Developer Notes

1/3/25

Happy New Year! I hope you had a wonderful time celebrating the season with family and friends.  Personally, I loved spending time playing with my kids and snacking on all types of holiday snacks.  I loved catching up with my teammates and old friends that I hadn't seen in years.  I was still grinding away perfecting the game.  I have designed a new player model for the starcraft.  I have finished designing 90% of the mid-bosses and bosses.  I'm hoping to have an updated demo in the steam store soon.  I will be adding a linux version as well.

I have spent a lot of time learning about 3D modeling, so I can get the look that I have envisioned for the game.  I love technology, so upscaling my skillset is important. I feel it's important to understand the how the different assets work together.  Well, I gotta get back to working on the game. I'll give another update in a few days.  I hope you enjoy your weekend.

11/16/2024

This week I was slow on my execution on the development side.  I had a few priority tasks that I felt needed to be completed in regards to the companies marketing plan and financial goals.  I want to maintain the momentum on the marketing side.  13% of the page visitors have downloaded the demo on Steam.  This is awesome.  If you have already download the demo, thank you for the support.  My goal is to get the download ratio to 22%.  Don't forget to add the game to your wishlist and share on social media.

Next week,  I will be adding two more components to the demos based on player feedback.  I will be adding the how to play feature, which will explain more the power ups and hazards. I will also be unlocking more of the Boss Weapon System, so players can see a bigger array of attacks available to the enemy.

In other news, I finally won a t-shirt for having the top max at my gym for the month of October.  I was able to get 355 lbs. on chest press this month.  I'm proud to say that consistency paid off.  Now I'm moving back to free weights and preparing to run in masters track and field.  Unfortunately, I lost my bid for councilman.  It was a valuable experience, and I will be able to apply what I learned in other areas.  Until the next chat,  I hope you have a great finish to your weekend.

11/3/2024

It’s been a productive but busy week. Getting the Steam demo up and running was a huge relief! After some back-and-forth with customer service, it turned out my launch folder wasn’t specified enough. I followed their instructions—and boom, everything was working. I shared the demo on TikTok and Instagram, which felt like a major milestone.

I also spent time drafting a pitch for investors. I found a great template and started organizing all my ideas for the game. I’m looking for investors because I want to upgrade all the music and enemy models—I’ll need some hired guns to pull it off. I decided to update the demo this week with each enemy’s level-specific attack pattern. That should players a better feel for the game.

On a different front, I’ve been campaigning for a city council seat. It’s been an interesting journey so far. People ask questions I’d never considered before, which has really made me think about what I want for my community. I’ll find out Tuesday if I won. Wish me luck!

10/19/2024

It's nothing like family and friends.  I had a really good day yesterday.  I got a chance to eat lunch with one of my oldest friends who also happens to be one of my college teammates.  I got a chance to watch the Baylor University track team practice.  It's been a while since I have been able to observe a practice.  The best part of the day for me, my steam store was approved. I'm hoping to have the demo up on it by the end of the day.   

In game development, I worked out a few more attack patterns for the bosses, so I can complete some more stages.  I think these next levels are going to be pretty challenging but fair.  I have also added a few more wave patterns as well.  Once I get the demos up, I will be finalizing the release date instead being just Winter 2024.  

10/8/2024

I decided to start posting notes about my progress in development and answer questions about the game's creation. I'll start with the elephant in the room: why wasn’t the game released three years ago? The simple answer is... it got deleted, and I wasn’t able to recover anything from the project. I still don’t know what happened, but I learned from it. I spent a few months sulking about it, then I got back to work.

When I first started working on the game, we were living in Germany, and I was able to devote a lot of time to it. In 2020, COVID hit, and we returned to the States to be closer to family. I went back into the education field, and eventually transitioned to the financial sector, while remaking the game at night and on weekends. I was really excited to release the demo on itch.io last night. I would say the full game is 95% complete. I’m currently working on enemy wave patterns, boss fights, and small details that I think will make nice additions to the game.