State of the game update

As well as building up the team by bringing aboard Victoria and The Scribbler, I’ve been thinking of changes we can make to our working processes that would enable us to get content out faster.

In the early days of the game, I did everything myself with my own two claws – writing, coding, artwork.  That big push of heroic personal effort was needed to kick the project off, but it’s not a good model for the long term (because the game’s development will never move faster than my own personal work rate).

esc, Diss and Hyneman have each made vital contributions to the project – 1.3 was bigger and better than everything that went before, and it would never have been possible without them – but I’ve been guilty of keeping too much control of tasks myself, instead of really taking the time to properly delegate things.

An example is our writing process.  Right now, esc & Diss write scene drafts in Google Docs, which I then finish off personally before coding them into the game.  This ensures we keep the game written in one “voice” – which is important – but it slows the writing to a crawl, because everything has to go through me.  If I’m busy on another development task then finishing their scenes might sit in my task list for weeks.

So, we’re experimenting with a new approach.  esc & Diss are getting direct access to the source code.  Instead of producing drafts for me to finish, we’re introducing a review cycle – instead of me working on their scenes directly, we’ll have discussions about the changes I’d like to see and why.  When everyone’s happy with the final version, it gets implemented into the game code in one single click.

This should speed up writing, free me up for other development tasks, and also make better use of esc’s and Diss’s talents.  It’s also potentially a framework for allowing members of the community to directly contribute scenes and side quests – you guys have some really great ideas.  We’ll let you know how it goes.

Taking the time to implement structural changes like this will allow us to get better content out to you faster.  Patrons, I really appreciate how patient and supportive you’ve been so far.  I promise to make the best and most productive use of your financial support that I can.