About two hours ago my task list had a SINGLE item in it, that's right just one fix and I have completed everything assigned to me at that point, alas the bug required some tricky multi-player stuff to reproduce so it was not a quick fix, and since then a few more items have emerged from a recent MP session so I guess it's back to work for me.
In other news, our Theory Test app, which teaches you how to pass your driving test, has just hit Number #1 on the Top Paid iOS UK charts, beating Minecraft and Angry Birds, which of course will not last for long, but it's a great feeling to be at the number one spot once again, and I am pretty sure it won't be the last either, now if I can just get our game maker to Number #1 on Steam ;)
Though delegation and blindly fixing stuff, I am now down to just FOUR items on my task list which is a nice feeling, and naturally the universe won't want me to be happy for too long so I expect the list to increase again in the next round of internal tests but at least I am on top of the project which is where I need to be.
As part of my fixes, I occasionally have to create small levels to test, and this lead me to test a possible collision show-down with the above statue, but it was in vein, the collision was super fast and smooth, and the ugly looking stone statues made no complaints either, so I think everyone was happy in the end.
A gruesome image below but a great day for completing tasks! Between the team we've knocked off off 26 in one day, and have dropped below the 40 item threshold which is cool considering it was over 200 at one point and we've been adding lots of items since that count.
I present to you one of our lovely Zombies, currently integrated into the main build along with Cartoon genre plus a few more game levels to flesh out the offering when you first install and use the product, and right now I am trying to get as much of the final asset assembly together as quickly as possible, so this is sure to be another hectic week but it will be worth it come the end of Feb!
A good day in terms of getting a good solid build ready for an early submission to Steam which was always part of the plan to test things out, and everything looked good apart from a few niggles added to Wrike.
My own day however has been marred with the inability of my brain to work out why the Steam SHIFT+TAB does not work (the Steam UI Overlay system), and from 9AM to 9PM I've battled and mostly failed. About an hour or so ago I discovered the using the SetForegroundWindow() helped a little, but it's a dangerous command and flaky inside the child window setup I have for the software IDE and DX app.
I've finished on a high note with the toggle now working from the IDE, and if you ALT+TAB the app it also works in the game, but it does not work when you CLICK inside the editor or game, and the mouse highlighter and click definately do not work. I've fired off an email to the Steam guys and maybe I can get some insight into how to debug the GameOverlayUI.exe module which so far has been the cause of all my Friday bane and suffering.
Also not eaten since 9AM too so going to put something on TV and eat food, forget about input focus, windows messaging, directinput cooperative modes, keyboard and mouse focus, activation and foreground permissions, and hopefully my brain will create a short list of new things to try when I return tonight or Saturday.
Also some fellow kindly reversed into my car which now has a very deep hole, bent plastic and shards of glass where my front bumper and fog light used to be. Only found out about it today when the garage asked about it, retraced the cars tracks to the pub car park, somewhere between Wednesday night and Thursday morning. I could start an investigation, or an insurance claim, but there's no use crying over spilled milk and it was a nice reminder by the universe that leaving my car defenseless in the middle of an empty car park on a Wednesday night is not a good idea on so many levels. If the Steam launch goes well, I can just buy a new bumper, or if it goes really well a new car (not really, my Honda Accord is the best car I've had, anyhoo, back to the eating and developing stuff).
Ravey had another day (and night) to work on the multiplayer, and managed to reduce overall packet traffic by 75 percent, which meant our second eight player deathmatch went smooth, even with some users harboring high ping rates, which means we're good to go here with only minor tweaks and fixes to follow.
For my own efforts, knocked a few more items off the list, and added the same number back on as we continue to refine the software for a Steam release, but now faced with the strangest of bugs which manifests itself in the form of hiding all the sounds in the game, as though the game window itself is unable to play sounds or has zero volume, or something, so hopefully I can solve this before I log off for an early night, ready for the big Friday when lots of things are planned and also marks the end of the first week of 'solid testing'.
After obliterating my priority tasks with a vengeance, I am now working through the last five 'normal' items on my list, and I am sure there will be many more added but it's nice to get my work visible at a glance on a single page, good for moral, and with my Pool Night tonight I can hopefully come away with a win there as well.
In other news asset generation continues at a good pace on the Character Kit which will fool your gamer with a crafty use of beards, and thanks to a standard pipeline we're documenting it also means you can craft your own beards in a modeler and add them to the selection, not to mention the extra beards we will be selling through the store too (don't worry hair pieces and false noses to follow in the near future).
Today we tested the first EIGHT player multiplayer mode session with a map I created specially for the occasion, and aside from two issues relating to the dreaded 'guaranteed packet' effect, the whole experience was pretty cool, with players jet packing all over the sky, shooting fellow players in the midst of serious network testing and generally having a good old time in the level I affectionately entitled 'Holy Shotgun'.
In addition to testing the latest multiplayer code from Ravey, which was the fruit of a coding stint that kept him awake until 5AM, I also tested about ten fixes I made during my own late night session, all of which did not reduce the stability of the 'almost final build' except for a missing texture which was an easy tweak to the installer, and despite changing just one file, I still tested the whole software again, button by button, feature by feature, and I saw that it was good.
