Out of sheer curiosity: how many hours per day are you working on your game? Sounds like it's a lot.
up until I released it? average of 1 a day over many years. some of the item generation code for example is very old.
Since release, not counting the repeated checking of by blog etc, real story writing and coding is currently half an hour a day. The engine stands so it is 95% content I need to build for chapter2. But I need to ramp it back up to an hour a day average to make the 31 March target.
To translate the tasks:
- lots of fixed tilemaps to draw, litter it with little treasures and discoveries [fun, many hours]
- create the NPC conversations, shopkeepers etc. [not so much fun as it is a constant battle to stay consistent and trying to get a bit of humour in as well (as a non-native speaker)]
- create monsters with tactics/AI/actions [fun, but may need to involve some coding for area attacks which I want to put in]
- check that I have linked all the NPCs, teleport points, treasures, chests, doors so that the app won't crash when one is unlinked [not fun, but a necessity]
- build some random map types so people that want to double their playtime and grind a bit can do so [fun actually, my random dungeon generator seems to work reasonably well and I have some cool ideas how to use it. A typical random dungeon in chapter 1 was an orc lair: 3 types of orcs + 1 boss as main monster types. I will now build a few more, one type being a dragon lair: young, normal and mature dragons being the inhabitants with an ancient dragon as boss.]. Some of these items, rdm dungeons in particular, play off big time in terms of adding replay value and to allow different types of players to enjoy the game in different ways.
- add more items [should be fun, just need to think of meaningful names]
- add one more item type [class insignia], actually easy because it just has a different assigned slot and a lot of 'NO's in the class restrictions. What will be interesting to do is to give these a different attribute generation routine. I want them to be rarer and more interesting, they are passive items but will be allowed to have attack-type bonuses like weapons. or maybe skill bonuses, that would be even cooler.
- implement ability to change classes. not hard, but I need to make it not too easy and as much woven into the storyline as possible.
Why don't I spend more time a day and finish it by end of Feb: I have a wife, two small kids and a demanding day job in Finance. But all under control, 31 March should be do-able. Finding time every day is actually quite hard so proud I got it this far.
How much time did you think I spend?
