Life at an underground game company.
Posts tagged Production
Game Development Milestones, Schedules, and Deadlines
01 year ago
by Samael
in Development Concerns
I am a programmer. Well, sort of; I program, at any rate. Currently, I’m working with Double Cluepon as their tools and client engine developer. That means that — basically — I’m making Emerald Kingdom all on my lonesome (not really, of course — we’ve got a very solid team here, it’s just that at the moment everyone has other tasks — art, animation, networking, design, writing — and so the tool development is mine.). It’s sort of a daunting task, to be sure; there are literally hundreds of thousands of words in the backstory, we’ve got a webcomic coming up, and my boss is looking for a pretty aggressive timeline to reach Alpha.
And that’s what I’m here today to talk about, because it’s something of a wall that I’ve hit my head against a lot. It’s a big, heavy concrete wall, and it’s filled with spikes. Because Deadlines can be your best friend and they can be your worst enemy.
From Blank Slate To Bank…. Somethingthatrhymeswithslate
The problem with a deadline is, for the most part, you have no clue when the hell you’ll be done with any given thing. This is something that can be winged, and your wild guesses get more accurate as you go on, but quite frankly even three years in the business of software development hasn’t made it any easier. At least, not for big projects. A big project encompasses so much that a 1 hour delay early on could translate into a three week delay down the road. There’s no way of knowing what bugs will crop up, what features will need to get chopped, what will need to get added, so on and so forth. The easiest way to deal with the Long Term Problem is to use a ticketing system (I recommend Redmine, although Trac is….. eeeh, really, it’s not very good, but it is popular. Really, check out Redmine.) to cut up the work you need to do into sizeable, more easily understood parts.
Building a Map Editor is hard; but if I split that up into “be able to paint tiles”; “be able to paint objects”; “be able to scroll with the mouse”; “be able to delete painted tiles or objects”; “be able to specify borders”; “be able to save and load maps”; and so on and so forth, I can eventually come up with a much more reasonable SWAG (Scientific Wild-Ass Guess) than if I just went with the first thing. (more…)
Fifty.
02 years ago
I have been quite busy as of late. Between resume vetting, working on some web re-organization and generally taking some time to regroup….I have barely had time to do much anything else. When I get busy, the blog goes silent. That’s going to change a bit as time goes on. More of the crew here at Double Cluepon will begin writing posts here and there. Nova, our CR Vixen will also be getting in here soon to keep things rolling, and keep things tidy.
So, for the fiftieth post, I just wanted to give you some updates as to what is going down here at Double Cluepon.
While we will be mostly interviewing this week, having collected a massive number of resume’s last week…it’s still not too late to submit a resume and portfolio to us. We have gotten so many folks sending us credentials it’s very overwhelming. We wish we could bring all of them in, but we just do not have the resources. However, one of the things we are considering is some kind of intern program. We think it might be helpful to some of these folks to still hang around a game studio. Especially an indie studio.
- WireWorks, our first game, fared much better than we initially hoped.
It sounds weird, but all of us felt WireWorks had a chance to not do as well as it did. We never expected it to hit four stars. (The version of WireWorks that is going into Emerald Kingdom will be far more polished) Despite that, it did a lot better than we hoped. It came out of the gate, and for our first ever product, it beat the Average, hovering around 3 stars, or just under. Not bad for our first try! Especially in a world of hundreds of thousands of flash games. We learned a great deal from its reception. We also learned where we failed, and what needs improvement. We are already putting some of these things into new policies as we move forward with Emerald Kingdom. Even so, everyone we spoke to directly in some way loved WireWorks, and we are quite proud of our debut product.
- We are currently working on revamping our web presence.
Be on the lookout, we are in the process of putting together a new unified web presence, with a uniform interface so things are easier to navigate. We are doing this now, while we have some time during the spin down of WireWorks development, and during our star search for a new artist.
- We have opened our forums, and have also posted some details about some major features you will find in Emerald Kingdom.
You can find our forums here. More to the point…the forums are the place to mingle and hobnob with us folks at Double Cluepon. We read them all the time, and may from time to time answer direct questions. If you want to get more direct with us about Emerald Kingdom…the forums are the place to do so.
- Twin Perennial is now in production.
We do not have a release date for the debut. However what we can tell you is this: the story outline is done, the script production cycle is now been started, and it is in full production. What is Twin Perennial? It’s a web comic which is based on the characters and world of Emerald Kingdom. While many of the main characters will appear, it will “key” in on two very important major characters. The sisters Paranoia and Confusia. Twin Perennial will serve to introduce the world, concepts and characters of Emerald Kingdom. We have not mentioned her in awhile, mainly cause she has been busy with her own gigs in addition to helping to develop the strip…but you should definitely check out Joan Varitek. You should also check out her etsy store. We love Joan. Greatly. In that platonic kind of kindred type of love. Not the prison type of love. Also, banana’s.
So, in closing…things are busy, yes. Not as busy as they are going to get very soon. I really want to see some of the kids walking around the world already.
Ja Mata!
The new cook in the kitchen.
02 years ago
by Azrael
in Double Cluepon
Double Cluepon Software found it’s “Reasonably Awesome Software Engineer” today.
Zach Lome will be joining our merry band. His starting goal will be to finish tool building for Emerald Kingdom, and to re-factor the code of our engine. We shake him warmly by the hand.
Zach’s first mission will be getting up to speed. From there he will be working full time to bring Emerald Kingdom to beta. We do not have a definite time frame as of yet, but we do know this advances the time-table a great deal. We don’t ever give release dates until we have a finished product. That being said, things are really picking up now.
Between Zach and Doug, coding is now in a position to take off. There will be more to report next week.
Stay Tuned.
We have not died-ed
02 years ago
We have just been busy on WireWorks, dealing with the ick and sick, etc. However, one cool thing: modelling is a full time thing at the moment, as we are asset building for Emerald Kingdom, while development finishes up WireWorks.
Just an FYI. We should be seeing our second alpha of WireWorks this weekend, with a Beta soon to follow.
Wire Works. Almost ready for testing.
02 years ago
Today, the menu screen was completed. All that remains now is a few minor bits before the game gets its final assembly. Then it will be play tested by our beta group. Then, released to all you folks who have been waiting.
Coming to a browser near you. We can't wait to play!
We here at the Studio want to play it as much as you do…stay tuned! The anticipation and excitement on our end is growing…I cannot imagine what it must be like for you folks out there. Just rest assured…it’s coming!
