Summer Programmming 2014 – Dev. Post 18


Hey I’m back! Not only did the trip to London rob me of my working hours but as soon as I landed my portable wireless internet ran out of data so I was unable to post anything until today. Rest assured, if you look at the two posts before this one you’ll see that I indeed worked during those few days of seeming inactivity.

On a more direct topic, today is the day that I started to reschedule for the last few weeks remaining, this is something I feel is very important to do at this stage since I have a better overview of what’s left to do, what the final product will hold and how much work I can do in a single day.

Anyway, here’s the schedule for the coming four weeks:
Week 30
        Comment the code.* (2)
        Level manager.* (4)
        Full screen mode. (1)
        Credits screen. (2)
        High Score Screen. (3)
Week 31
        More enemy types. (3)
        Level design.* (4)
        Proper sound effects. (2)
        More fitting music. (2)
Week 32
        Options screen.
o   Volume control. (3)
o   Key bindings. (4)
o   Other options. (3)
        Polishing and bug fixing.
        Beta.*
Week 33
        Polishing and bug fixing.
        Final version.
Note: The number in a parenthesis is the expected workload of the goal on a scale from 1 to 5; items without a number are more preplanned goals that cannot be graded in a normal manner. Items with an asterisk (*) are very important and either plays a huge role in the game’s final version or are set goals that have to be reached within a certain time.
So as you can see, the plan is to basically have it done by the Beta and then fix some final adjustments just before the Final version. I am not entirely sure about the exact date to send in the final version but I am quite sure that it is during week 33. For the remainder of week 30 my goal is to comment the code, build a level manager, include a full screen mode, implement a credits screen (so that people playing the game can see who made the shit) and implement a high score or result screen.

Today I wrote this schedule and started commenting the code; I’ll do more commenting tomorrow. The commenting is something that I really should’ve done since day one but didn’t feel like and now I am paying the price. Once the commeting is done I’ll get right to the Level Manager and later implement the full-screen mode which shouldn’t take too long. After that, I guess I’ll go for the result screen since the credits screen isn’t all THAT important in the end.

Oh right. I probably mentioned this in one of the other posts but I finally have a working Alpha with:
        Functional game mechanics.
        Good code structure.
        No memory leaks. (I think…)
        Working music and sound effects.
        Winning and losing conditions.

I’m not entirely sure that I can upload it right now but I’ll do so once I’m back on Gotland which should be in about a week or so.
Anyway, I got to sleep now. I’ll take care of all the above work tomorrow morning.

(It feels nice to be back)