Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Storyline halfway there

Figured out some kinks in the story/logical plotline, moving on to the end part of half the game, then dialogue, then I'll move onto 'Phase 2' as I'm dubbed it to my character artist designer.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Sending Devs e-mails

Is so much harder when you can't have face-to-face meetings.  I hate sending 2 page long e-mails.  It's like running a marathon sometimes or writing a university paper by time I'm finished.

Not to mention I have to basically finish EVERYTHING (Character art including boss art, dialogue, double-check the decision tree) by the end of this weekend.  Programmer said it'll take him a week (so like after this weekend) to finish the first demo.

I'm happy I'm so busy, but dang it, why didn't I have this crap figured out earlier?!??!

Redoing wireframes

New mock-ups needed for the developer as I explain some changes to the battle system.

Monday, November 28, 2011

Programmer not dead

He just was busy. 

For two weeks.


....


Well, I don't care either way, I think it'll work out fine this way because everything's running almost on the same schedule now.  Battle system hacked out last night, now just lines of dialogue left.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Battle System

Had a bit of a breakthrough on the battle system today.  It's a pretty simple system, based on a RPS mechanic, but after watching several reviews of other iPhone games and seeing the ones that get the best reviews, it's clear that I was lacking something in the battle system.


All good battle systems for casual games have a sense of progression.  (Scrap that:  all good games in general have a progressive battle system.)  The problem I had with my battle system is that it didn't have any easy to implement progression that added small changes to the battle system.  I had toyed with having some skill-based mechanics (ie. hand-eye coordination required mechanics) in each of the battle, but I decided a) that's lame b) everyone else has really beat that particular horse to death and c) this game is story, strategy and decision based.  I don't want to throw in random crap like hit all the right buttons and get a grand slam kinda thing.

The main issue I'm facing now is how much health to give each character.  Do I give each character in battle their own health bar, or do I have one energy bar for the whole team?  I'm really tempted to use a team energy bar, but maybe that's too restricting.

Argh

And now the programmer hasn't returned my e-mail or contacted me in the last week when he promised me a document a week back...


I'm hoping he's not dead.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Art Attack

My artist just sent me about seven pieces of art to review. 

That was like, a serious use of my afternoon.  It was rough because there big (and little) changes that needed to be made, so I just sent her an essay. 

She still has four pieces she's working on for me.  I'm feeling like a bad employer.

But on the bright side, nearly 75% of the character art is done for the game!  Two major characters to go (out of six) not to mention 3 more boss characters.

I'm going to be so penniless by time this process is finished.

Final Boss Sketch


Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Whew

My main artist, A, e-mailed me back and told me her scanner wasn't working, which is why I hadn't heard from her this week.  I was seriously ready to start hyperventilating. 


More than normal, that is.

I'll post some art later today, hopefully.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Waiting, waiting

Sometimes there is nothing worse than waiting for work to arrive.  I'm waiting on three things from three different people now, and it's starting to drive me a bit crazy.

In other news, I've added an additional story sequence to each of the two game paths, so that's exciting.


Sunday, November 20, 2011

Sigh

Does the Blogger dynamic template have to suck so much?  Why can't I add widgets without going through the HTML here??  Sigh...would anyone actually want to add this to their blogroll?? I'm getting a crazy amount of pageviews....


I'm not sure if I should switch to a different template or mess with the HTML template so that people can subscribe to posts if they want, or subscribe to know when the game is ready.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Layout Issues

After some discussions with the (newly hired) programmer, I'm start to think about some of the additional design elements that still need to be completed.  He suggested some add-ons that I thought would be good, but there's a primary problem we have to address before I get him to begin work.  I'll highlight it in a simple picture:

My main problem is this:  the text area is going to be too small.  I know this will look amazing on the iPad, but I'm building a fantasy-based text-heavy game....I need the story scenes to make sense visually an the iPhone (or any phone for that matter) as well.  This story scene layout I've devised is typical of all videogames.  For example here:




But the problem that I face is that I'm dealing with a screen that's about the size of two sticks of gum wide.  Which is really tough if you want to put down a lot of lines of text and dialogue.  (Which I do, thanks.)  Console games have wide screens, which work really well for text boxes like this.  Text boxes on phones usually have a total of three words in them.

There is an alternate solution (and you'll note that I use Fire Emblem screens here because I think they do a great job of story-telling in a niche genre.):








As I see it, I have very few options.  The text could be below, in the middle, or at the bottom of the screen.  But what I don't want to do it take up the whole screen with text.  This is a graphical fantasy adventure game, and I want to keep it that way (Besides, I've invested way too much time into this art for me to take it all away). 

The programmer thought up a great idea, that I'm still playing with...we could potentially do scrolling images and text, very flipboard-like.  I don't want to turn it into a comic if I can help it, but it seems like a good idea.  Potentially worth exploring.  I'm going to have to explore my options as I dive into some code and as the coder and I make some prototypes. (And by 'we' I mean 'him,' naturally.)  But hopefully by the end of this I'll have a much better solution to the problem of creating text-based games for the phone.



Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Decision time

Well, I have a choice between two programmers.

One guy fell off the face of the earth (would have given it to him otherwise) and the lead I had was too expensive, they wanted to charge me agency prices.  Which is fine, it's their business, but I already told them I had a small budget and I probably couldn't afford them.  I think he knew I would probably turn it down, but he was doing his due diligence, etc.

For the record, I would MUCH rather hire Canadian/American, because the economies are so bad here, but no one wants to work for the equivalent of minimum wage in the programming industry, not that I blame them.  They should get paid well for their work.  But I was willing to take someone on who had some experience, but wanted more for a lower price.  You know, win-win?

I have to be honest, I'm willing to pay someone $25~ an hour to program, and I can't find someone willing to do it in my city or near where I live.  Huh?  How does that make sense? This isn't a hard project.  In fact, in programming terms, I'm positive it's like basic math for me.  I've looked up some of the coding you would have to do for some of the things I want, and 'I' could do it.  But I actually want to pay someone else to do it and I can't find anyone.  This, in my mind, is crazy.

So my choice is currently between two offshore contractors, and both are equally good choices, in my mind.  They both have game creating experience, they both have fairly solid portfolios, and they both have fair prices in my mind.  (Actually, I just did the math, they're both charging me the same at the upfront quote, which is around $25, go figure.)

What I'll do now is an in-depth interview, and see who changes their mind.  Then I'll pick.

Deadline for the programmer is Nov. 15, so I still have a couple days in case I change my mind, or unless I somehow stumble on one before then.  Sigh.

Monday, November 7, 2011

Double Sweet

Twitter has gotten me a dev lead!  From someone I follow.  I imagine they will ask for too many $$$ hmmm...

Dude Sweet

I just saw in my stats that someone from Alaska is reading this blog. 

Alaskan friend, whoever you are, please keep lurking.  I will give you a free copy of the game if you keep coming back.


 Xoxo.

Well now I'm really annoyed

So I've narrowed down my choice of developers, and the one I'm most interested in e-mails me to tell me he's been busy working on his own games, which is why he hasn't responded to my request for a phone interview.

Er, really?  I'm going to pay you and you can't even answer one simple email with a yes/no answer?  I understand busy like anyone, but I'm all about lining up the next sale.  I'm kinda wondering what this guy's deal is.

So I'm moving on, a couple more interviews, and I think I'll have someone by next week. 

A friend referred a really great coding guy, but he says he doesn't have the time nor the iOS skill to do the job, although he said he'd pass along the opportunity.  So, I almost had the perfect programmer (I met him once, he's as nice as programmers get.) and lost it all in the same week.

Deadline for programmer is Nov. 15.  I don't think I'll be using e-mail-me-sometimes-guy because I already have one of those on staff.  They're fun, and they get the work done eventually, but I have a guy e-mailing me that really wants to do and follows up with me, and compare that to someone I have to send three e-mails to get a response, which twice has been 'um, sure, sounds good, let's talk later.'  Who does that?  Does anyone understand people like this? 

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Really

Man, why do people even bother applying for contract positions if they were never really interested in the first place...seriously.

Of course I can do it all myself...I just don't WANT to.  It's a waste of time, and by doing that I'm going to miss the Christmas season for sales, and I have to spend time learning something that a variety of people already know how to do well, which is a huge loss, in my mind.  And it means I can't focus on other elements like story, art design, UX, marketing, beta testing, etc.

Well, whatever.  At this rate, I'll do it all myself.  And get all the $$. (All three of them.)  That'll show them.   

Honestly

How long does it take to make a quote for a project?  It's been more than three days.  I run my own service/product based business based on extremely vague ideas and I still put out a quote in half a day, max.  I shouldn't have to prod someone by e-mail to ask them for the quote as a reminder, should I?