Indiecade announced on Friday that their deadline was extended to May 15th, giving everyone another two weeks to submit. I actually have only one extra week to improve my demo because my next deadline is PAX 10 (May 9th 2009). The stress is still on, but it’s weird working so hard towards a deadline and having it pushed back — a mixed blessing really. You have to keep pushing hard for longer, but you also have more time to polish, to tighten up the graphics on level 2, etc.
I’ve noticed a certain degradation in my code quality the last few weeks. I still document my code, and clean it up before checking in, but I’m also leaving a lot of areas unfinished, and doing a lot less refactoring. There is an increase in code duplication, and a little less care going into the design of new classes and systems. It’s not that I don’t care. On the contrary, I’m almost obsessive compulsive about these issues, but I know my time is limited. I can afford to cut some corners as long as it doesn’t sacrifice the stability of the game or the simulation. One thing is for sure, I’m still tagging my code with “todos” everywhere that is appropriate. If I graphed the amount of “todos” in my codebase on a timeline, I imagine it would neatly line up with my stress level.
After these deadlines, I will need a good week to go through my code and fix up and improve areas that need it. For the time being, I’m focused on the exterior presentation.
Update: Oh, and my hometown hockey team won their first playoff series in 10 years last night. I’ve been losing a lot of sleep staying up watching the games, but it’s all worth it.
Work Done Last Week
I added shader support, and experimented with some visual looks for a day or so. Still, I had to drop this idea for the original deadline. It isn’t yet working as I would like it to, and there are more pressing issues to address. With the extended deadline, I may look at re-introducing it soon.
I improved the audio support, adding some sound effects, and starting to extend the framework. Once you start adding some audio, you start seeing all the other “events” that are missing audio. A mini-Pandora’s box. The audio effects I have right now are still placeholders, and I’m working on acquiring some original stuff.
I did a lot of work on a help system. I’ve been trying to set up a dynamic system that provides useful info to the player without impeding their view or progress. It’s taken me a couple days to set up, thanks to an annoying bug that I spent two days fighting (while implementing countless potential solutions). My final solution isn’t a hack per se, but it’s god awful ugly. But when your back is up against the wall…
The control scheme is also improved. Based on user feedback, I’ve been experimenting with a simpler system, and it seems to be more effective. I’ve yet to get the new system player tested, it’s still in flux, but I’m looking to get some feedback on it this week.
I didn’t do any administrative tasks. As expected I ran out of time.
Work Planned This Week
This week, I’m focusing on the help system, the camera work and level design. The deadline extension gave me a little reprieve — time to collect my breath before diving back into things.
The help system logic is 90% done. I’m trying to layer the help around the current focus of the player (inspired by the way Everyday Shooter did it). You can easily ignore it if you don’t care about it, but it provides useful information to first time players. Or at least that’s the plan.
I’m unhappy with the camera I currently have in place. It was a quick hack for the time and has no state tracking (ie, it is unaware of its previous action, current velocity or acceleration). I want to add some better tracking and smoothing mechanisms, and some dynamic zooming to better frame the scene.
On the level design, what can I really say? It’s a hugely important area, and my focus is having on killer level for the demo. A lot of work and iteration lies ahead.
Lastly, I’ve been jumping from one area to another, leaving things mostly unpolished. I’ve been trying to constantly address my biggest risks, and I’m hoping to have enough time to come back and bring everything together.
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