The last three weeks have been a relentless, sometimes soul destroying, drive to polish Invaders from Dimension X and find every bug possible. I have to call out and credit Jonathan for his constant quest to find everything possible that might be wrong with the game.
Between us, I am sure we have played various parts of the game 100’s of times. I can visualize the code in my sleep.
What has come out of these past three weeks is, I believe, a highly polished game. Time will tell if others think the same but I am very happy.
However, the job is not quite done yet. I need to prepare a video, edit the manual, fix a couple more small items in the game and just generally prepare the game ready for launch.
In the meantime, I set my oldest daughter a challenge (paid challenge – shes streetwise and $$$$ wise!). Design a splash screen for my future Picketts Mill civil wargame. The header for this blog is the result. I think she did a great job.
This is what inspires me to keep doing this. The satisfaction of coding a complete game from start to finish. To see new images for a future game.
Oh, and I managed to do a little bit more work on my Model Carrier.
So whats next?
I need to get back to finishing off Battle for Korsun. I am guessing there is maybe a month or twos worth of work left.
In May my graphics artist will free up and start working on Valor and Victory custom maps for me. They will be based on the originals – I will be interested to see what the community think of them.
I also have the map for France 1940 coming. The three games – Valor and Victory, France 1940 and Picketts Mill will share a lot of the common framework that I have built as I worked on Korsun and Invaders. The differences start to appear when implementing each games individual ruleset.
What this means is I can have a basic game with a Map, Units, and movement in about a week. As an example, this weekend, as a break from Invaders, I put together the basic framework for Picketts Mill.
Finally
I see that Matrix finally released Desert War by Brian Kelly. I really admire Brian for working on one game for so long. It shows a real passion and I believe that like me this is not his day job but something he worked on in his spare time.
I am not sure that enough people realize that a lot of wargames are written by developers in their own spare time and they likely won’t make any money from it. There would be a lynching if I came home one day and told my wife “Hey Honey, I quit my job so I can focus on wargames. Everythings going to be ok….”
Did you know that Nightfighter from GMT is still being worked on by two guys? Also in their spare time with young families. I hope they get to see the game published one day.
