3 months in crunch mode, 2 sleep-less weeks and a fully playable
demo has been developed. Evertyhing has been made under a very tight scheduled and
I'm glad I was able to meet it.
It requires a lot of sacrifice and self-discipline. Indie game
development is not for everyone and there are a few articles already
about it.
Everything's now up to the Level Up 2011 judges. All I hope is
that they have a lot of fun when playing the game.
What to include in the demo?
Initially I wanted to get ready an introduction scene and a boss
battle. Shortly after I realized the timeframe wouldn't allow me to
do both. I had to choose. So which one would more badass and
entertain more? I went for the boss. And I'm glad I did.
In the next weeks I'll be writing about how this boss was made
some other time.
The importance of contests
The contest's prizes sure are juicy. They're quite motivational.
But it's not just that what makes a contest so important. They impose
you a deadline. You're against the clock and you know that by certain
date, you need to have a fully playable demo. And better have it
polished.
“But it's a tech/prototype demo, right? Judges will take into
account”. Yes, they probably will, may be they won't. But I believe
a more polished, professional-looking game will be at an advantage
over those that don't. This doesn't mean that an unconventional
prototype-state competitor appears to be too fun has less chance to
win. Additionally, here was my logic:
Among all the contest prizes, whether it was the first or the last
prize, one of them is that the demo will be featured in the Steam's
'Demos' page. May be they'll ask the winners to polish a bit more
before publishing the demo (i.e. create an installer); or maybe they
won't. After all, the demos don't require to meet the quality
standards that full-featured games have (Steam integration,
leaderboards, achievements, etc)
If they won't... I asked myself, “Do I really want my game to
look unprofessional when it goes to the demos page? Judges may be
forgiving on prototypes, but gamers/consumers aren't”
And there it goes. A driving force as
how polished a game should be. I had already noticed this advantage
from entering a contest when I was doing Derby Attack.
Last 2 weeks... /CRUNCH MODE: MAX
Just like in traditional game programming, when you're approaching
deadline, development(*) consumes your whole life.
That may sound awful, but very good things came out of it:
- The GUI was developed in those 2 weeks. I finally have GUI.
Wheeee!! Now I can change game settings on the fly without having
to edit a Lua file. I can also make interfaces for controlling live
values in real time.
- Levels can be restarted over & over again. At first
frequent crashes appeared, and some engine weakpoints were revealed.
But almost everything is well now; and I can change a Lua file using
hotspot and reload the level without having to reload all resources
again.
- It looks professional the whole time. Now everytime I'll need
to demo the game (i.e. to potential investors) I can ship it as is,
with latest modifications & enhancements.
- Fixed small bugs & details that where being delayed.
Those are flagged for “fix later”. Two or three bugs have been
there since... a year ago!
These are the sort of details that one doesn't push unless there's
goal to achieve, as when it happens when there's a contest deadline.
(*) Note that I prefer saying “develop” rather than
“programming”, as I've been doing all kinds of
non-programming tasks that take me an equal amount of time: 2D &
3D modeling, game design, sound fx recording & layering, testing.
That's all for now.
Don't forget to subscribe!
/crunch mode: off
