Details on October

Modern Hotdog Stand has been posted to the repository. While there are additional features I would love to add to the game, my current schedule does not realistically allow me to do so. If the game is popular enough, I could always revisit it and add the features I desire but I suspect that will not be the case. The next task in the Ultimate Retro Project is the text adventure game. This would actually be ideal for Halloween as it does have a horror theme to it. Still, I do not know for sure if I will be able to finish this on time, so have an alternative planned out in case I am unable to meet the end of month deadline.

Speaking of October's schedule, I should probably go over my plans. Of course, Dozen Days of Dice episode 10 has already been released. One of the Saturday's in October will probably be spent working on episode 11 so I have it ready for November. I am going to try to keep the Dozen Days series monthly from now on which is why I am having the poll this month. I want to know which series will be following the dice series in case I have a string of free Saturday's and can get ahead in series development. Yes, I know that pig's can't fly but stranger things have happened.

Making of One of those Weeks is an eBook that only a few people read. I assume that most the people who read this blog also read the eBook but really have no way of knowing for sure. Still, Chapter 26 is ready to be released so I don't have to worry too much about it. I think this chapter of the book clearly explains the decision making process that I go through when I don't have enough time to focus on games for the Blazing Games site.

Modern Hotdog Stand was actually not finished before the month started. It was actually finished today, which should be obvious from the first paragraph of this entry. People who know how to compile Java and want to play the game early can grab it from the repository. The best I have been able to do is to finish the game in 7 days. I will be writing an article on how my simulation works which I hope to release shortly after the modern version has been officially released.

One of those Weeks episode 44 is in a functional but not finished state so I am going to have to finish it up before it is released. The neat thing about this episode is that it is simply the application of information the player obtained by playing the previous episode. I am hoping that the clues are sufficient, but because I know the answers I can't properly judge the difficulty. This is a problem that all puzzle designers have to face with the only real way of knowing the true difficulty of a puzzle is to expose it to a large number of people.

The final game of the month has not yet been determined. I probably should have placed some type of placeholder message on the schedule, and will probably do so next time I update the site. As I said above, I am hoping to have time to finish the classic Text Adventure which does have a horror story. My alternative plan is to do alternative layouts for Monster Hunt.