What's Taking So Long!?!

Getting games ready for sale is always a kinda dirty process. It challenges even the best leaders to pick and choose what is important for day 0 vs what is acceptable for day 1. I think the most important attribute to have in this moment is the mettle to make the best call you can and stick by your principles. That does not mean sticking to any specific plan or grandstanding on a particular issue. What it means is having your north star out there and keeping yourself and your team faced that way.

I would have liked to have gotten into early access a bit sooner. That is a straight up truth. We still ain't there yet. But we are finding stuff that also just needs fixing || refactoring right now. Tough calls to be made every day. Thankfully, while I do have a mortgage to worry about, I don't have to worry about too much static around the decision-making process. Just two guys on stream talking about what is important and what isn't.

It is important that we make these decisions publicly. I'm not too worried about needing to be kept honest. Will and I are fine with calling it like it is. The archiving of those decisions... right out there for anyone to see or look up later... that's the good stuff. Twice a week we get up there on the virtual podium and meet like we would if we did in private. We sort out problems and figure out what to do next and after that. It's the part of game development that is (often for good reason, but often not) kept out of the public eye. When you are just two guys making a game you can show your work and we're taking the opportunity to do just that.

Before I started working in game development I would have benefitted tremendously from being able to see this kind of stuff go down in real time. Deciding on the path of a feature, or to scrap something, or defending the rationale for why a system needs to do A instead of B. PRIORITIZING WORK. It's all the very human part of game development, and game development is a very human process regardless of the techno-sorcery you wield day-to-day. Some of the shit Will tells me makes no sense to me whatsoever. Most of it does though, and he's willing to explain even if it might not take root where it lands. The point here is that regardless of the arcane hieroglyphics blinking in his speech bubble and the smoke escaping my inner workings while I try to process... we still have to get down and make difficult decisions and that is the part we are showing.

It's all right here if you are curious: https://www.twitch.tv/goonentertainment/videos

Cha-ching! That sweet, sweet, Twitch revenue.

You Digress. What did you have to fix?

We had an issue with how the game was saving. Lots to learn about race conditions on saves, garbage destruction, and other stuff that has nothing to do with gameplay... but EVERYTHING to do with someone being able to enjoy what you have made. Funny enough, we caught a symptom of the issue during one of our meeting streams. Full blocker.

The result, however, is that we now have a much better understanding of how data, garbage collection, and saving work in Cruft. It is fitting that garbage collection caught us in the 11th hour. This is pleasantly not lost on me. Cruft indeed.

The tension of being "on the eve of battle" is real stuff. The game itself still needs tons of development. It still needs tons more feedback to help feed that development. As soon as you enter in the realm of folks paying to play your game though, you need to button that thing up as best you can as a product, even if it is just day 0 of Early Access. We're also not using duct tape here. We're going in and doing the kind of work that makes producers sad sometimes. Go in and fix it for real with time estimates that can only be loose at best.

You just have to chew up the feelings when things are delayed and follow that north star.

We're almost done with P0 issues. The light at the end of the tunnel is visible and there is not a train coming.

There is other stuff in the mix too

1) The game continues to grow. The speed gains from pulling Will into this party have been phenomenal. Cruft's tutorial still has a couple fiddly moments in it but it is way more water-tight than I expected it would be at this point. It's also just cooler. Most of the changes were driven by convos with a single play tester. Thanks Badger!

2) We may soon have an artist joining us to help out with all the stuff I am not trained to do. I'm happy with what we have, but it is painfully hard to read in spots and has never had a real, holistic look via the eyes of an artist. I really hope this goes through. Lots of room for improvement in the presentation of Cruft.

3) I'm advising some friends in Brazil on their game. I hope to get to talk about it some time soon. Very cool (Like, VERY cool) stuff.

4) I've also been in talks with an old friend over at Tilted Mill Entertainment. Their website got a recent update. You should check it out. Something is happening over there. If I had to guess (which I don't), whatever is going on is pretty awesome.

6) While tabled during this time of Cruft focus, there is a nascent second game in the works.

5) This thing is going to be a part of our marketing. and yes, the van in game will soon be blue.

We are close folks. Per usual, that gets said a lot for a while before anything goes live. It is per usual for a reason. We're just going through the same routine that just about every game goes through when you are coming up on a soft launch. Hopefully we are taking our learnings here to this point and making the right calls.

Thanks for reading!