Burnout

I thought I could maintain it, but the scope of the project, the hours I was doing on top of work and most worryingly, the questionable goals of the project all contributed to the last month of inactivity. One year is a lot of time dedicated to a single project. However, more so than time is value. The thought that the game isn’t fun and isn’t my own work really bothers me. The novelty of making a rewrite has sort of passed and I’m left with just a bunch of tasks to get to what I think isn’t a particularly interesting game from my perspective. My son loves it though! But I’m sure I could do something simpler that he loves too… like the drum mixer someone made in elm…

I’ve set myself a much smaller task for the time being, make a playable alpha. No magic, no traps, no story. Just a simple dungeon romp. Part of what scares me is that I think I’m really only about half way, which means I’m probably only a third done if being realistic about the polish, website, save/load and other non-game specific aspects. But I haven’t been able to bring myself to work on that in the last month. Perhaps it’s best to revisit this after working on some of my other smaller scoped ideas.

Progress report

So it wasn’t all doom and gloom. Even though it wasn’t easy, I did manage to make some progress

Death

A game is never fun unless you can die in it. But die too much, and you turn away the casual players. The gaming industry in the modern era is a pathetic excuse for whingy teenagers who can’t accept their own incompetence, impatience and stupidity. Thus in the quest for making a profit for their shareholders, most games are just glorified poker machines.

Immortal -2459 HP and still slugging it out with the bandit! Err… pathfinding isn’t so great here.

You will die in Castle of the winds. Alot. Oh no saves? Then learn to do less stupid things next time.

Tombstone Death by Giant Red Ant, a common n00b mistake.

Styling

So some people had not realised that I’m remaking the style as well as the gameplay of the original Castle of the Winds. And when I tell them ( being too polite to critique the look ), then they realise ‘ohhh, so you meant for it to look like that’ hehe. Yes. It looks beautiful for a reason.

Inventory Before Functional inventory

Inventory After Styled to be like the original

Other news!

So this week I said goodbye to the good people of Blake eLearning whom I’d been working with for the last … actually since the start of cotwelm. It’s a bit funny that this rewrite was triggered by the tech lead there and I’m leaving for a role working full time with Elm!! So you could say that he was a major reason why I left. He’s a good guy. I’ve been feeling quite melancholy the whole week, there are some really good people there that I’d gotten to like over the last year. Much fond memories of the good times that I’ve had there and I’m proud of the work that I did during my time, albeit short but still accomplished my fair share. I leave with no regrets… I live with no regrets.

Now the place I’m going to, this is going to be an interesting one! I know the dev manager from a previous place, the guy is pretty hillarious and fun to be around. The other dev, my partner in crime seems to be a very clever man from the two times we’ve talked. It will be the three of us rewriting some massive legacy winforms app into a SPA using Elm. I’m late to the party, 15k LoC is already written. This is going to be both very exciting and daunting. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel anxious and excited at the same time.

For the last year, I had been working 8 hrs a day, coming home and spending 4 hrs with the family, then when they slept, working on cotw for 2 hrs, usually until midnight. Now, I have the opportunity to focus all my working time on it. This was a great opportunity that I had to take. I believe that we make our own fortunes. We have to strive and work towards and be at the right place for when these opportunities arise. Luck favours the prepared.

Future…

I make no promises. If this is the last post, then thank you for reading. ( so bloody dramatic… )

If you’d like to contribute, please contact me via github. Otherwise, I hope to find some meaningful way to continue.