Old Journals

June 5, 1989

The new animations I shot with Mike are going in very quickly. Already the “potion drinking,” “unsheathing your sword,” and “collapsing” are up and running.

The only big ones left are:

-climb stairs

-pick up sword and hold it up

-sheathe sword

-“alert turn” for guard

-“collapse” for guard

I think I can squeeze it all into the available memory, except for “climb stairs”; that one might need a disk access. I could live with that.

My major achievement today, though, was to completely redesign the first two levels to make them more fun to play. There’s more freedom now, more exploration, more rewards. The previous versions were rather humorless – you go from A to B to C and if you mess up, you die.

Level 3 is still pretty punishing and bleak. I don’t know quite what to do about it. I guess I’ll hand it in to QA like this and see what they think.

Level 4 is pretty good.

Level 5 is nonexistent.

Levels 6, 7, and 8 are pretty good, although they need work.

I guess tomorrow I’d better come up with a Level 5. Then my “beta version” will at least have the first two-thirds of the game.

There’s no getting around it. To achieve the reasonably complete, reasonably bug-free beta version I’d hoped to deliver tomorrow will take me another solid week’s work.

Should I ask QA to hold off for a couple of days (how humiliating!) or just turn in what I’ve got and then give them an updated version a week from now?

Posted on Jun 5, 1989 in Old Journals | 1 comment