Sunday, November 9, 2008

November preview

I have a bit of a confession to make. Most of November's content, 3/4's of it to be precise, was not ready before November. Regular readers know that I finished Dozen Days of Dice on November 1st, but One of those Weeks episode 45 and Ultimate Retro Project episode 58 were still not done. This weekend went a long way towards rectifying this situation, but I am still not in the clear. Of course, the contents for this month are Chapter 27 of Making of One of those Weeks, Dozen Days of Dice episode 11: Everest, One of those Weeks episode 45:Toronto and Ultimate Retro Project episode 58: Modern Adventure.

Chapter 27 has already been released so there is not much need to talk about it here. Episode 45 of One of those Weeks, however, has not been released. The screen shot probably should give the players an idea of where they have ended up. Those of you who are familiar with Canada may notice that the skyline does resemble the city that the episode is named after. I do wonder if I am about to annoy eastern Canadians, but know that western Canadians will understand the humour of the episode. Of course, that assumes that people actually share my sense of humour which may just be wishful thinking on my part.

Dozen Days of Dice episode 11 has been mentioned before, but it is an interesting game. The goal is to flag all the locations on the mountain first. Flags are earned by combining dice meaning that both luck and strategy play a part in this game. I do wish now that I would have spent the three hours I had remaining fine tuning the game, but with everything that is going on at the moment with me I am finding that I am getting exhausted after only spending 12 hours on the challenge (only 10 of which was work). I really do hope that the majority of people who care about the Dozen Days series want me to spread the hours out as it will result in better games while still retaining most of the spirit of the series.

The bulk of the artwork for the final Ultimate Retro Project episode has been finished by Mary Caton so I just have to do the coding and by the end of the month I should have the series complete. The Modern Adventure episode is the same story as the classic episode but with a graphical user interface. I should point out that episodes 59 and 60 were released quite a while ago and were done out of sequence because that was the game I really wanted to develop. I do still plan on creating a 3D version of Dungeon Romp, but that will not be showing up until next year at the earliest. Also likely to be postponed until next year is the Christmas special that I had to postpone last year. I will not know for sure until the beginning of December, but the odds of me having the time to finish it before this Christmas is very low.

Last, but most important, there is a four question poll that is going to be available until the end of the month. This is to get feedback on the direction the site should take next year. While the final decision for what I am going to do in 2009 is mine alone, the results of the poll will certainly help me make my decisions so it is in your best interest to let me know what you think.

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