Overdue report
Last post I said there were going to be some delays. Didn't realise it'd be this many! Day-job work has increased, eating into development time. Family came down. Stuff. Things. Blog wouldn't work properly in Firefox to post messages - I'm using a different browser now. In short, didn't get a lot done.
I've mentioned before that sometimes it's not the 'coding' or art or work that's the problem, but the thinking. I've definitely been feeling that, with the game hitting a progression roadblock which I couldn't understand or do anything about. I think I've solved that which I'll post a separate blog on for other devs to possibly learn from. What's essential at this point is vision, and to be able to imagine how the game will play despite how it currently plays, so that target can be worked towards. I have that vision and work can get on.
The last step for the current build is balancing. I'm making an important decision that the next release won't be a great game; I'm not going to balance it to perfection. I've settled on the long-term game design and before I can start implementing that, I need to rework the engine. That needs to be done before more content can be added, ships can be improved (AI needs to have secondary abilities too), and the game proper can be tuned. I'm working my way through spreadsheets to crunch the numbers and get a basic balance.
Once that's done, I'll do a final bug-pass and not worry about small imperfections as long as the thing runs, and release.
I apologise once again for the slow progress in game updates. I look forwards to the time when updates are plentiful and apologies few and far between.
