I am getting stuck into that game that none of you had played before and never will (TGTNOYHPBANW). I'm writing this entry really as a public announcement such that I will bloody well get TGTNOYHPBANW up and running and into a Beta game. Please feel free to use this post as a reason to hassle me. The more hassle I get about TGTNOYHPBANW, then the more likely I am to complete the thing to a point you can all play. I am working evenings, spare weekends and lunchtimes at the moment to get the core features finished.
The target is to run a Beta game when EMW and Byrn get back from their little jaunt around the globe.
[update]I've added the task list to show what I am up to...[/update]
You can keep up with progress with the Google Calendar:
Comments
I'm curious as to what this game is about. Also, automating pawn suicide seems a little harsh :-)
When I get the bit between my teeth, I do go like the clappers. TGTNOYHPBANW came along great leaps and bounds this week and it looks like I might have a weekend of sitting on the ground by a soggy and raining airfield. It's playable now but it's damn raw. There are a whole ton of things that need checking and sorting before it goes to Beta.
Much as I would love to be involved I have a lot of work on at the moment so won't be able to partake in any forthcoming game.
Don't worry, you'll never play TGTNOYHPBANW, have never played TGTNOYHPBANW, nor have you ever won TGTNOYHPBANW. So I will be expecting you not to play TGTNOYHPBANW, when it comes.
Wow, you wrote a game? When was this?
I don't think I've ever played any games ever...
Explain this concept of a "game" to me please.
Byrn, about 10 years ago, I wrote a game called Chom Isis, which was written in Perl. It involved people being sneaky and killing each other's pawns. etct etc. I don't know why you're asking, you'll never play it anway.
Nibbles, a game a series of rules based around a system called a toy.
It appears that this weekend is some sort of holiday. I have a feeling that Kate will be working through most of it, which can only mean that it's going to be CHOM WEEKEND! Either that or I'll buy a game to play through too... I think Chom might be it.
Woot! Making loads of progress! I think that the first beta will have loads of balance issues 'cos I've not spent much time balancing various levels but they game engine itself will be very ready.
fear not, you have a bunch of min/maxxers on the payroll...we should be fairly quick to spot the balance issues. Its hard to do that without a playtest or two anyway.
As a possible later feature, perhaps you could have some kind of auto-balance feature? Jobs that are used a lot have their base cost increase, while jobs that are seldom used decrease over time (special offer?).
I like the idea of autobalance but I think we might need to restrict the sorts of jobs that have that happen. The "Upgrade spouse" type jobs should be left at a fixed cost because they are quite integral and people will need those a lot - their price would shoot up instantly. However, for murder etc then why not! I also like the idea of some sort of 'special offer' where
I'm working on the Tutorial at the moment. I'll get a first draft done and then you guys can have a go at the info. To start with, it's going to be very "Click here to do this..." but the subtleties will need to be added when you chaps have a go.
News system
I am not sure what to do with the news. I do want to have the news broadcast but I might make it so that it runs every day and gathers together a selection of the jobs that failed that day. Although you will lose the timeliness of knowing when a job failed, I think it will be better in the end. I'll also put it inline with the messageboard, rather than have its own page. I am not sure about that at the mo, because there is plenty of room in the menu and I am not sure if it's helpful to see all your messages by scrolling or to break them up onto separate pages. We'll soon see about that.
Can't wait to get the skin finished. It's by far the best bit of website graphics I've done in a very long time. It's graphically more complicated than even the most complex Icar sites I've done in the past. I am considering generating Wii-like faces for the pawns. I'd rather the game didn't look like a spreadsheet!
A book I'm currently reading gave me some big flashbacks to Chom Isis last night...it's "Halting State" by Charles Stross. I shan't splurge the plot here, as I know a couple of people commented on it when they saw it on my bookcase, but it covers higher powers manipulating peoples lives via massive networking abuse, and what happens when the pawns figure out whats going on.
Thoroughly recommended...
Nice. It's not the most original idea, so I'm not surprised there's some good fiction out there.
I'm currently bug hunting before release. I'm a little bit behind where I wanted to be but then the skin took a fair amount of time. There's not much to see at the moment but you might get a feel for what I've been up to. (IE6 / IE7 / FFox2 only at the mo).
That looks all sorts of awesome!
Noticed a little glitch in the bottom-right hand corner, the corner graphic is displaying about 1.5cm too high on IE6
Thanks Pete! Glad you like the feel. It's taken some time to get right. Wait until you see inside. ;)
I'll have another go at IE6 this w/e (I think I might have a floating character inbetween two divs, a typical cause of that in IE6). And that is the best bug report I've ever seen. I'm going to enjoy your testing, sir!
A screenshot tells a thousand words. One of the testers here would have given you;
"screen doesn't look right", and then assigned it a Critical status (as it no go-live).
I did forget to give you screen resolution, however I'd already played with re-scaling the screen, so doubt thats too much of an issue here...
Yep, you're right. It's nothing to do with resizing. I am pretty sure that when you have two DIVs together and there is a blank space between them, IE6 treats that as a character. That means that one of the inner divs is now offset and that's put the background (lower right single image) out of place.
I'm getting the same as Pete in IE7.