• Sprint 18 – Why Not Both?

    WHY NOT BOTH?

    Week of May 14th, 2017

    WARP DOGS’ CORP LOGS

    • The state of our WARP CORP continues to hold steady at ~doin’ fine~
    • The Extinction-Level-Event (ELE) is holding steady at ~39 weeks away. Rad!

    I’m trying something new! That’s what working for yourself allows for, yeah? Pivots, baby!

    Truth is, I was spending more time than I wanted to on these planning and retrospective posts. I mean, ok, it wasn’t that much time, but it was always something I kept putting off and putting off, and then when I actually did do it I always half-assed it.

    I won’t get rid of the concept entirely because I think it’s important to my psuedo-agile approach, but I am combining the two. This new thing will go out each Sunday (except for, uh, this first one?) and it’ll look exactly like the Planning posts with the addition of a Show & Tell section. I’ll also try to weave in last week’s successes (and many failures) into the Goals. Ok, cool? Cool!

    Not much to report on the biz side of things. The prototype release Flower has been out for about a week now, which is rad! Everything else is on schedule.

    SPRINT GOALS

    The latest prototype contains two hobbies – critter hunting, and fishing. Since the start I always envisioned three primary hobbies, and this week marks progress in that 3rd one: archaeology!

    This’ll be the most involved of the hobbies, and includes things like digging up jewels, finding treasure maps and clues leading to even greater treasure, finding the remains of long-dead ancient creatures…there’s a lot!

    More importantly, this hobby has the most ties with other systems of the game – like seeding the ground with things to dig up each new day, or adding new quests to the Compendium if you dig up a map, and so on. As such, focusing on something like digging will end up improving a whole lot of systems as I work through them all – it’s like five or six birds with one stone!

    SHOW & TELL FROM LAST WEEK

  • WERE-RELEASE #4 OUT NOW – “FLOWER”

    Happy full moon, everybody!

    A new full moon means a new version of Village Monsters for you to have fun with. I’m happy to announce that the latest Were-Release (what is this?), code named “Flower“, is now officially released.

    Go download it!

    As with all the other pre-alpha releases, things are still very early. Expect a lot of unfinished or straight up missing systems and features. If you’re interested in following games in early development and want your feedback to shape a game then I’d love for you to take a look! Otherwise, maybe wait until it’s closer to the final release

    This is also considered a minor version, meaning that the focus was on polish, bugfixes, and new content. You can expect the same overall structure and feel of the game to be similar to the last release.

    The next major release is scheduled to come out this Summer, so be sure to get in any feedback or suggestions before then.

    Have fun!

    “Flower”

    RELEASED: May 10th, 2017

    Download:  Windows | Mac (Soon!) | Linux (Soon!)

  • Sprint 16 – It’s Not Built For Shoes – Retrospective

    IT’S NOT BUILT FOR SHOES

    Week of April 30th, 2017

    OVERVIEW

    This was a pretty lousy week, if I’m honest. You ever have one of those days where it feels like you do a ton of work, only to you realize you don’t have a whole lot to show for it? Imagine that, but it’s all week, and you have an idea for how it went.

    Dunno why, really, just one of those things.

    This coming week includes a full moon – meaning a new release! – and I’ve felt completely taken by surprise. Has it been a month already? What the hell! Only 4 days to go…so, I best get back to it.

    SHOW & TELL

  • Sprint 16 – It’s Not Built For Shoes – Planning

    IT’S NOT BUILT FOR SHOES

    Week of April 30th, 2017

    WARP DOGS’ CORP LOGS

    • The state of our WARP CORP continues to hold steady at ~pretty ok~
    • The Extinction-Level-Event (ELE) is holding steady at ~41 weeks away. Rad!

    Not much new to add on this front – money is continuing to be spent, but not too much. We still have just under a year to figure this stuff out, and I’m still feeling confident we will.

    For the first time in like a decade we’re getting a tax return back, and its substantial enough to make a blip on the ol’ WARP CORP charts above. That’ll come some in the summer. Between that, various retirement accounts and other sources of income, I think I’ll be able to keep on trucking until an eventual plea for money in the form of a Kickstarter. Ah, but before that I need a game worth backing, right? Well stop making me type this and let me get back to it!

    SPRINT GOALS

    I have a few different analysis-related goals this week. I’d like to get together a “Lore Bible” of sorts – for myself! I’m picturing an Excel sheet of sorts that lists every character, their personality, relationships, places in the world, and so on.

    I’d also like to finish up the public roadmap that I’ll be sharing over Trello – I’m committing to getting that out this week, actually, so look forward to that.

    On the coding front the plan is to continue with ‘core loop’ items. This week I’ll definitely focus on player housing including furniture placement, upgrades, and lots more. Finally finally, I’d like a more robust dialog system (one fed via an external file instead of the hardcoded version I have now)

    So, could be a busy week. Let’s get to it.

  • Sprint 15 – April Showers – Retrospective

    Hurry up and announce a Pikmin game for Switch already

    APRIL SHOWERS

    Week of April 23rd, 2017

    OVERVIEW

    It was another good week. I’m switching some things up on both the development and story fronts.

    I’d like to make my development even more open than it already is. To this end, I’m moving off of KanbanFlow and back to Trello which has more robust ways of sharing things. The idea is to make my entire roadmap public so that you can look at what’s implemented, what’s coming up, and you even vote on things you think are most important.

    Here’ s a lil preview:

    On the story side of things I’ve been rethinking some of the themes and overall tone I’m going to explore. Nothing much I can talk about now, but in short: things are going to be more fun and less gloomy.

    More to share soon!

    SHOW & TELL

  • Sprint 15 – April Showers – Planning

    Hurry up and announce a Pikmin game for Switch already

    APRIL SHOWERS

    Week of April 23rd, 2017

    WARP DOGS’ CORP LOGS

    • The state of our WARP CORP continues to hold steady at ~pretty good~
    • The Extinction-Level-Event (ELE) is holding steady at ~42 weeks away. Neat!

    Not much new to report here, truth be told. Just keeping my head down and working hard. I still haven’t decided if I’ll do a May release or if I’ll plow ahead ’til June like I did with the combined March / April release.

    Though it’s a bit far away, I’ve also been making plans for how I’ll handle PAX Prime. I’m in Seattle and can definitely afford to go there, so I think I’ll make it my first public outing for the game. Like everything in my life these days it’s equal parts exciting and terrifying, so I figure I should get a head start on preparing.

    SPRINT GOALS

    The goal is to continue on ‘core loop’ features for the next week. My success – or lack of progress – will probably dictate if I do another release soon. I’m happy with how the Pink Crow release turned out, but I’m still embarrassed by how barebones it it.

  • Sprint 14 – Take Your Time – Retrospective

    Persona 5 is a hell of a game

    TAKE YOUR TIME

    Week of April 16th, 2017

    OVERVIEW

    Another good week.

    Much of it was spent on creating villagers to populate Luckstone with. A lot of these have existed in my head for some time, but I hadn’t had the skills to bring them into pixel form. Don’t get me wrong – I still lack those skills – but I know enough now where I don’t feel super embarrassed about it. Check below to see everyone!

    Beyond that I added a shop and shopping mechanics, plus some weird and tangential stuff – like scratch tickets you can buy at the store. I also began work on a female main character – a long overdue task I’ve been putting off on account of my inability to make good looking characters.

    There’s also been a lot of Persona 5, which is a Good Game. So, maybe go buy and play that, huh? You’ll see a lot of Persona influence in Village Monsters…daily activities, personable monsters from all walks of myth and legend, and maybe even anime waifus!*

    *no

    SHOW & TELL