Archive for the ‘Project Management’ Category
It’s Getting Close…
Friday, January 23rd, 2009
I’m prepared to officially declare Alpha this morning!
I had an extremely productive couple of days and finished off the 2 Player Mode last night. There are still a few small things to add to the game (a few animations to spice things up in places), but all the big features are finished. At this point it’s finishing up the last of the polish items and then it’s tuning, testing, and bug fixing until submission!
My original plan was to declare Alpha by the end of December, but then I decided I had time to implement Timed Mode and 2 Player Mode. I’m really glad I spent the time to add these modes; they add so much to the game. I really feel like I’ll be able to justify the price-point I’ve been mulling over in my head (more on that later). Given that I added two game modes in the last 3 weeks I’m feeling pretty good at declaring Alpha today.
The plan now is to wrap up the last of the polish tasks and fix the bugs I’m aware of by mid next week. At that point I’ll declare Beta and send out a Beta build to everyone who has signed up for Beta Testing.
I’m still looking for more Beta Testers. If you’re interested, please send me an email (info AT streamingcolour DOT com) with “beta test” in the subject. There are full details in this previous post.
Unrelated to Dapple, I wanted to share a few links that have been sent my way over the last while:
- AppTheater (www.apptheater.com) – A site that collects videos of iPhone Apps. If you want to see what an App is like before you buy it, look for a video here.
- Oolong Engine (www.oolongengine.com) – Noel from Snappy Touch informed me about this freely available simple engine for iPhone. It looks to me like it’s based off the code from Apple’s (now removed) CrashLanding example project, but they’ve added all kinds of handy functionality. I wish I’d known about this 6 months ago…
Oh, one final note: I contacted the TTC (Toronto Transit Commission, for those outside Toronto) about advertising on buses and subways. They sent me some pricing information and I’ve realised that the old adage “you need to spend money to make money” is so true. There should perhaps be a corollary “you need money to make money”. I’ve realised I can’t afford to do that kind of physical advertising until I make some money. Ironic, ain’t it?
Owen
Breaking my Own Rules
Monday, January 19th, 2009
Back at the end of November I posted about some new rules I had made for my work-life. Basically, I had said that I wasn’t going to do work, or read work emails after 7:00 PM each night. I had also decided that I wasn’t going to work on weekends. All of that went out the window last week.
As I get closer to submission I’m working more and more. Last week I did several nights of working late and I worked a half day on Saturday, and a few hours on Sunday. I’m already paying for it. I haven’t been sleeping well again. The problem is that when I work late, I can’t stop thinking about work, even when I’m supposed to be sleeping. I end up lying awake at night going over things in my head instead of falling asleep. So I’m not really sure what to do. On the one hand, I need to be putting in this extra time right now, but on the other hand, I do like to get some sleep.
The good news is that by working a bit on the weekend I was able to wrap up the Timed Mode for the game. I managed to put in a bunch of new animations including: a countdown animation when you start a timed game, some beeping sounds when your time’s running out (that get more frantic as you get closer to “time’s up”), and a new Game Over animation that differentiates between losing because there were no more moves and because you ran out of time.
I’m quite pleased with how the Timed Mode turned out and I’m also pleased with how long it took to implement it. It took about 3.5 full days of coding to get it all in and working, with all the new animations, UI, etc.
Yesterday I started planning out the 2-Player mode that I want to add this week. The biggest problem I’m running into is the screen layout. The screen is pretty tight in single-player modes for displaying critical information, but now I need to display info for 2 players. So yesterday I spent a few hours mucking around in image editing software playing with the layout. I think I’ve got something that should work. Now I’ve just got to build it and see.
I’ve given myself until the end of the week (i.e. Sunday) to implement this new mode. That’s about as long as I can afford to take and not risk delaying the project significantly. It feels like I should be able to do it. Here’s hoping I’m right.
Owen
Press Releases and Maximum Risk Factor
Wednesday, January 14th, 2009
I spent all morning sending out press releases now that I’ve got the trailer up for Dapple. This time I drew up a proper press release (all the correct formatting, etc) and had several people who know about this kind of thing read it over. I also sent personalized emails to each place I sent it to. I figured I had a better chance of someone reading it if I wrote each person individually. It was a lot more work doing it this way, but hopefully it’ll be worth it.
It’s funny, I posted in my look back on 2008 note that I had learned that you need to find people to do the stuff you’re not very good at. I’m new to all this PR/marketing stuff, so maybe I should be taking my own advice. The problem is, I just don’t have money left in the budget to hire a PR firm to handle this for me. Maybe it’s something I can look into once I’ve sold a few copies of the game, but for now, I’m actually kind of enjoying learning how to do this.
As for the reference to “maximum risk factor” in the subject, that’s with regard to what I started coding yesterday. Right now Dapple contains one game mode that is very well fleshed out. It’s what I’ve been working on the whole time. The plan was always to get that main game mode to a level of polish that I could ship it on its own, then try to add a few more game modes before ship. I honestly don’t think I thought I’d get to the other game modes. But here I am. And yesterday I started coding up the second game mode.
This is turning out to be easier than I had thought, mostly because I designed the code and API’s around being able to handle multiple game modes. The core logic is all the same, it’s just how the player interacts with it that changes. For instance, the base game mode I’ve already implemented (Classic Mode) is turn-based. There’s no rush to play, you can take your time thinking out your moves (think Hexic). What I started implementing yesterday is a new Timed Mode. This has the same gameplay, except now you’re playing against the clock. The clock is always ticking down and you need to make matches to bump it back up.
Changing the gameplay turned out to be fairly easy, and it turns out that the most work comes on the UI side of things. It means some new menus, some new popups, and storing new high scores in the player save data (as well as modifying the high score screen to show a list for each game mode).
I was laughing about this last night, because when I worked for larger companies it used to drive me crazy when game designers would ask for major feature implementations a month before shipping. I guess I finally understand that a little better now.
Ultimately, I think having more than one game mode will really help to convince people that it’s worth the cost of buying the game. I’m hoping to wrap up Timed Mode in the next day or two and then I’m going to see how much work is involved in putting a 2-player local play version of the game in. That one makes me a bit more nervous as it will mean some lower level game logic changes, but it feels like I can do it. Wish me luck!
Owen
Newgameitis
Tuesday, January 13th, 2009
First of all: I mailed my forms to the US today (turns out they go to Texas, not California, like I had previously thought). I sent them ExpressPost to get them there as fast as I could, which turned out to be quite expensive. Oh well, if it lets me release my game on time, it’s worth it.
Today I’m suffering badly from “Newgameitis”. I’ve been noodling around with a game concept for my next game for once I finish Dapple. I’ve been writing down notes as I think of things and I’ve been deliberately avoiding writing any code; I need to concentrate on finishing Dapple right now. However, today it’s all I can think about. I’m trying to write Dapple code, but I keep switching over to my notes document to jot down little ideas. I don’t want to lose these ideas, but I need to concentrate on Dapple too.
I think this is one of the biggest challenges you face as an indie developer working (basically) alone: there’s no boss to tell you to get back on track or check up on your task status. It requires a lot of discipline, which I usually don’t have a problem with. The toughest part making a game is actually finishing it. I’m at a part of the project that doesn’t involve a lot of giant steps forward; it’s mostly hard work to fix bugs and polish things up. I need to keep that part of my brain that’s screaming, “Hey! Let’s work on this new idea, it’s be way more fun!” in check.
Owen
Naming the Beast
Monday, December 8th, 2008
Why do Mondays suck so much? I’m feeling a little overwhelmed with everything that’s going on with the game. This is the usual state of mild panic that creeps up on you as you start to get close to Alpha (yes, that’s right, I said it: Alpha).
I’m hoping to have the game in an Alpha state by the end of December, go Beta in mid-January, and ship by the end of January. That’s the plan. There’s a lot of factors that might play with that date, though. The main one being the length of time it will take to get Apple approval.
At any rate, back to the matters at hand. I still haven’t picked a name for the game yet. I’ve gone through dozens of names and I’m finally down to two names I like. It’s just a matter of picking the final one. Once I do that I’m planning to update the Games page of the site with screenshots and information about the game. Real info, like how it’s played and what it’s all about.
And in the category of Mondays sucking, I’ve made a disappointing discovery. My composer has created some really kick-ass music tracks for my game and now I’m starting to wonder how many of them will fit. This is the problem with not trying out my audio stuff sooner. I just tried compressing the music files and they’re between 5-10MB each. For four tracks in the game, my game just got 25MB bigger! On a mobile platform, that’s massive. I looked through all of my favourite games on my iPod and all of them are under 10MB for the whole game. I also noticed that none of them include any music.
If I still end up doing a Mac/PC version of the game I’ll definitely be able to use all the music tracks. But now I need to find a solution for the iPhone version of the game. Do I compress the hell out of the music? Do I pick one or two tracks? I feel really stupid about this.
Owen