying to apply them. I’ve also considered doing some professional Dungeon Mastering and creating some sort of rental program for all my Dungeons and Dragons Dwarven Forge terrain. I’ve even looked at opening up some sort of physical hobby shop. I have a lot of dreams but I need to start executing to see what works and what doesn’t.
I’ve started to revisit the board game idea and I think I finally have something that will be fun. It has to do with making an arcade and using the worker placement mechanic made popular in the game Agricola. It’s a pretty rough game right now but I expect that it will get better quickly as I iterate on it.