This week I’ve learnt that you need 20 testers to release the game.
That’s bad news.
I can count all my reliable friends using barely one hand, and I need four times that much.
Which means I’ll have to ping people and devote more time to marketing than I thought.
Making Speed Matter
…which brings me to the big pending feature: making speed matter in combat.
I might not deliver that.
In game programming it means that feature will be delivered after the game is released, in a juicy patch.
Features to Ship
Meanwhile, in my Small Room, I focused on features needed to ship the game.
Among normal ones, like ai turn sequence plans, there were a lot of publishing stuff: logo, screenshots, fixing advertising ID (I plan to release the game without advertising, but add it later on).
It’s always big pain in the ass when you worry you won’t make speed matter in combat, and stumble upon Android compilation gradle errors, which just eat up your time like a hungry hamster.
On the flip side, I reproduced one bug haunting me for four weeks, and successfully search-and-destroy’ed it.
So at the moment I sent all the files to google for initial approval, and made a working build, which is basically taking boring work from my future self.
Also, I have ongoing feedback (from myself of course) after every time I play the game, which is minor (change text alignment, make planets rotate).
If I didn’t mention, I also added content (10 titles instead of 2, 50 research techs instead of 15, 6 ship types instead of 3). That makes game less like a casual space shooter and more like a 4x strategy.
Not to mention full-fledged galaxy of 20 sectors and 80 planets (now it got reduced to 9 sectors and 40).
On top of that I made a plan for the trailer.
More Good News
I got a job!
Actually, I wrote to my former employer and they gladly accepted me, making a nice win-win for both of us.
Although money was never my concern (no kids), recent layoffs of IT guys in the sector made perspective of being unemployed looming over my head like a big, black, rainy cloud.
At least that’s not the concern any more.
Summing up, everything is going well with the game, and February will be probably the release month (assuming nothing unexpected happens).