Friday, September 2, 2011

Game Development Blog #59

Game Development Blog #59


"WORK TIMES A BILLION"

Yes, the chips may be down, but that won't stop me from putting out a little update discussing what is going on. Here's the skinny - my home internet connection is offline for about 2 weeks and change (horrors!) Before you make fun of me, it's actually a fairly critical time for that to happen as I am spending a huge amount of time talking to many different people about lots of important business-type dealings right now (selling stuff, ya know). I am regularly getting contracts and agreements, printing out/signing/scanning/reuploading. What used to be fairly easy in the span of 15 minutes now requires that I run back and forth between various physical locations to handle such things (exacerbated by the fact that I haven't a car either). It's nice that the cafe up the street has free wifi, so I can't complain too much. Likewise, as I am in early development on two new titles, this is when I usually am hip-deep in reference digging (something that must often be done while I am fleshing things out at the beginning of a creative cycle). So my work-style has been taking a fairly dramatic hit; I am doing the best I can.

On the upside of all of that, I am pleased to report that all of this means that things are generally very busy for me. I am finally past active development with 180 in (nearly) any way shape or form - while we are still figuring out the Casual Mode (now called Strategy Mode), it's a bit of a slow process and my role is diminished while the programmer does his part. Meanwhile things have ramped up considerably in production for GunHead as the Android version is finally coming to life a bit, and (at last) I am in the thick of it developing assets. I could go on for pages about asset dev for this game, but I think I will save it until I am a bit further in. it's a kick for real :)

The other cool news is that things are finally getting dusted off for Trapdoor once again. Yes, this is the very first mobile game that I'd ever written any kind of documentation for, and it's been sitting on the backshelf for a long time while other things have come and go. At last, a programmer and I have decided to take advantage of the coming long Labor Day weekend and just do a little "game jam" and attack the thing. It is exciting to work on a small, short-term project, and I am eager to get through the process and see how we fare. I don't expect we'll have a fully-functioning product by the end of the phase, but if we can get a good way through it with more than a bare skeleton, that will be pretty awesome; then a couple of weeks or so to polish it, and (at last) another release to unleash upon the unsuspecting world!

There's a lot more to say, but hey - I have to get back to work.

BONUS: Must-read! "How to do make Media Kits, Retro Dreamer Style!"

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