Tag Archives: Solstice

The Solstice. Doomdark grows stronger yet. We must act. I know no more.

Posted on by

I’ve been quiet of late. No real reason, at least no more than just life in general. So I figured a quick update is probably in order.

I’ve missed two release schedules. I intended to release a patch every quarter, around the solstice and equinox. Well, I missed the Autumn Equinox release for no other reason than I hadn’t done anything. So I bumped it to a Winter Solstice release… and well… you’ve probably noticed the lack of a release. This means that it will now be bumped to the Vernal Equinox. I’ll try and get on this one… please bear with me…

There will be two Doomdark’s Revenge bug fixes in the release that have already been fixed.

There are currently three features marked for inclusion.

The first one is interesting as it was reported as a bug, but as far as I can see it is actually a problem in the original data. So yes, it is a bug, but one from the original release. I have no issue fixing this as I don’t think it will really have much affect on gameplay.

One other feature that was tentatively going to be in the next release was

Game Difficulty – Easy / Medium / Hard

The reason for the tentative status was purely because it needed more thought than what I added on the ticket, but ultimately I need to start somewhere with it.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve not been doing for the last 6 months…

The Solstice is nearly upon us…

Posted on by

The Solstice is nearly upon us and Doomdark is already waking from his slumber. We must reach the Tower of the Moon by tomorrow, yet our ride promises to be long and hazardous.

The last few days have seen many issues knocked off the list for Lords of Midnight, two of them were show stoppers! Right now my actual TODO: list has 3 items on it. That said, every night, before I start working, I run through the game and add all the issues that crop up to my list; it seldom stays short for long… That said, I almost have a product that I am prepared to ship, even if not 100% happy with it. But then, when are we ever 100% happy with something.

Tonight I will be finishing off the tutorial system in the game. It’s not ideal and it’s a little wordy, and to be honest at this moment in time it is so in your face that I’m tempted to remove it. But knocking off the rough edges tonight should do the trick. After that I need to finish the manual, which will be online. And that should be it.

I will make another few passes through the game trying to snag issues that annoy me more than anything else. I suspect most of those issues to be cosmetic ones that drop out of resolution changes, or physical ones raised because of small hit zones on phones. I am the least happy with 480×320, the iPhone 3gs resolution. But hopefully I can get it more acceptable over the next few days.

It’s been a long six weeks since I made the decision to continue with the project in its current form. I’m not sure how much sleep I’ve had. They have been longs days that have often finished at 2am, with the following day still starting early. Then straight from office after an hour drive and into the study to start the process again. But all that said, I am really happy with how it has come together, it looks great. Sure there are loads of things that I would change. But every-time that I write a change on a list, I have asked myself, “how much does this really matter to the person playing this version of the game? And that has been the thing I have had to keep sight of, it’s this version of the game, and this version of the game needs to ship. There are a number of things I can tweak, but I can tweak them later.

So, currently, I plan to submit the iOS version to Apple on Friday, with a scheduled release date of The Winter Solstice, That gives me nearly three weeks for it to bounce in and out of the Apple submission process if necessary.