Good Tuesday to you all! We’ve had a real push on the coding side this week with Project #2 and its really starting to show. In terms of the state of play now, we almost (very almost!) have a working prototype. When I say working prototype I mean the bare bones of the game (the way it works, the scoring etc.) is pretty much there or thereabouts. We still have quite a way to go to get the game up to “release” production values, but once we have the basics of the game up and running the rest really is just polish and buffing up.
I guess in some respects this is the bit that could take quite a while to nail. Without them the game could seem a little sterile so I feel it’s really important for us to get this additional level of production spot on (from here on in, I shall refer to it as the “sparkly bits”). Every game has “sparkly bits” even if they are well hidden, stuff that doesn’t really influence the gameplay as such, but gives it that good finishing touch. Imagine Peggle without the various style scores or the lovely “ode to joy” level finish music. It would just be a game where you had to watch a ball fall from top to bottom turning pegs lighter blue or orange. It’d be incredibly sterile and lifeless and no doubt wouldn’t have been much of a commercial success as it has been. That’s why it’s really important for us to nail these sparkly bits and make the game really tactile and fun.
It’s quite hard trying to explain my train of thought without telling you anything about the game! However once we have finally ironed out all the bugs Ill be in a position to start to tell you a little about the game and how it all works – made some good progress last week, and if we make even half as much again this week then we could be talking very soon indeed.
Project Blast! is still in technical design stage. Obviously we already have a working prototype here and this design is all about how we actually take the Blitz code and transfer it to C++. There’s a LOT of code in there (too much) which can be condense, re-factored etc. to make the best use of C++. It’s something I feel I have to nail to prevent problems a little further down the line once we get stuck into the code side of things. With all our efforts focussed on getting Project 2 out the door this has taken a bit of a back seat over the past few weeks.
I’ve also been exploring various distribution channels for Adarakion in terms of getting our games out to the public, priced sensibly whilst hitting as wide an audience as possible. In terms of our initial PC releases I think that Steam is the most obvious way of doing that, however I have not ruled out other channels such as us hosting it on our own server etc. however the only down side with that is that we simply don’t have the marketing budget or time to channel traffic to our site to buy the game. With Steam that’s pretty much all done for you – millions have access to the Steam platform which in turn means that we sort of auto-generate a bit of exposure whilst hopefully making a bit of money (which in turn we can invest into making these projects even better)!
I’ve had a sneaky peak at our new website too last week – coming along really nicely – certainly feels a lot more modern (yet retro!?) than the current one, so hopefully that wont be too long before it’s online. Got some great new features planned for the site too, I’m really quite excited to see it all up and running!
So yeah, I think that’s all for this week – if you want to follow our progress we can be followed on Twitter, alternatively we also have a Facebook group (search for Adarakion Games). We’re just all over this social networking scene (in more ways than one)! Keep in touch, drop us a line, it’s always good to get feedback both on the diaries, our projects etc. It helps to keep us all motivated and pushing for success.
Oh and by the way, Grease isn’t the word. #Rochain is…