Coffee Quest Trilogy Plans

The Coffee Quest (CQ) series started off as an attempt to create a web-based role-playing game using the then-new Java programming language. Java, while a very successful language in many areas, failed in the browser and has been replaced by JavaScript using HTML5 components and CSS3 style sheets. This tends to be collectively called HTML5. My original plans for porting to HTML5 was to simply use an engine that supported HTML5  and finally get around to getting my CQFS engine working by building off the back of another engine. I started experimenting with the Unity engine but really do not like that engine. Then I remembered that for a game jam I participated in back in 2012 that I started working on a FPS version of Coffee Quest. That existing work, while still in an early development stage, would be perfect for the first three games in the series so I decided I would do a Coffee Quest Trilogy game that would combine the first three games into a single package. As this game is developed, the individual episodes will be released on Spelchan.com giving visitors to my site early access to the game.

The enhanced HTML5 version of the game will be mixed-time combining both real-time and turn-based play. I may make the option of an FPS mode where the game would be fully real-time. Each game in the series will have multiple episodes to reflect the different maps, and possibly a number of new maps, that will be made available. I have not decided if in the final game to lock the maps and require players finish other maps to unlock additional maps or if to make everything accessible. A third option would be to have all the Coffee Quest 1 maps initially unlocked to the player and once they have finished any of the maps, to unlock all the Coffee Quest 2 maps. Once a Coffee Quest 2 map has been completed, then the Coffee Quest 3 maps would be made available.  

My ideal release plans, which knowing history are very unlikely to work out, are as follows:

Quarter 1 of 2019 would be the release of the Coffee Quest release candidate with a new map (or two). The goal here would be to have a better automap, better quest status area, and the ability to click on the automap to bring up a full-screen map screen.

Quarter 2 of 2019 will hopefully be the beta release of the Coffee Quest 2 module which introduces monsters and inventory to the game. The Coffee Quest series uses the concept of conditions to weapons where the weapon deteriorates in quality over time and will break if the weapon or armor deteriorates too much. One change that the enhanced version of the game will have is that picking up additional copies of the same weapon will simply improve the quality of the weapon if you already have that weapon instead of filling up slots in an inventory.

Quarter 3 of 2019 will hopefully be the release candidate version of Coffee Quest 2 with a new map and enhancements/fixes made to the game.

Quarter 4 of 2019 would be a new Christmas game using the CQ-Trilogy engine.

Quarter 1 of 2020 would be the beta of the Coffee Quest 3 game which would introduce multi-floor towers.

Quarter 2 of 2020 will be an easter-themed game using the CQ-Trilogy engine.

Quarter 3 of 2020 will be the final build of the Coffee Quest 3 module.

Quarter 4 of 2020 will be the beta release of the combined game and will have some new maps as well as a halloween themed game.

If I fall behind on one of the quarter objectives then I will release additional maps for that quarter’s release. This would delay the final release of the game by a quarter. If things go smoothly I will finish the enhanced version of the original Coffee Quest Trilogy by the end of 2020 but odds are there will be a couple of quarters that I will miss so most likely this project will not be completed until 2021 or 2022 in the worst case situation. Depending on my situation once this project is completed, I will look into doing a similar project for the porting of Coffee Quest 4 and the final creation of Coffee Quest 5 and 6.

State of the Site May 2018 update

With my being accepted into a Master of Science in Computer Science program I will be extremely busy for the next couple of years. I do want to keep up with my site, which is not that time consuming if I predominantly post ports of the games from Blazing Games so both this blog and my homebrewgamejam.blogspot.ca blogs will continue while I am in university. The frequency of the updates is going to be shifted from weekly to alternating between the two blogs with each having an article posted every other Saturday. If things get too hectic, I may cut back to a monthly update but am going to allocate a block of time towards the site and blogs so that things will continue unless something bad happens.

My Easter Egg generator is not really writing a postmortem for. While I did learn a bit about color filters while creating it, this is not enough to warrant a full article.

This month is seeing the release of two games. The first being the HTML 5 version of Four in a Row which is not a new port but does need to be transferred over from the Blazing Games site eventually and as towel day is so late in the month why not this month. The original version was still rough so I decided to clean up the AI a bit and to add animation to the game. There is still a lot that I would like to add to the game before I would consider it to be complete but not sure when I will find time to do that so it may be a decade before this game is properly completed.

Towel day will be the release of my Towels for Earth port. However, I will be posting the postmortem of the game before the actual release of the game. That will be the topic for next fortnight’s post after which I will start posting Chapter 4 of my Animate CC eBook.

Fleet, which I was planning on posting in June, is not quite ready. If it is not ready in time I may post a different game in it’s place but hope to have it finished. If the game is not ready by the 25^th then I will go with an alternate post. Either way the site will have information about what I am going to post. If the game is delayed, it will still be worked on so will be posted later in the year. 

July's game will be released on the 13th of the month as that month has a friday the 13th. It is going to be 13^2 Spikes. August is String Along, but I may substitute it for Fleet if a delay is required.September is when CQ is finally suppose to appear but if things go as planned there may be a bit of a surprise with that release.