Progress Report

If you've been waiting patiently for an update, I apologize for the down time. I'd like to give you more frequent updates, but sometimes progress just goes really slow. Plus, I went to a convention last weekend, and that stalled development for a good several days. Otherwise, though, I've been making a mammoth effort in ironing out the wrinkles in this one section of the game, that involves the harbor town and sea shrine.

One thing I can tell you, is that development often involves days of staring at a partially completed map, making little tweaks here and there, until the inspiration hits (often involving finding a "hook"), followed immediately by untracked hours of focused absorption into a feverish mapping process. That's what happened with the Valley Pass "dungeon", the forest town (a.k.a., Splintwood), and to an even greater extent with this sea shrine dungeon, at least in terms of providing the meat of the dungeon.

But I've got that all pretty much squared away, and I'm very excited to show it to you. But before I can do that, I have to get the plot straightened out and the cutscenes put together, and that's proving to be a very frustrating process. I have a few set ideas of things I definitely want to happen, and in the process of stringing them together and working them into my game, I'm finding it a lot more difficult than I anticipated to fit all the pieces together, so that it all feels very natural, and not too convoluted, and doesn't stretch the player's suspension of disbelief too far.

For example, take the ship map I discussed in my last post. At first, I wasn't sure I was going to be able to make one, so I didn't want the plot to rely on an on-ship scene. But then I made the map, and worked it into the plot. But what if the story flows better without that scene? Then it kind of sucks not to be able to use this map that I put so much effort into, and that I think is pretty cool and would really like to showcase. And there are other little things here and there, elements that I think are a lot of fun, but just because you think catgirls wielding machine guns is cool, doesn't mean it fits into your game just where you'd like it to go. (Rest assured, that was just an off-the-wall example; I have no intention of putting machine gun-wielding catgirls in my game).

So basically what I'm saying is that the development continues to drag on, and I'm pretty confident that all the kinks will work themselves out given enough time and consideration, but - well, it's just that: it's going to take some time. I'll be happy when I'm ready to move on to another portion of the game, though; it seems like I've been working on this one forever now. I've laid down the preliminaries for what I hope will be a very cool (if cliched - but hey, like a greatest hits tour, you gotta hit all the bases) pyramid-themed dungeon. If I ever get out of this harbor, that is.