DIMB - Dev Blog #3

No. Freaking. Way. A third weekly dev blog in a row? Madness.

To be honest this dev blog is a bit late but I've been travelling for the past two days so I'll allow myself to be tardy. I'm in the Philippines for the next month where the internet is just about as useful as the contaminated drinking water.

This last week another big mile stone was passed; Chris finished and sent over the "Scanner" and "Mine" challenge animations. This is a big deal since that now essentially completes the art and animation for the actual challenges. So that means the majority of animations needed for 25 out of 30 levels in complete.

Adding in the "Mine" animations was fairly trivial; just replacing the stand in art for the mine and resulting explosion with the correct, nice looking stuff. There was one issue where the death animation for DIMB wouldn't play correctly after the explosion, but it turned out just adding a slight delay to the animation fixed this.

Three of the five boss rooms are complete - that's two challenge rooms and the first boss stage. The second boss stage is taking shape now (it's a bit more difficult with a more complex mechanic) and the third boss stage is still in concept. Trying to think up a satisfying but challenging and thematically relevant final boss stage is harder than it seems. And that's before coding and play-testing and realising it's all pointless.

I'm in the Philippines for four weeks, and intend to be done with 99% of the coding by the time I get back to the UK. Whilst I love DIMB - that is I have enjoyed working on it and I'm super proud that both Chris and I have stuck it out for this long - I want to be finished with it. Considering the length, depth, play time and overall complexity of the game, it really should have been finished in three to four months, and not dragged on for close to a year.

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