Adarakion Developer Diary: Issue 46

So here we are, another week, another diary entry. It’s definitely getting tougher to fill the space with meaningful dialogue – especially as technically I can’t announce anything yet (yes, still)! So what have we been up to this last week?

A fair bit of planning work has been done for our work on Project Blast!  I’m really hopeful that we can start coding this very soon indeed and get the quality to the level that we aspire it to have.  It’s probably fair to say that quality and work methods have been top of the agenda in most of our group discussions lately, discussions regarding the level at which we are attempting to pitch Blast! means that not only does the actual game play need to “feel” like a quality title, but also the way the game looks needs to be at a similar level.  The current work done on Blast! is great for what it is – a prototype – there’s no way that we’d get near a 360 or PS3 with the current level of gloss however, so it’s taking the concept to the next level and beyond that has been focussing our minds of late.  What gives a game that “finished” feel and look?

We’ve also been hard at work finalising Project 2. I’d say it’s nearing Beta stage now (with a few bugs and rinky-dink’s to finalise.  We’ve scrapped a few of the proposed changes we were going to make, purely and simply as they didn’t really bring any additional value to the product and it was just creating work for works sake.  Once we hit Beta we will be ready to announce the game to everyone.  In terms of platform availability we are toying with several options. Mobile devices were top of the list – but our issue here is that the main game screen is quite complex and has a lot going on at one time and as a result portable device screens may struggle to get the required level of detail.  iPad is definitely an option however, as we have more space to play with.  Whatever we decide here it’s almost certain there will be a PC release of sorts. Whether that PC release is a paid for release, or a “free” game is again something we are still discussing – maybe doing some sort of donation system may work well?  Again, all things that are currently in the melting pot and being mused over, so more on this when we come to a conclusion!

Also over the weekend I visited our tech god Matt for the first time. It was good to be able to talk about things face to face and do a little planning.  The thing with us developers is that the planning is the boring bit – but yet essential to our development into a proper “full time” studio. So there was some discussion over business plans and the like – which (whilst important) is a really REALLY dry subject to try and talk about and nail quickly.  We made SOME headway on this aspect, but it still needs a lot of work and more (boring) hours spent developing it.  We could probably do with some professional input at this stage however as we are trying to start a company with technically no money it’s difficult to source this free advice!  I’m sure there are some kind hearted soles out there who would be prepared to help out a small group like ourselves; we just need to find them!

What is also difficult is, after having a couple of weeks off, is getting back into my previous mindset of “this is going to work”. Not that I doubt it for a second (far from it) but the amount of work / effort / badgering that goes off in the background that needs to be maintained – in fact, I’ll have to do some more badgering shortly – people will think they are off the hook ; don’t want that!

Bizarrely, being back at work means I have more dev time available to me – I tend to use my lunch hours to code so I do get quite a bit of work done in that time. Speaking of which, it’s getting to that time now – so I’ll sign off here.  Fingers crossed that a beta announcement will appear very soon and then we will have a game for you guys to play and test for us!