Whilst we haven’t made a significant amount of progress this week I do feel like a lot of ground work has been done. We are now totally moved over to our new server, which effectively gives us full control over all our mail, repository, web site etc. Whilst this comes at a monetary cost, we all feel the extra control this gives us to be well worth it. We have set up our new brand spanking new project management software which is light years ahead of our previous software both in terms of usability and functionality. Of course, give me a new piece of software to play with and you can guarantee Ill break it within a few days… Although I haven’t yet, which must be a sign that it’s also fairly robust?
We took a decision during our last web conference that our second project is going to initially take top priority so that we can all chip in to try and bring this to release as soon as we can. As we all have very busy “real” lives, I was reluctant to set punishing targets on the team (remember we are doing this out of love at the moment, rather than for any initial cash reward), but I felt that without any target at all we would all simply stab at the projects here and there and not really have any tangible progress to show for it. So we have agreed and set a target for project 2 (a sort of release schedule I suppose) which isn’t too far in the distant future, more on that VERY soon indeed. It’s also quite likely that “Project 2” will initially be an iPhone App (although a PC version is also very likely) – just feel like we need to cut our teeth on something to see what the market is (or isn’t) like and to see if we can bring any money into the company. You will hopefully see very quickly once we announce project 2 that this was the obvious decision to make!
In terms of Project Blast! I’m still working hard on the Technical Design Document. I’m on my second or third revision of it now, so it’s all coming together – but it’s an incredibly strange (and very dry) thing to do, having to design a document based around something that already exists. I have to disassemble what work has already been done, think about coding it in a different language and then apply the concepts of that language and then pull it all together so that each object interacts with each other as it should. Quite interesting to analyse a game in this sort of detail though, breaking things down into the component parts, and then breaking those component parts down into components! Hard going at times but as I say, it will pave the way when we turn our attention to Project Blast! in earnest.
Some of the more astute among you will have noticed that our forums have been taken offline. This was an initial decision whilst our website goes through its transitional stage, however the forums weren’t a particularly busy place, and it was becoming quite a lot of work to maintain them and keep the spammers at bay. Rest assured that once we release “Project 2”, the new forums will be fired back into action for support, feedback and the like. I will of course keep you posted as to the state of play with all these things.
Also, I would like to say thanks for the feedback to our videos from our diary entry last week. It’s really encouraging to see that people at least like the look of Blast! and its also great to know myself that you are looking at pre-alpha footage there – once we have implemented all the features that we plan to, it will look and play even better than it does at the moment. I’ve taken on board your thoughts/feedback and all will be seriously considered and “mulled over” so if you have any more to add, check out last week’s diary and feel free to comment.
With our focussed attention on specific sections of our project, I am hopeful to be able to be in a position to have a working game very soon, and as soon as that is the case I will announce the game officially, open up some beta opportunities here and there and start to get people actually playing our stuff!