If the lack of a post last week didn't make it obvious, I've been out of town and largely unable to do much in the way of work, including getting a blog post up. I am now back home, mostly caught up on things, and able to resume work as normal. And as a quick aside - I don't know where all of you new Patrons came from, but it's great to see you. If you aren't one of the new ones, there's still plenty of room for more if you want to take a look at being a Patron or Subscriber.
Shameless plug aside, I have gotten some work done on v0.18 already. Mostly in the form of blocking out some maps and working out what I want for new mechanics (because I cannot and will not be stopped from experimenting with something in each update), but it isn't what I would call a significant amount of progress. There are also a number of bugs that need addressing from v0.17, some of which are going to take some investigation before I can call them addressed.
Where I'm caught up right now is that I don't like leaving bugs unaddressed, but I also don't like the idea of going yet another week without having a test build while I do all that investigation. I also really want to get the mechanic I have in mind in someone else's hands. Both for testing purposes and to see if it feels decent to someone that didn't invest dozens of hours into making it function and may have a bias on how good it is because what it is in the test build is thousands of times better than the jank it first came into being as.
This leaves me in a place where I actually need to focus a bit on what I'm developing. Usually there isn't a lot of rhyme or reason to the order I do things in. Obviously I need to make maps before I can start putting events in them, but once a map is made - whether I start filling it with events or writing out the story or making a new map or switching gears to render something or make or balance an enemy - it's almost entirely random based on what I feel like doing. If I want to get a test build out for Friday, I'm going to have to focus on the critical path (the bits the player is required to go through in order to progress), otherwise I'm not going to have enough done to really justify a test build.
I've also been trying to plan things out in my head for the side content for this update and how future story will factor in to one of the new zones. I didn't initially want to, but I may keep v0.18 to one zone instead of opening up two. Given how close to Halloween we are at this point and how far I still am from having a complete update, it feels like the better decision. From both a time standpoint and from a development standpoint. Holding off on putting the region together until it's relevant to the story means I don't need to put a bunch of extra checks in place to make sure future story doesn't trigger out of order in a more complete version of the game. It also means I don't need to spend days or weeks building all of that content when I have seasonal updates to put out. Even with my Patrons voting to have builds be complete regardless of development time, the more I think about it, the more it feels like the better decision.
Besides, I don't think anyone wants to wait until December for a Halloween themed update.
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