Writing as Procrastination

As we get closer to Starfarmer’s release, one of my tasks has been to overhaul the user interface for the game. The interface had been made very early on in the project and needed a facelift. The original interface was also so tiny that our playtesters kept having to squint.

I’m getting close to the finish line on this task, having already redone the front-end screens, the player’s computer, and the “IGDM” (a set of screens you use to monitor your farm and your status). Fresh home from MAGFest, I dusted off a screen Sku has been waiting for: our robo popup!

This was the old version. Yes, that is actual size. This is why you don’t go straight from making 32x32 sprites into making a user interface for a 1280x720 game window, folks.

The robo popup (or Robot Assignment Screen) is the player’s hub for controlling each of their farm robots: you can change the robot’s tool, rename them, change the channel they work on, and send them out to the field or recall them to the robo shed. You can also change their mode -- robots can be set to either await your orders, or go out on your farm automatically to look for work. All of this was crammed into the tiny screen you see above. Let’s see the new version:

Ah, that’s better! Everything got double-sized and a few things got shuffled around. I added the upgrades and expanded the status icon into its own row. The mode the robot is set to is also its own button now -- the old version had one button to both change the robot’s mode and send/recall them, which was confusing to say the least. Speaking of the send/recall button, you can now see the robot’s current charge level next to it, which will be super useful.

I was very sure that Starfarmer was gonna be done this year.

The most sure I’ve ever been! I felt like we were 80% “done” at the start of the year, and another 20% can’t possibly take a whole year, right? So I put down “2017″ as the game’s release date on all the official channels.

I’ve now changed this to “2018.″

The old adage “90% of the work done means 90% of the work is left” sounds funny, but boy, you have no idea how true it is until you really experience it. I hadn’t exactly overestimated how ‘done’ we were: the game is in a mostly playable state, with all the big gameplay features in and only a few major projects left.

But being 90% complete and being polished enough to release are two very different things. This won’t be news to anyone who’s done a big project, but ‘cleaning up all the little things’ is a ton of work when there’s a lot of little things to clean up. There’s also the matter of content: feature complete doesn’t mean content complete, and boy is there a lot of content. We even scaled things down, and that made it manageable, but not ‘this year’ manageable. And of course, ‘real life’ gets in the way, as my paid work took more time away from this project than expected and health problems Happened.

So what’s next? Well, I’m pretty optimistic about 2018. It’ll be a lot of polishing and bugfixing, and some more content creation, but I’m really looking forward to getting through that last mile. It can be frustrating to feel like you’re so close and yet so far, but the cool thing about being this far into a project is that you know it’s going to be done.

Hello followers! You may be wondering what I’ve been up to and why it’s not taking screenshots. The short answer is “a whole lot” but the long answer is: Starfarmer!

Starfarmer is a PC videogame that I’ve been helping to develop for several years now. It’s inspired by the farming games of old (Harvest Moon. I mean Harvest Moon) and it’s got a cool sci-fi twist with robots and aliens! I’m super excited about it -- so much so that I got a whole website and blog and Twitter set up! :D

... and then I didn’t have any time to maintain those! :’D

My partner (”Skulkin”) and I have gone back and forth on figuring out how to manage things, but the bottom line is, there’s a lot to do for the game still and doing official marketing AND game development wasn’t working out. Instead I’m going to post unofficial updates here on my personal blog, because unofficial updates are better than radio silence, and anyway it’s super exciting that I get to work on this and I wanna tell people about it!

This is the best possible farm configuration. Look at it, look at how pretty it is. :D

Rex Rocket is a fun and challenging game and it has a retro feel, so they didn’t really have to add any dialogue. But I’m glad they did.

Writing subversive and bizarre dialogue wasn’t enough, so they also put in profiles for all the enemies you defeat and “lore items” that are basically just there to be collectible and deliver jokes.

First impression of the game: “Aww what a nice kid’s game, you go around collecting flowers and everything’s pretty”

Monument Valley is a very pretty game.

The price is a little steep for the sheer length gameplay you’re getting, but I still recommend it if you value polish. The puzzle design is great, the game moves beautifully, and the sound design is as gorgeous as the art. The Forgotten Shores pack is great as well (and, level-for-level, a better value than the original game).

When the developers behind King of Thieves released an update to patch out spawn traps, I thought, “oh good, there will be fewer levels that require stupid cheaty frame-perfect jumps”

Ahahaha boy was I wrong.

In order: a level with Spinner trap that mysteriously wouldn’t go away no matter how many times I died, a level that required you to jump when you hit the pixel sticking out of the wall in order to travel straight up, and a level that required you to jump at a magical angle that takes you through the Blade trap to the goal.

I also had someone beat my dungeon today by, quite literally, running straight through my Blade trap. It wasn’t disabled, they just waltzed right through it. Really not sure how that works or makes sense, but there you go.

Sorry Frost, you’re off the team. I got a new horse now.