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.

Game page look results

Regular visitors to the Blazing Games site will know that I had a poll about the new look of game pages. A couple of weeks ago I posted an updated version of the 13 Spikes game that had a tabbed format breaking different parts of the old game page into separate pages. There is an overview page, an instructions page, a game page, a downloads page, and an articles page. I was thinking about slowly transitioning all the game pages to the new format. Still, being the way I am, I figured that I would ask the site visitors for their opinions. I got very little feedback, so figuring that people don't like emailing me they might respond better to a very convenient poll. I was right.

There were a lot of votes, with most of the votes being the neutral "either" choice. In fact, only three votes were for something other than either. Two of those votes were for the new format. Certainly, the voting results explain why no one emailed me. I suppose this means the change isn't as drastic as I thought it was.

In the future, all the game posts will be using the new format. It will take quite a while for this transition to be completed, though I don't think the transition will be that noticeable as all the more popular projects will transition fairly quickly. I should have started the transition tonight with One of those Weeks tonight, but was already really late posting the site so didn't have the necessary time.

Changing the Game

The Friday update to Blazing Games has been posted early, though the "official" announcement will not be made until late this evening. For the few of you who actually subscribe to my blog, you can look at the changes by going to Thirteen Spikes. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, I am doing something different with game pages, or at least will be if the Blazing Games visitors don't hate the change. I will explain my rational for the change in the remainder of this entry. Feel free to post a comment or email me.

I am making the change due to the basic fact that the game pages were getting awfully cluttered. By breaking the game page into five logical sections and having tabs leading to each section makes it easier to actually find what you want.

The overview section of the page is the landing point. Here there will be a summary of the game so people can quickly decide if the game is what they are looking for. This page will also have revision history for the game and a road map for future releases.

The Instruction section holds the actual instructions for the game. I am going to try and be more thorough with the instructions. I suspect that despite the extra effort I will be putting into the instructions, these pages will be the least viewed pages for the game.

The Play tab will actually hold the game. In cases where there is more than one episode of a game, this page will act like a list of episodes (with icons for each episode) so that people can select the particular episode that they wish to play. Games will now start appearing within the same browser tab instead of opening a pop up window. With multi-episode games, I will make pop up windows a separate launch option.

The article tab will be for articles that have been written for the game. For instance, Thirteen Spikes has a strategy guide that was released today, which is what appears in the article tab. As is the case with multiple episodes, if there are multiple articles then the page will be a list of the articles with summaries so people can find the article they are interested in reading.

Finally, the download tab. As you can see, any tab that is not being used is greyed out. When the tab is not greyed out, it will be used for downloads. These are mainly Open Source Release zip files, but could also be level sets. If in the future I start releasing Apollo (not the official Adobe name, but as the official name is not yet announced, I am using the code name) versions of my Flash games, they will be located here.

That covers the new format I am thinking about using for the game pages, but it is conceivable that my visitors will not like the new changes as much as I do.

Directories

I spent the day adding the directory links to all the game pages on the site. I was catching up on my podcast listening while doing all the cutting and pasting. I foolishly did the directory links as hard-coded links, but when you consider that all the pages are permanent pages anyway this is not that big of an issue. Though a better way would be to generate the directory algorithmically, though as the actual path doesn't always match the directory of the content, this probably wouldn't be as easy as if I had planned for a directory from the start.

While "organic" programming has become trendy lately, due to the frequent release schedule I force upon myself, Blazing Games and all the games created for it have always had an organic nature to them. By organic, I mean that you start your program (or site, as the case may be) with small initial goals. You then grow the program by adding new features and functionality to it. As iterations pass, you end up with a much larger entity than you ever imagined you would have. Sometimes you are able to trim chunks of the project (refactoring the code), though sometimes you end up with knots due to the way the thing grew (interfaces that have to be maintained even though they don't quite fit in with the rest of the growth).

Blazing Games has grown to huge proportions, and hopefully it will continue to grow over the upcoming years.