Slow Progress

I wish I had better news, but the past 2 months the progress was slow. Alice's Ai was a challenge, Titan was very busy, and the voice actress hasn't made Ucogi's voice yet. We are using SourceTree to update the game, and here's the dates and progress we made during April-May.

I know you are all waiting for a beta, or an update. This is painful because I am waiting for things to get done as well. My programmer sometimes promises deadlines that he can't meet for various reasons and that delays the development of the game. This month was very nerve-wracking, as I was waiting and waiting for some progress. The following Skype messages are between me and Titan, the programmer. It shows how days fly by, and sadly that is just a glimpse of the whole story.

All that said, I'm not pointing fingers. I'm explaining the situation. I do have to do many things on my own and this waiting and pressure is killing my creative mood. But I try to keep my chin up and be professional. Some of the challenges I'm facing has to do with the sound. I got some good voice samples but they do need to be edited and placed in the game, and tested and if they are not good enough, I have to repeat the process.

I made a rough video regarding Alice's progress and I tried to show off some of the new sfx. The sound in the video is quite out of synch but it was a hassle to fix, so I left it as it was. Still, you can see the improvements since last month. One of the biggest changes is that the soldiers used to be black and now they are white (in the story, the black soldiers appear later). When progress is made, feels really good. The background looks bad, it's one of the designs that I have to re-do.

This waiting made me think and reconsider. I know now that I need to give the least amount of work to anyone else involved in this project. And to do the best I can with what I got. I have to find a balance what is important and what can be shown in other ways. For example, I wanted to have a mini-boss in the farms, as a story beat, world building and change of pace. I can compromise and have an NPC dialogue, without the fight. Which means that the programmer won't struggle for another 5 days to deal with this, and he can work towards completing more important things.

These are my thoughts for now. What remains to be done? Programming-wise we have to finish Alice, Stheno, Succubus 2 and the ending presentation. The title video needs some sound work as it is out of synch. I need to re-check Succubus, Red and Golem Bosses. We need to add 3-4 dialogue cut-scenes, and a new cheat menu. These are the most important things for now. We are almost at the finish line. 

Of course bugs and corrections are unavoidable, and I do have to fix the design aspects of levels and dialogues. But Voms' timeline is really close to an end. Once the programming is completed, everything else should be a breeze.