Very tired here.
Anyway, I will keep that updated.
After a weekend working hard in the game, I have very little progress in the story side. This Jam is mainly about that stories side, so this is a problem.
If the Jam were in Spanish, I would be able to write and test all the stuff in the remaining time, but being in English its required to have things finished earlier for native testers to have time to check, report, and make modifications.
All the time for this weekend has gone in solving some technical problems and making improvements to the working flow.
Technical boring stuff only for techies:
From my other game in Spanish I have a Word Document where I can write (with some little“codification”) the main text for locations and actions there. That was a very useful idea because it allows me to spell check the text directly with a Word Processor, to avoid misspells.
For that game in English, this is even more important for me. The problem I was solving is that some of the improvements in the Parser were not implemented in the Word to ParserCommander (Paco for friends) exporter. Although not being too difficult is the kind of thing that can take hours testing and checking that all is correctly exported.
This is work that I will be able to reuse and take advantage of in future improvements and for working more in this story, but the calendar is losing its sheets too quick this month.
“Special” Game Mechanics
I also have some advance in the side of the special mechanics this game will have. However, having mechanics without story was not the plan.
Testing and Story
The limit I have set for send something to beta test was this Wednesday the 15th. Everything suggests that there will be not too much to test. Anyway, that testing will help me a lot to see the amount of “badness” with my English, and to evaluate the amount of work to do the next days.
The story will continue growing the following days, more or less, but I’m conscious that the longer it grows, the less quality it will have, as less time for further tests will be available.
At this moment I have clear that the game will be growing after the deadline, in its own branch, but I would like to send the best I can for this competition, not for the sake of high rank on it (it would be great, of course) but my realistic goal is just to be able of take part in a Jam in English, and learn from that. The first lesson: Start a month earlier.
Creator vs Audience
What Garry Francis says in his previous comment makes me think in this process of creation. Things with an audience, like these games, should be created with the goal of make them enjoyable by them, I think (another thing is if you reach your goal or not).
It’s easy to fall in a kind of “creator black hole” where you can only see the creation side, forgetting about the public.
But it is also easy to fall in situations where you start to make decisions based on what the players will like the most, that is in fact “what you think, or were told the players will like the most”.
I’m trying to make the game I would like to play. Having this in mind, I took some “risks” with mechanics that perhaps will not work too much, mixing in the texts bad sense of humor with a little of poetry and sadness in a blend that perhaps will not like other than me.
But after all, this is the goal: Try to make something that an “AZ” (me) in the other Xpace mirror dimension would like to play. Perhaps he will not like. I’m not saying that I’m good on it. Is just the line that I think I must follow in the creation process. But if I achieve that, I would be glad thinking that perhaps any other AZ-like soul would also enjoy it.
If nothing of this happens and is an enormous failure, well… ¡Que me quiten lo bailao! :D