Test results and future plans

We had another game testing session last Friday and this time we weren't chased by an angry mob with torches and pitchforks! In other words, Carcity worked out most of the control bugs/issues and the wall jumping sortof works like we intended it to.

OneHand finished the first stage with some minor alterations and we also tweaked the first version of the stage as well, making a slight increase in the difficulty level. I finished the plans for the next stage and if I'm not mistaken both Carcity and OneHand are adding the finishing touches right now. Because of time restraints (and general laziness) we're going to use the tweaked tutorial stage as stage 2 instead. Carcity has also fixed an intro screen/menu of sorts that you return to when you die. You'll have the option to either have a look at the controls or to start the game.


Now, I bring both bad and good news. The bad news are that we have less than 2 weeks left until our deadline for the LBS game awards (yeah, fat chance) and I'm making very little progress with the graphics so our game will most likely be butt-ugly and unfinished.

The good news however, is that we intend to continue working on this game after the deadline, except OneHand, who will work with HB (from the Heroes of Armarond dev team) on an older Flash based platformer we worked on a year ago. I have agreed to chip in with some 2D graphics and level designs for that game as well since I too was a part of the original dev team on that project.

We have run into some problems regarding the continued development of Polyboy though: we have to turn in our laptops at the beginning of summer and I'll only have my ancient Sony Vaio to work on and I'm not sure if it can run Maya properly because of it's severely outdated hardware and lack of space. Same goes for Carcity. His computer at home is known for being unreliable with all the crashes and slowdowns it frequently suffers from, and Michaedee (being the only member responsible enough to have a real job) will most likely have to spend a lot of time working.

I know my laptop once had the power to run Unity and I have an old copy of Photoshop at home in case SAI would fail me. If I remove all my games I might have enough space to continue working this summer, you don't need anything more complex than a pen and paper to plan stage layouts, enemy placements, concept art, themes, backdrops and storylines. It's the more advanced graphics that worry me.


So yeah, that's pretty much it for now. Although our deadline is closing in, that doesn't mean it's the end of the project. We've had too much fun so far and there are still a ton of bad puns that we haven't used yet. It would be a shame to have it all go to waste.

Until next time!
/Wasp