12.15.08
I got the story roughed out for Game Mini. Figured out the main incentive for players to progress and started implementing it. Sigh. Now I’m not even working on the final game anymore. Am I getting farther from my goal? I guess that it will feel good to have something finished and see what it’s like to release something.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll just be crying in the closet for a couple hours.
Just kidding.
Kind of.
12.2.08
Well, maybe Christopher Lloyd doesn’t need roads, but I figured that I need them in the game pretty ‘friggin badly. I made the navigational arrows invisible until you roll over them, which works pretty well overall. It makes the space far cleaner and more aesthetic – unfortunately it also makes it harder to tell WHERE to go.
So my solution has been a path that goes through the game - a visual cue as to which directions are available to move in. It is absolutely AMAZING what a big difference that makes in terms of understanding the navigation.
(12.1.08)
Shifted my overall focus slightly. I had been working fully focused on the game up until now – but now I’ve started to consider what marketing I plan(s) to pursue. I knew from the start that I would need to put at least as much energy into marketing as I would into development. Most developers HATE this, but I think that what I’ve been reading is actually pretty interesting.
So I put up some Art on Redbubble.com and DeviantArt.com to see what it’s like having a product, and trying to sell. I’ve also been more consciensious about updating my blog
( www.crispyinspiration.blogspot.com ). It’s hard to get traffic! It serves as a really good test pad for traffic building ideas.
[Disregard -- the blog has been moved to my personal website -- www.dansilber.com ]
It had been my thought for quite a while to have some version of the game available for free – maybe the first level or something like that, which would serve as my primary marketing tool. I still think that idea is sound, but I’ve evolved the concept a bit.
I now intend to have the free version be a stand-alone full storied (albeit small) game. I plan to put some ads up in-game and offer it to AS MANY WEBSITES/PORTALS as possible (it is vector and can resize to any format). My thought is that if it is a fully polished game, widely published – it will get a lot of traffic and I can monetize on a bit of the traffic. At the same time I will be generating buzz/interest/market for the full pay version of the game.
I will here on out refer to this mini game as Game Mini and the full multi-leveled version as the Main game. Okay?
(11.26.08)
Well, I got a sound effect and music slider into the game. That is good. The urgency for me to do this was in part because the (place holder) music was too loud and makes it hard to think while testing. If I can’t get by without this function, the chances are that neither can anyone else.
I’ve added a bunch of cutscenes and new art in. It’s a coming along.
(11.24.08)
(Happy Dance, happy dance- happy, happy, happy, happy dance)
My neighbor finally got my main computer up and running. I’ve been building on the laptop computer at home and it has been a major pain in the tuchas. It turns out that my processor had burned out. I guess when it was originally put together, it didn’t have any thermal paste around the unit. Unfortunately, the ‘pooter is still crashing a lot.
In other news – the vast majority of the work I had done that was lost on the flash drive was redone, and quite a lot of new stuff on top of that. I built a really decent tutorial for the game which actually seems to work fairly decent.
(10.29.08)
Sigh. Sometimes you just gotta roll with the punches. I lost my flash drive with the latest 2 versions of the game. And that is not to mention the 3 months of journal entries lost. I was actually documenting my thoughts so well.
That is just plain too bad. I lost an updated HUD/interface, I lost a bunch of updated cutscene information. I would guess that I lost at least a bit of new art also. I’m not sure what else. That was about 2 weeks ago – and I have been holding off working on the game in the hopes that things would show up again.
Well, I’m done sulking and now ready to get back on track and redo the work lost.