Game Update
This week I worked out what it would take to build all the levels for the game to get it to market, and the outlook wasn’t great. I promised 30 stages primarily to match up to content that I have seen before. The issue is that forcing myself to create this number of stages is a lot like forcing musicians to create 15 tracks when they really only put their heart into 4 of them. So I reduced the number of stages in an attempt to increase the quality. It doesn’t mean that we can’t add more stages and content later but for now this is the decision that has been made.
The current plan is to complete a new stage every two weeks, however this isn’t the whole story. Right now I have five passes that I go through to make each stage. Each one of these passes has further components. All together there are about 15 items that need to be completed. Some items take a lot longer than others and I’m still worried about the plot line for the game.
It’s likely we will complete a lot of the basic structure for stages first and then move on to completing the plot line next. I expect more work will be done with our new decision system. An interesting decision that I saw in the original Ogre battle is on Stage 2. The first boss says, “It’s not to late to turn back, will you join the empire?” If the player says yes the game actually ends and goes back to the start screen, and the default option is yes.
If anything I have my work cut out for me. It was a sobering moment to lay out all the work in front of myself. I need to re-focus and get moving on this. I was hoping to give myself more motivation to get things done and this might have done that.
Personal Update
Having the boys back in the house has been good for my productivity, but it takes more time and energy out of the day to keep things running here. Still They are doing a good job at helping with the household chores. I’m hoping that I can teach my oldest how to make levels so that he can help out with the work load a bit.
Things are still good with my girlfriend. We are growing together and discovering deeper and deeper parts of each other all the time. Sometimes these things can be painful and difficult to work through but in the end its worth it to feel this vulnerable with someone. There are times that there are issues, and we don’t figure it out until much later. Communication has been key to get to where we need to go, and I have faith that she’s the one for me.