Well, its official, we’ve hit a milestone. Project 2 is now officially Alpha. After a hard weekends work, coding away all the final missing features, it’s now fair to say that we have a working game on our hands. Pretty much feature complete, full of bugs to find I’m sure, but it’s a good feeling that we have managed to hit this milestone. The only remaining code bits to do are stuff like volume settings, user feedback items and the like which shouldn’t take too long to code in.
Being at this stage is a mixed bag of feelings. Relief – we actually stuck to the original design of the project and managed to expand on it quite substantially to actually produce a game that plays as intended and adds bits and pieces here and there over and above the original brief and trepidation – we still have a steep mountain to climb before the game is anywhere near release ready what with bug fixing, additional polish etc. Having said that I think we should all be proud of our achievement. From a rough design doc to pretty much finished game in 3 months is pretty good going. Alright, this isn’t Red Dead Redemption 2, but nevertheless, as a team who didn’t really know each other 3 months ago its something we can all be proud of.
At last we know we have a game that works, so we can now start to reveal a little more about it, I spotted Phil had released a cryptic (although not really that cryptic) graphic last week, so I guess its only fair that I do the same this week, so here goes:
Apologies for the crudeness – I had to do some very quick re-touching up work on it in paint…. And THAT’S why we have an artist. I’m rubbish at it! We will reveal more as we progress over the coming few weeks.
Also, with any luck, we will hopefully discover (maybe by the time you read this) whether our other big plan has come to fruition or not. I’m reasonably confident that it will, but not counting my chickens until they are hatched (thanks for that one Mum)! If this does happen as intended then we need to move quickly to formalise the team a little, maybe make a few additions here and there, streamline our processes etc. could be quite interesting – certainly very busy!!!
It seems to be in my nature, and I can’t help it, but my head is starting to turn to the prospect of coding Project Blast! which will (I hope) be our first proper large scale project. Project 2 was very much a trial for us. Can we work together as a team? Do we get on? The answer (I think it’s fair to say) is a resounding YES! So Project Blast! will be much more focussed on our “mission statement” in terms of the type of game we want to produce. You all know a fair bit about Blast! already, so writing a Dev Diary when we are working on that will be much easier, it means I can be far less elusive and can reveal more about the game along the way.
With that, Ill sign out for this week – lots to do and not enough time as it is! More on Project 2 next week!
BIGAL-1992
Congrats on reaching alpha stage. How long will we have to wait before we can get our mits on the game?
gnipper
Not long at all now I hope… just needs a bit more polish, some final features etc….
DrDeth
How much money you got??
(I suspect that this is how game leaks happen…)
BIGAL-1992
Are you asking me or gnipper?
DrDeth
You.
a inferior race
Just out of curiousity how many more stages are there? As in are you going beta then gold or beta, gamma, delta then gold.
gnipper
:) the plan is alpha, beta, release. The gap between Alpha and Beta SHOULDNT be too long however (all being well!)
Charmed_Fanatic
First time ive read these diary’s. Your making a game?!? Cool! Will go back and read the rest now, im interested :P
DrDeth
Excellent! Hope you like it.
cookienihui
Congrats on reaching the stage, lol… are you looking for NSA or serious relationship with REAL cougars. Or maybe find a sugarmomma who can pay all your needs?
==::Cougara.c o m ::== is dedicate to get REAL cougars, sugarmommas and cubs find each other. Keep it real please!!
gazzagb
Congrats on reaching Alpha stage guys! We havent heard anything about Project Blast for a while, is that still going ahead or has it been shelved for Project 2?
gnipper
Cheers :) Project Blast! still very much in the pipeline – Project 2 was more a “get used to the team/systems” project for us. Suffice to say its been a success, so work on Blast! will commence shortly after we have finsihed here :)
gazzagb
Ah, cool.