#beingintime

10/10/14 (2 hours/32.25 HOURS TOTAL)

Today I return to this game. I bought a copy of Being in Time by Martin Heidegger. I want to include his philosophy correctly when I reference it.

Ace Enders just released a new I Can Make A Mess Like Nobody’s Business album. IT’S SUPER RAD. I’ve been a fan of most of his work, and always awesome to see a Jersey guy doing good. It's going to fuel today's development session.

I deferred the last playtest session, but I need to keep at it if I’m going to present this game anytime before the end of this year.

                I’m fighting with the size of this scene. I want to keep my ellipsis the same for all levels (for a narrative reason), and I feel that an outside level will need to be tweaked less  - while this walled in room needs definitive space that feels even.

                The ends of my circle are not going anywhere I’d like them to. After longer than I’d like to admit, I thought to put a particle effect on the player, allowing me to frame the level around the loop. Boom! Now I can lay things out perfectly in the player's line of sight! Take a look!

9/8/14 (0.5 hours/30.25 HOURS TOTAL)

Tonight I downloaded a bunch of new assets. I then created a new scene, and began laying out some ideas for a tutorial level. The biggest thing I added was a fire particle effect. I’ve got the same curiosity about this as I did about having the water as a findable object.

I hope someday I can have my own space to do development. I’m currently working while sitting on the floor at a friend’s apartment, because he has internet.

I am now in full panic mode about the wedding. My travel plans for the next few days will be drastically altered to finish a few overdue things.

8/26/14 (1.75 hours/29 HOURS TOTAL)

                As I look at this first design I had it my head, it may we waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to influenced by the chronotrigger logo. I also used the ‘T’ of ‘Time’ as a clock face, as I need to look up if anyone else had used this before.

                In the mean while, let’s look at changing this up, choosing fonts for the different periods in the game. My current thought was to have Futurestic/Modern/Prehistoric/Antebellum. I’m kind of at a crossroads here. Do I lay out all of my ideas of the story? I’d like to keep some of that a secret. After we set the fonts, we’ll do a bit of the Doctor Who treatment to it, giving the logo a feel for time travel.

                Wow. I really suck at photoshop, but I’m rather pleased with this draft. It’s got a solid late 80’s/ early 90’s adventure feel to it. I’m pumped to play this game!

8/25/14 (0.5 hours/27.25 HOURS TOTAL)

                There will be train delays for another two weeks. This may give me a lot more time for development.

I’ve been working on an HTML5 game for license which has taken up a lot of my time. I also had my stag party, and done a bunch of wedding planning. The NJIGDA is having a demo night on September 30th, so I hope to ramp up development and show BOTH GAMES  then. I’ll right my pitch tomorrow, so we’ll see how that goes.

Tonight I begin taking a rough crack at a logo. But what to call the game? Since it’s about time travel and I’ve already been influenced before on Martin Heidegger’s existential philosophy, why not keep on that track, and call the game Being in Time? (After Heidegger’s most famous work, Being and Time.) I like the idea of ‘in time’ much more than ‘on time’. The first implies displacement, and the 2nd would be better suited for a fast paced game. (Don’t get me wrong, this game will very likely have timed rounds, but overall that’s not the M.I.T. of the game.)