Adarakion Developer Diary: Issue 57

Criticism. Something that’s easy to give and difficult to receive sometimes. As I’ve mentioned previously, when you are working on something so intensely it seems like every small amount of progress made is something to get totally over excited about and it’s SO easy to think that something you have done/produced is the best thing since sliced bread when in fact is misses the mark on more than one level.

Take our RoChain logo that we showed you last week for example.  At the time of production it did divide the team somewhat. Some of us liked it (erm… me) and some didn’t. I made a decision to run with it, against all my co-developers concerns. I think I’m a bit like a magpie. I like shiny things. Be it a lovely gold ingot, or a milk bottle top and that’s something I need to keep a close eye on moving forwards.  Needless to say, we are revisiting the logo at the moment, and when we have given it a little more thought the fruits of our labour will appear here for you guys to see very soon.

Having said that, for the eagle eyed amongst you, you will notice that we have undergone a little reboot at Adarakion, the new styling and web site reflecting our professional aims; we’ve been through a lot of changes over the past 12 months or so and we felt that to a large degree we needed a clean sheet.  One which retained the spirit of Adarakion and at the same time was new and dynamic enough to look different!  I think (hope) you will all agree that the new logo is dynamic, modern and yet retains the feel of the old one?

In terms of actual development progress we have managed to implement the basics of our menu UI system which in essence works as we intended it to – so that’s cool and the next big step for us is to get the actual board working and then start to implement our combo system (which I envisage will work a little differently to the original PC version).  I’m hoping that we can port a lot of the code over from the PC version, certainly the mechanics of how the board works should translate from one platform to another fairly easily with a few minor tweaks so with any luck that will save us a lot of time and energy.

Having said all that there seems to be more distractions around at the moment than we need.  SO much is happening outside of the daily development cycle that I can’t even begin to mention; real life stuff (work) being top of the list, followed swiftly by [TOP SECRET – CENSORED] and finally general people stuff that just can’t be avoided.  Whilst ever we are doing this in our own time, these things have to take priority – nothing any of us can do about it but that doesn’t stop it being frustrating – especially when we have grand plans.

Talking of plans, I’m also taken to thinking that if we are serious about making this into more than a part time hobby then we need to start to do a lot more planning, targeting, investment seeking etc. etc. than we currently do, which again is much more of people time devoted to the “non dev” side of things.  Something that isn’t ideal, but ultimately inevitable I feel.  Having had all these distractions it does help to focus the mind a little on what is important and how to go about doing things in the correct way. Games Development is much more business focussed than perhaps most people realise, and trying to develop a game in your spare time is fun, but if you are deadly serious about making a living from it then you need to give an equal amount of time over to the business and planning side of things – otherwise your dreams will be nothing more than that. Dreams.

7 Comments

  1. I love this logo. Its great guys :)

    As you grow im sure you will get more business people on board to help out with that side of things and the planning. Im looking forward to your top secret project and more games and news from you guys.

  2. Logo is gorgeous.

  3. There’s too much orange! Ha ha only joking ;)
    The new logo is absolutely perfick.
    It’s sounding like you might have to go part-time/quit your day job as things pick up for Adarakion. More power to you!

  4. Great new logo G-Nip, looks really fresh and bold while keeping the link to the old logo. Great stuff. Have every admiration for what you are managing to do in your spare time…

  5. Lovely logo. Simple colours, great use of shapes. Top stuff. Will work well at large and small sizes too.

  6. The RoChain logo just wasn’t right, but you’ve definitely managed to nail the Adarakion logo, it’s brilliant.

  7. Thanks guys. Appreciate your feedback and its good to know that im not totally devoid of any taste ;)

Comments are now closed for this post.