Day 16
Well, this is the first day that I've posted, I think, where absolutely nobody said anything after I made a post.
I can't help but wonder if it possibly had something to do with me requesting input.
Regardless of the reason, it does beg the question: Why am I even doing this?
I mean, really, why spend three weeks creating a game that almost nobody's excited about? I'm sure many devs face this question at one point or another. Sure, I'm only developing a small IRC game, I know. It's absolutely nowhere near the scale of what Josh is doing... but really: If everyone only plays it once or twice before they get bored, then I've utterly failed to produce a good game... and that's a real possibility, if I can't find some way to make the gameplay fun.
I guess I'm doing it partly for myself. I want to do this. I've wanted to do this for a long time. I'm basically rebuilding a "game" I built over a decade ago, called Story Creator. You would input a number of people, their stats and such, and hit "Go". It would calculate a week or two of these people living with each other, and output it to console, where you could read it at your leisure. Quite often, it was hilarious. This is the third iteration of the idea, and the first where I've actually turned it into a game where you could actually win or lose. I'd always wanted to rebuild it, but never really had the motivation... and these devlogs help keep me motivated. That's why I make the devlogs, and why I'm making the game... though I would still dearly love if people enjoyed it. I'd like that most of all, really, but I'm still having fun making the game.
Alpha testing
Yesterday was mostly alpha testing - real, legit alpha testing. I fixed a great number of little bugs here and there, and the game is actually running rather smoothly now. In additon, I've identified a few areas I need to fix. One thing in particular is that it would be very useful to have
some way to identify who's winning - some knowledge that all players are privy to. I think this is going to equate to a couple of messages output in the main channel about who's winning. "Bob is in the lead, with XXXX points. Alice is close behind." This would put some extra pressure on the winning players, I think, and also give the losing players an edge. That's important to have in a game - you want everyone to be at roughly the same spot so there's always competition. Dragging it out like a Monopoly game is
not a good idea, in my opinion.
Next up, I'm going to write out some generic win/loss messages and teach Taiya how to actually "end" the game. Also useful will be the ability to abandon and quit. Those things come next. After that, I'll finish the storytext - and at that point, the game will officially be in Beta. When Beta hits, I'll be able to take Beta players, and try to improve the game in a way that makes it as fun as possible, based on input from the beta players... while I'm adding more features as well, of course.
I'll take offers for beta volunteers at this point, if anyone's interested.
I'd not like to have too many people in the channel at once, so it'll be a closed thing instead of an open beta. I'd give out passes to the people that need them.
That's all for today!
Tomorrow I should have more.
Game progress: approximately 58% Complete (-1% total, +6% from bugfixes)
Prototyping: Complete
Star system info: Complete
Save file and loading: Complete
Game initialization: Complete
Renaming ships: Complete
Explaining first turn option: Complete
Explaining second turn option: Complete
Entering starting stats: Complete
Joining new game: Complete
Turn timers: Complete
"lookup" feature: Complete
RPG Threading: Complete
Getting character info: Complete (fixed bugs)
Making requests: Complete (fixed bugs)
Introduction: Complete (fixed typos)
First turn option: Complete (fixed typos, fixed bugs)
Second turn option: Complete (fixed MANY bugs)
Money calculation: Complete (tweaked)
Option staggering: Complete (bugged, fixed bugs)
Basic AI: Mostly done
Finishing the turn: Mostly done
Storytext, minimal: Mostly done
Scoring: Mostly done
End-of-turn calculations: Mostly done (bugged)
End-turn output to players: Mostly done (fixed bugs)
Responding to requests: Mostly done (still bugged)
End-turn output to main channel: Mostly done (fixed bugs) (still missing saying which turn it is)
Player elimination (losing early): Halfway
Winning the game: Halfway
Alpha testing: Halfway
Endgame "win" messages: Halfway
Joining game in progress: Started
Adaptive AI: Started
Storytext, optimal: Started
Beta testing: Not started
Restarting the game: Not started
Quitting the game: Not started
Abandoning the game: Not started
Midpoint class change: Not started
Switching nicks: Not started
High scores: Not started
Long-term analysis: Not started
End-turn output scrambling: Not started
Rebalance for human players: Not started
Special game events: Not started
Endgame "loss" messages: Not Started
Making Taiya detect who is actually in #LTRPG: Not started
Showing the top-scoring player(s) in main chat per turn: not started
(Game progress has actually "decreased" because I thought of more things that are necessary, and stuck them at the bottom of the list. More things at 0% completion means lower amount completed. In actually, I really made progress, but because of the way this is set up, you can't tell.)
Writing progress:
storytext: 297 lines
file length: 1282 lines
(+8)
percentage of file that is storytext: 23%
percentage of minimum complete: 85%
percentage of optimum complete: 8%