Plans Released

My plans for 2009 have been posted to Blazing Games. I have misplaced my map for Modern Adventure, but will post that as soon as I find it and scan it in. Really short post this time.

A Change in Plans

Yesterday I was going to work on episode 12 of Dozen Days of Dice but a broken water main put my plans on hold. Today I was going to put together Friday's game but found out that I had already done a Christmas version of Dungeon Romp last year when I was unable to finish my planned Christmas game. It is really sad when you can't even remember what you released a year ago, though in my case it is probably because I have far too many things on the go than age. For that reason I am forced to change my plans for Friday and instead of a game I am going to have my plans for 2009. I was originally going to have a 2009 plans game that I would release on January 3rd, but there simply is not enough time to finish a game by Friday, at least not with the other things that I have on my plate at this time. So instead of having a sneak preview of my 2009 plans here, they will be revealed on Friday.

Ultimate Retro Finished

I just posted the source code for Ultimate Retro Project episode 58: Modern Adventure to the repository. Those of you who want to play it early and who know how to download from a repository and compile the java source code can play it early now if you wish. Those who don't want to be bothered can just wait until it is posted on Friday (late Thursday evening in B.C.). While this is probably cutting it a bit close, the game was in a playable state last weekend so today's work was simply finishing touches, bug fixing, and fine tuning. That said, there was a lot more I would have loved to do with the game had I more time to work on it. I suppose the reality is that there will always be more that can be done so having hard release dates does make sense. The question is how often should those be. More hours per game with fewer releases? I'll be making that decision in a little over a week when I officially close the poll on the Blazing Games site.

I do want to release a hint guide for modern adventure on this blog even though I don't really think the game is that difficult. I don't think next week is the right time to do so, but do watch for that shortly after the game is released. I haven't decided if I will create a good map for the walkthrough or just scan in my hand-made map. Perhaps the hand made map would give some insight to the design process, but if not it would be much faster to just scan that in. Besides, that sounds like a good excuse.

Now all the games in the Ultimate Retro Project have been completed so technically the series is done. I do still plan on doing a 3D version of Dungeon Romp so look for that next year.

November preview

I have a bit of a confession to make. Most of November's content, 3/4's of it to be precise, was not ready before November. Regular readers know that I finished Dozen Days of Dice on November 1st, but One of those Weeks episode 45 and Ultimate Retro Project episode 58 were still not done. This weekend went a long way towards rectifying this situation, but I am still not in the clear. Of course, the contents for this month are Chapter 27 of Making of One of those Weeks, Dozen Days of Dice episode 11: Everest, One of those Weeks episode 45:Toronto and Ultimate Retro Project episode 58: Modern Adventure.

Chapter 27 has already been released so there is not much need to talk about it here. Episode 45 of One of those Weeks, however, has not been released. The screen shot probably should give the players an idea of where they have ended up. Those of you who are familiar with Canada may notice that the skyline does resemble the city that the episode is named after. I do wonder if I am about to annoy eastern Canadians, but know that western Canadians will understand the humour of the episode. Of course, that assumes that people actually share my sense of humour which may just be wishful thinking on my part.

Dozen Days of Dice episode 11 has been mentioned before, but it is an interesting game. The goal is to flag all the locations on the mountain first. Flags are earned by combining dice meaning that both luck and strategy play a part in this game. I do wish now that I would have spent the three hours I had remaining fine tuning the game, but with everything that is going on at the moment with me I am finding that I am getting exhausted after only spending 12 hours on the challenge (only 10 of which was work). I really do hope that the majority of people who care about the Dozen Days series want me to spread the hours out as it will result in better games while still retaining most of the spirit of the series.

The bulk of the artwork for the final Ultimate Retro Project episode has been finished by Mary Caton so I just have to do the coding and by the end of the month I should have the series complete. The Modern Adventure episode is the same story as the classic episode but with a graphical user interface. I should point out that episodes 59 and 60 were released quite a while ago and were done out of sequence because that was the game I really wanted to develop. I do still plan on creating a 3D version of Dungeon Romp, but that will not be showing up until next year at the earliest. Also likely to be postponed until next year is the Christmas special that I had to postpone last year. I will not know for sure until the beginning of December, but the odds of me having the time to finish it before this Christmas is very low.

Last, but most important, there is a four question poll that is going to be available until the end of the month. This is to get feedback on the direction the site should take next year. While the final decision for what I am going to do in 2009 is mine alone, the results of the poll will certainly help me make my decisions so it is in your best interest to let me know what you think.