Weekend Update

Very successful week. I have something to show for it too, which is even better. I built all of the characters attacks out, with a few exceptions. This means that all the attacks function and the AI can handle them. I still need to do all the summons, and I suspect I will have to do some tweaking for the AI, but it's an important milestone none the less. I built a blank map to test the characters and their attacks and took a screenshot.

They didn't quite all fit in one screen, but there you are. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to guess who's who. I won't put out a complete character list, so until you unlock them in game, use your imagination.

Secondly I did up about half the world map. I had no plan to do this during the week, but I was in the neighborhood so to speak. I've got about half the map done-ish. Here's a second gratuitous screenshot.

So that was my week. Next week I need to finally put the summons in. This requires some AI modification and some other tweaks. I've known exactly what I needed to do for some time, but have essentially been to lazy to actually do. It isn't even that much work. Secondly this week I have to test all those attacks I added. Once that's out of the way (or I get bored) I should start in on the battlefields.

So those were the interesting bits, after the cut, I talk about why I'm writing this.

Approximately zero people read what I write in this blog (give or take one). I take time out of my week to make screenshots and content, and I intentionally hint at things in my game as though someone cared. So why would I spend all this time writing about my game, essentially in the same way someone who actually knew what they were doing would to generate hype?

Writing this silly blog has been the single best thing I have ever done as a game developer. Someone in college probably once talked at me about ethos, pathos, and logos, but I still don't know what those mean. What I do know is that writing as though there is an audience really drives me. I need to finish this, I said I would, and I can't really take that back.

I've had a few game prototypes, that with not terribly much work, could have been marginally successful as far as free indie games go. But they never went past prototypes. I always lost interest. One year later I'd get back into game development, and I'd want to make a new game.

In public I rarely talk about my game development. It just isn't something I really ever bring up.
"So what'd you do this weekend?"
"Oh, I debugged my AI and made some marginal improvements to my game, which I can in no way show you."
Usually my response to the question is more like this:
"Oh, not much. Slept, mostly"
If I get into it, I have to explain so much and it makes me look far more geeky than I see myself. I think in the last year there are four people that I have actually mentioned my game development to, and I was living with two of them.

This then, is an outlet; a chance for me to actually talk about what I really love doing. In that way, it's like a creepy internet fetish, only geeky and safe for work. Maybe it's just because I'm generally a private person and do make some attempt to not appear to be a huge nerd. Whatever the reason, the change of audience is just uncanny. I keep thinking in the back of my head, "I just might pull this all off."