Where has the time even gone?? The trouble with making a game for fun in your free time is that whenever your free time is taken by something else (such as friends, your loved ones, Diablo IV...), the game naturally takes the backseat. But it's still going! Not the most productive of weeks, unfortunately, even though I have made lots of notes about how certain things are going to pan out.

Now, it wasn't completely wasted; there was writing, (about 1500 words), there was drawing (3 minor characters), but mostly, there were bugs. Soooooo many bugs. You see, in the beginning, when things were small and fairly straightforward, it was very easy to run through the game several times in a couple minutes, and make changes as things went, but the more I progress, the more systems are added, the more complexity introduced, the less easy it is to test things thoroughly and make sure everything is as it should be. QA is an important job, and it is a time-consuming one.

To me, there are 3 kinds of bugs/issues that need taking care of: the first kind is the game-breaking, needs-to-be-fixed-immediately kind of bug. That's easy enough to find and fix, usually. The second kind is the less-critical technical kind (wrong character name or image, images missing, typos, etc), and the third kind of issue is more to do with "vision" if you will, that is to say how the flow of the scenes pan out (which side characters come on, expressions changes, special effects, etc).

Like I said, the first kind is easy enough to find, and I think I've made a good job of making sure that nothing is completely broken as I go. Ren'py, the game engine I'm using, is surprisingly good at telling you where things go really wrong, thankfully. 

The second kind is a lot more annoying to test and find, because sometimes I just see what I expect to see rather than what's really there (if that makes sense), and I think I will need a team of play-testers to help me when we get closer to release. In the past, people have very kindly let me know when they've found typos and problems once the game was out, and these problems have usually been easy to fix, but I'd rather do that before publishing the game for all to enjoy. If you're interested in helping, please let me know! I'm probably in need of a handful of people with time and attention to detail ^^ If you'd rather not have it spoiled for you, though, don't worry about it and sit tight whilst we iron out all the bugs! the Goddess knows the gallery has always been the bane of each of my releases so I'm always expecting issues there x) This week, that technical QA pass was all about going through the different combat scenes and making sure the new implementation worked well. It made me realise that I had forgotten to integrate one part of it properly (the different dialogue bits for each enemy), and that was another global change to make (thankfully, as the system is a lot more robust now, it only took a few lines of code for each encounter). I did also do a bit of balancing on the new defence mechanism.

That leaves the third kind of issues to fix, and that also takes a lot of time, because it really is a matter of going scene by scene and making sure it is as I intended (which means that no one else can do it ^^). When I'm writing a scene, it's all in code, and it's not very practical to stop every few lines to check the in-game flow. So, often, what will happen is that entire scenes will be written, with all sorts of transitions, animations and effect, then I will play them tens of times to make sure things are as I want. And that, my friends, is how a week has gone by without me realising, and it leaves me with the feeling of having accomplished very little! It's not true, of course, and it is a necessary part of the work, but it's a lot less fun than creating new stuff!

Oh, the card game also received a new little function! Previously, the result of your turn was purely based on the attack/defence stats of your selected cards vs your opponent's. Now, to add a bit more of a strategic wrinkle, you will also get a bonus to your attack score if your selected cards are from the same suit (or colour, if you will). It means that sometimes, choosing the best cards based purely on the stats will not be as obvious because you'd miss out on the bonus attack. Not a big change, but I like the added complexity.

Not the most exciting of updates, I know, but I hope it was interesting nonetheless. I'll keep on going and I'll be back next week with more positive news, I hope!