{"id":3374,"date":"2016-10-07T15:49:00","date_gmt":"2016-10-07T14:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/?p=3374"},"modified":"2020-03-14T16:26:59","modified_gmt":"2020-03-14T16:26:59","slug":"development-diary-20-first-milestone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/blog\/2016\/10\/07\/development-diary-20-first-milestone\/","title":{"rendered":"Development Diary #20: First Milestone\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Following quickly on from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/blog\/2016\/09\/30\/development-diary-19-on-schedule\/\">last week<\/a> is the&nbsp;first milestone update. The puzzle dependency chart for <em>Reel<\/em>&nbsp;is now finished and I have a good solid framework to start work on the art and interactions&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #dadada;\"><del><strong>3rd Oct. \u2013 Project Start<\/strong><\/del><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #dadada;\"><del><strong>7th Oct. \u2013 Design Locked:<\/strong>&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>Story\/Puzzle Dependency Chart finished<\/em><\/del><\/span><\/li>\n<li><strong>7th Nov. \u2013 Environment Blocked:<\/strong>&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>Environment blocked in with temp. geometry, walkable areas defined and navigable with character stand\u00ad-in, cameras placed.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><strong>21st Nov. \u2013 Character Locked:<\/strong>&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>Character design, modelling and walk animation finished, nav-\u00adagent set up in environment.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><strong>19th Dec. \u2013 Environment Locked:<\/strong>\u00ad &nbsp;<em>Environment geometry detailed and lit.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><strong>9th Jan. \u2013 Audio Locked: &nbsp;<\/strong><em>Spot FX and ambiance\/music finished and implemented.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><strong>20th Jan. \u2013 Game Locked:<\/strong>&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>UI and menus implemented, environmental interactions finalized, \u00adtesting.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><strong>31st Jan. \u2013 Final Delivery:<\/strong>&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>Final testing, bug fixing and delivery.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I talked a little about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/blog\/2015\/03\/25\/chartsandgraphs\/\">puzzle-dependency-charts before<\/a>, as well as being a really good way to plan out puzzle-y\/narrative games, they&#8217;re really helpful when it comes to visualizing how the elements of a game all relate to one another.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I started out with a very linear flow from the beginning of the game to the end, every puzzle depended on&nbsp;you having finished the one directly before it. By shifting a few things around slightly I was able to make certain sections of the game work in parallel. In one case I had an area&nbsp;obstructed&nbsp;by the solution to the previous puzzle, each time the player solved a puzzle, more of the area became accessible, all leading to a final puzzle at the end. The beginning and end of this section remain the same and the final puzzle still depends on the player solving all the previous ones, I just made more of the area accessible to begin with, allowing the player to work on more than one puzzle at a time. This is a constant balancing act though, too linear and the experience is restricted and potentially frustrating if a player gets stuck, too parallel and it&#8217;s easy for things to lose direction and become confusing. Here&#8217;s the final chart with the text removed:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a class=\"ngg_lightbox\" title=\" \" href=\"https:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/wp-content\/gallery\/first-milestone\/dependencyfinal.png\" data-image-id=\"119\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/wp-content\/gallery\/first-milestone\/dependencyfinal.png\" data-thumbnail=\"https:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/wp-content\/gallery\/first-milestone\/thumbs\/thumbs_dependencyfinal.png\" data-title=\"dependencyfinal\" data-description=\" \"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"ngg-singlepic ngg-none\" src=\"https:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/wp-content\/gallery\/first-milestone\/thumbs\/thumbs_dependencyfinal.png\" alt=\"dependencyfinal\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">White circles are environmental changes, being in a certain room etc. Orange circles mean&nbsp;a &#8220;physical&#8221; action has been completed, <a href=\"http:\/\/artoftoryanse.tumblr.com\/post\/96542044322\/some-particle-tests\">swishing<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/artoftoryanse.tumblr.com\/post\/139922372172\/working-on-interactive-pull-strings-at-the-moment\">tugging<\/a>,&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/artoftoryanse.tumblr.com\/post\/111668968222\">poking<\/a> etc. Green indicates that a specific item has been picked up, pink means an item has been used on a part of the environment and purple represents a piece of information has been revealed to the player, part of a code for example. There were originally blue circles as well, for inventory puzzles, but I&#8217;ve been working on removing as much non-diegetic&nbsp;UI as possible so those types of interactions have gone too.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I&#8217;m pretty happy with the overall flow, there are a couple of things that stand out that might require keeping an eye on; there aren&#8217;t any pink circles to begin with and then there are quite a few towards the end, I&#8217;ll need to make sure the process for using an item is clearly explained when it first appears. There is also a purple circle quite a distance from an interaction that depends on it, this is intentional but needs to be properly sign posted to avoid unnecessary back-tracking and potential frustration.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Alongside planning and charts I&#8217;ve also been trying to sort out some house-keeping&nbsp;bits and bobs. I&#8217;m currently trialing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.arqbackup.com\/\">Arq<\/a>&nbsp;as a backup solution, it feels sort of like a fancier back-end for Dropbox or Drive, handling versions and duplicates etc. without tying you to a specific storage solution or subscription. I had a look at Crashplan and few other, similar products&nbsp;but they all felt a bit overwhelming, so far Arq is doing exactly what I want and nothing else. I still need to test out retrieving files though! It encrypts and stores in some sort of proprietary fashion, seems pretty straightforward to drag-and-drop what&nbsp;you need and&nbsp;there is supposedly an open source tool to retrieve your files should the software suddenly cease to exist, probably best to check that process out before I really need it&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In a vaguely similar vein I&#8217;ve also been having a look at&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/unity3d.com\/services\/cloud-build\">Unity Cloud Build<\/a>. I&#8217;ve had a few run-ins with version control before and I usually just end up thoroughly confused so, rather than fiddling about too much, I just followed <a href=\"https:\/\/unity3d.com\/learn\/tutorials\/topics\/cloud-build\/introduction-unity-cloud-build?playlist=17866\">this tutorial<\/a> to the letter. I have zero opinions on any of the various solutions they mention, I just went with what they recommended to beginners (SourceTree -&gt; Bitbucket) and had it up and running without too much trouble. So far I&#8217;ve tested out several different types of build for Windows and Mac and all&nbsp;seems to work well, it&#8217;s not the quickest way to get builds but, for my setup, its handier than transferring folders between machines and rebuilding projects; as I add more build targets I&#8217;m sure that&#8217;ll become even more useful.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Lastly I&#8217;ve been thinking about&nbsp;how I&#8217;m going to deliver the game once it&#8217;s done. I&#8217;ll be releasing first on&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/itch.io\/\">itch.io<\/a>, not only is it where <a href=\"https:\/\/finji.itch.io\/lost-constellation\">all<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/heatpenn.itch.io\/museum-of-moss-comic-1\">the<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/juegosrancheros.itch.io\/fantastic-arcade-2016\">cool<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/finji.itch.io\/overland\">folks<\/a>&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/vltmn.itch.io\/lieve-oma\">are<\/a>, it&#8217;s really simple to set up, you get complete control over pricing\/payment and they keep adding new developer tools, most recently their own version of early access called <a href=\"https:\/\/itch.io\/refinery\">Refinery<\/a>. A few weeks ago I had a quick look at butler, their tool for patching\/updating builds.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I have a developer account and a separate personal account for buying things, it was really easy to give myself as a &#8220;customer&#8221; access to the game via a free key and download the latest compatible build. From the developer account I could then upload updates and have them apply themselves as patches on the customer end&nbsp;nearly instantly!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">At some stage I&#8217;ll most likely be looking into Greenlight as well, once I&#8217;m at the screenshots and trailer stage probably, but based on how straightforward the process has been so far I&#8217;ll be going with itch for any kind of early-access I do, beta-testing, sending out keys to press etc. as well as my primary launch.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">As ever, I\u2019ll be floating around on <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/holyfingers\">Twitter<\/a>,&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/artoftoryanse.tumblr.com\/\">Tumblr<\/a>&nbsp;and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/Toryans%C3%A9\/139100656265397\">Facebook<\/a>&nbsp;throughout development, if you fancy following along. If you just want to hear about the big stuff, release dates etc. you can sign up to the Arcto Games <a href=\"https:\/\/tinyletter.com\/arctogames\">Tinyletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>Reel is being developed with the support of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northernirelandscreen.co.uk\/\">Northern Ireland Screen<\/a> as part of their <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northernirelandscreen.co.uk\/news\/8258\/exp-project-decision.aspx\">eXP Project<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Following quickly on from last week is the&nbsp;first milestone update. The puzzle dependency chart for Reel&nbsp;is now finished and I have a good solid framework to start work on the art and interactions&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3380,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[64,100,76,85],"class_list":["post-3374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-development","tag-dev-diary","tag-reel","tag-toryanse","tag-yed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3374"}],"version-history":[{"count":44,"href":"https:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4044,"href":"https:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3374\/revisions\/4044"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holyfingers.co.uk\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}