Slow and steady is the grind to eliminating the remaining small mountain of bugs and naggy issues, and they are dropping one by one which is great fun, and with each build the software gets stronger, such as the new ability for the static lights to really stand out and work very well in the new lighting process.
Also, new character skins emerge from our character artist as he juggles asset creation for the newly forming Character Kit, which will not only have the ability to play musical heads but also allow the user to choose from a wide variety of realistic skin tones with the slide of a mouse.
I had about ten items on my urgent list for today, and defeated all but one which I am likely to solve this evening as it's the zero rag-doll animation death issue which should be pretty simple to deal with, but in the main I am happy with the fixes including a serious one which prevented certain entities from the store from rendering properly, including off the shelf stuff as seen below.
I also started work on the Character Kit, which is a very simple tool which will allow you to assemble unique characters for your level, and although the first version will only contain a few bodies, heads and texture variations, it will be designed to be expandable both from the store and from your own custom contributions.
I started with about eight or so high critical tasks, and ended the first part of my day (9AM-7PM-No-Food) with seven left to do, but it was a great day though as I have increased the loading speed of the whole test game pipeline, largely by moving plenty of the 'load once' instructions to before the editor starts, and also making a 4 second improvement in the step that generates a mega texture for distant terrain rendering. On my system, an empty level used to take 16 seconds from clicking Test Game to starting the game, but in the new build it now only takes 9 seconds and I have identified a 1.5 second pause when generating water and 4 seconds when initializing physics, both of which I think I can shave down, but it might not make it into the priority list, moving on.
You will notice I am exceeding my two sentence barrier today as it's Friday and you will need some mind fuel for the weekend. Happy to provide! Above is a cool new character skin from our artist Adam, who will no doubt be making an appearance as either a default character or a skin choice for the future Character Creation Kit.
It's now one week back, and 5 dev days into 2015 and I am still feeling very charged from my rest over the holidays. I have booked my flight to San Francisco to attend GDC in March, and my all accounts looks to be a great show with Intel exhibiting outside the Expo hall for ALL FIVE DAYS (of which I may very well be part of), and Steam are preparing something pretty big it seems surrounding their mysterious Steam Machines device(s). I will be blogging and tweeting there as per usual, so if you want to catch up for a drink of Guinness and a Pie, I'll be following the attendant crowds as we stumble from one drinking hole to another.
Work on the Steam side is also going very well, with our resident Steam-tech-head Ravey solving the various challenges that will allow you to create, share and play not only your stock asset levels, but also store and custom content too, in glorious multi-player. I can't wait to see what the community does with THAT, exciting times and let's hope we cover enough bases for our Steam launch (early access build).
My Friday night plans are pretty typical of a bedroom coder, eat something quickly (as the body needs energy after 10 hours in the saddle), walk the dog, make some tea and continue my quest to knock all the high priority items off my list before I go to bed. Rest assured there will be more on Monday, but I'll still get a buzz out of clearing my proverbial inbox. As it is Friday, I might treat myself to a J.D & Coke, a recipe I have improved by substituting regular for something called Coke Zero Cherry, which makes an awesome mixer and is literally one calorie (could them, one). Now if only they could distill a 1 calorie bourbon, fat gits like me can rejoice the world over and drink ourselves thin!
Having listened to the theme tune to Morse over the last two days, I decided to start listening to a collection of 50 TV theme tunes on YouTube, I continued to plug away, defeating all manner of high priority nasties from the ever-trying-to-grow-larger list of tweaks and fixes needed to make a solid piece of software, and doing quite well at it according to Wrike, our new project management software which gave my a scare earlier today when it refused to bring up my daily list of tasks for a good few minutes past 9AM.
It is quite rewarding to stick to existing functionality rather than invent new stuff to pile onto the creation, as it means I get more time to actually use what already exists, and iron out those rough edges that I have taken for granted but would be a jarring experience for any new user, which I am concluding would be the majority of Steam users coming to the product, and I can report a warm fussy feeling as the product becomes rounded every day I sit down to work on it :)
Yesterday (and the two previous days) saw the completion of 58 tasks, plus 19 deferred and 8 cancelled from the mega tweak list of 180 items, meaning we're well on our way to achieving our goal of a good candidate build by the end of the month.
I've been informed that my comment about finishing in two months was a little erroneous in that it gave them impression that I would have the 'entire' product finished in two months, when in fact my intent was simply to highlight that I will have a stable early access build ready for a Steam launch at that time, and the final product will in reality be a work in progress as we continue to add features to the game maker.
Been trialing a new project management system over the last two days called Wrike which has proved to be very efficient at making me efficient, and as a result quite a lot of naggy little issues have already been eliminated from the engine making the internal build I have right now very cool, and it has been suggested that an early internal build can be made to our internal alpha testers in the not too distant future, lucky fellows!
Happy New Year fellow game creators, I will be spending the next two months in the deepest darkest cave I can find to finish the Reloaded project you've been following for the best part of two years now, and in order to do that I am redirecting all energies to a single point of focus to ensure I deliver.
To this end my daily blog will be condensed into two sentences only (plus optional screenshot or video) to re-enforce my laser-like focus on the goal and to keep you informed about the project all be it in a highly compressed and efficient manner until such time as I can return to the surface and the sunshine and join you again in the wonderful world of game creation.
