What do I do when I landed here?

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This blog tells the many adventures and tales of the development of our “Secret Mystery Project”. You thus find here frustrated posts when things don’t work out, happy posts when they do, and somewhat undecided posts when there was work on the story to be done.

At various times, we’ve created (and sometimes we still do) short prototypish games, which you can try out if you follow the  “List of Games”-link here or on the right side of the page. We’d love to hear your thoughts, so feel free to comment!

Still going strong!

I’m still also wishing that I had a model designer and someone for animations

I’m really bad at animating – even my prototype models are way too difficult to animate for me. Legs and limbs rotate in other parts of the body, if they even manage to not cross themself.
That really isn’t anything I should or can do. But apparently, it’s now almost impossible to find someone without pay – or maybe I’m not looking hard enough. Suggestions are always welcome!

Groups and Details

I’m done with planning, so all I have to do now is to put these things into action. Very well!

Then, there’s a new kind of (internal) object, which allows to group things together. So you can investigate a desk as a whole, then going into a detailscene to investigate all the stuff on the desk. It’s neat, it works well, it makes sense, and it reduces pixelhunting. So that’s a plus.

The negative is that the way this works, it might make the code a lot harder to read. But it’s not that bad, definately doable. And for what it offers, it’s definately worth it.

Unfortunately, I still haven’t found a modeller or animator, which is a shame. I can only hope to find someone sooner or later, but I’m now seriously considering paying for it (though I unfortunately cannot afford a professional modeller – I’m poor, you know)

Oh, hey guys

Yeah, I’m still planning.

These scenarios aren’t that simple to lay out! But it’s neat in its own way. Now if only it were easier!

(This post mostly being an update to let you know that yes, we’re still workin’ on it)

Drawing with a pen. On Paper.

What this is, I have no idea.

This is... Huh?

And this... ?

But at times, I’m actually planning stuff on paper. And then, I draw pictures to amuse myself. They usually turn out pretty bad. Since I’m not an artist, really. Eeh, whatever. Makes for amazing useless blog-updates. So there.

Rewrite & Bugfixes, unusual Animations

I rewrote some of the posts and pages here on this blog to more accurately state how things go right now. Which is to say; we have semi-regular, semi-thoughtful, semi-interesting posts on what I did last.

Hey, today I fixed a bug! Or not really a bug per se – everything was working as planned. But it turned out to be somewhat inconvenient at times, so I added a small workaround for that. So in that way, I guess we can call it a Bugfix!

And then – I had to create animations. While I do have a nice model for one of the characters ingame, I unfortunately have no one to animate it, and there is literally no interest at all in this. Truth to be told, I kind of expected this – that ryangregory offered to help was a very welcome surprise, and he has delivered splendid work. But as he told us before, he cannot animate this character, and neither can I, so now I’m looking for someone who can. I’m afraid that it’s almost impossible to find someone these days without pay. Sigh.

Meanwhile, I’m using a simple placeholdermodel and add simple placeholderanimations to it. It still kind of works, but I’d simply love to see that infinitely better, much more detailed, overall much better model in action. Well, maybe somebody will help us out …

Same procedure as every … session?!

I admit it. The last few days I only continued writing said dialog. But outlining the game and story has to be done, too, right? And I figure doing that is still better than doing nothing, so there. And after all, I managed to think of something cool for a certain levelprogression where I was kinda unsure on how to do that. So as far as that’s concerned, I’ll say that was a success.

But now, I’m back at writing code, and creating that first scenario. It’s nice, I think! I sure hope it’ll be fun once people play it, though it’s always hard to balance puzzles. Playtesting to the rescue, again, and I’m sure all my friends can’t wait to try it out. Even though honestly? Playtesting is always the hardest for the creator, the poor, little creator, who sits next to the player, and mustn’t interact, even though they all do it wrong. Sure, valuable insight has been won, but for the price of shattered hopes & dreams.

GAMEDESIGN.

Eeeh.

I didn’t code today, I didn’t create models, I didn’t do anything.

Ashamed as I was, I instead created a document outlining all story-elements, and how those are connected. At least I now have a neat overview (in progress).

Eeh. :/

Time planning

Turns out, I usually have a hard time actually starting work, but even more so I have a hard time stopping work. Somewhat.

Whenever I manage to really take a break from coding, then this break can take quite some time, since going back to work is never really that much of a priority. But if I work on it, I do want to finish it, and continue working to see what I can do. It’s funny to have these two totally contrary positions deeply manifested in my work-ethic. I can’t believe I’m the only one like that, either.

That actually has the advantage that I’m finishing something – even if only something small – every day. Nice!

Make sure it works. Then continue.

… Is actually a pretty boring way to work. You spend dozens of hours on that one part, then, you move on to the next. But of course, it’s the best way in order to keep organized, and to remember where what happens.

Naturally, I usually don’t do it. I jump around in my code whenever possible. I change something here and there, I move things from one point to the next, I fix bugs inbetween debugging a different bug. In short, it’s awful.

Oh well, at least I managed to fix all these bugs now. And this means that a certain system, which is pretty important gameplaywise, is now complete (… until I realize that its not). Next up: Creating a scenario to play in. Yay!

I wonder when I can convince the rest to finally unveil the game to the world.

Hey, guess what, I actually worked on the game!

So I did start! Hah!

Also, I actually finished that mysterious “oh-my-god-so-huge-thing” I’ve talked about. I’m kind of proud of myself. Though looking back, it really wasn’t that much. I guess I’m really just very lazy. Also, since it’s relevant – I’ve used a static-effect for that new thing. AGAIN. I just love it. Also, it really works here and cleverly hides the direct transition from one state to the next.

Though I’m getting tired of looking at my placeholderpanels all the time.

I better make a backup, huh?