More Crunch and more Presentation

Wow, so the last post was about a month and a half ago, there goes my new years resolution :)

Anyway, a lot has happened since that last post.
Well, not a lot, but quite a bit.
I'm posting this after the most hectic work week I've had in a long time, probably the first since my university days.

After the last post we started working on our beta delivery, about a month of work, give or take.
This time around, after the shocker in the alpha stage, we decided to focus on one task and one task alone, and that was to actually show some gameplay.
We actually divided it into nice and small portions, so we could digest it properly.

One setback was the art, we got some pretty gruesome comments on the graphics, and we had to redo it.
So, first couple of weeks we redid what we actually already done in the alpha stage.

My portion consisted of creating a skirmish manager on the server side, and creating a simple AI on the server for simulation of our task.
The manager seemed pretty easy, at first, but as a I progressed it became harder and harder, lots of code, for a pretty simple thing.
Plus, PHP is a pretty crappy language when it comes to keeping a state.
Everything is getting erased all the time, from load to load during one session, and you have to constantly find those pitfalls, and save them.
The manager was done about two weeks ago, that's when I started on the AI thingy.
I wrote a bunch of code, and about a week before the delivery, I started testing it.
Suffice to say, it ran into an endless loop, corners had to be cut and features had to be removed.
On Saturday last week, I finally had it finished and working.

On Monday this week, we had a beta delivery deadline for the school project (sounds kinda kindergarteny, but I had no other name for it).
We worked ourselves to the bone, starting from Saturday last week until the deadline.
I can honestly say, I'm running on fumes.

Integration began Saturday last week, not exactly last minute but pretty damn close, again, apparently I haven't learned anything from the points I've noted to myself the last time.
This time I gave the client developer the messages I was going to use, before hand, hoping it will shorten the integration process.
Suffice to say, it didn't help much, this time the messages did not go through all that well from the server side.
Lots of work was put into the integration, (Sunday ended at 5:00AM), lots of feature cuts were done, but we had something to show, gameplay-wise, at the end of said Sunday.

Come Monday, we showed the "end product" to our tutors and they actually thought it was pretty good, they gave us some notes, and let us go home to catch up on our sleep.

The next deadline was really close but, it was today, the presentation.
As a part of the college's open day event, all projects of the program were displayed for the crowd to see and get an impression of the program.
There were also a talk about investors coming to find some new ventures, but I think it was mostly bullshit.

Anyway, on Monday we constructed a plan of what else we need to do to make it look better for the presentation.
My workload was quite a passive one, supervision of the client development, and fixing server bugs on the way.
If the weekend was hard, the weekdays were even harder: a full work day(9-6), then coming back home and heading out to work on the project.
Every day ended at 2:00AM/3:00AM and I woke up at 6:30AM the next day to go to work, It was a really rough week.

But all and all it was worth it, when today came we had a good looking version of the game to show in the project presentation.
I arrived late to the scene, everything was all set up, each project had its own table, and people were walking around and asking questions.
Our game did not get the most "traffic", but we did manage to interest some kids, which is always a good sign.
We got a lot of good feedback, plus, watching people play the game, we got an idea of what we should focus on in the coming months before the end of the school year.
Plus, it was really cool explaining random people about the concept of the game, and what it will be and its potential, people seemed genuinely interested, which is a good sign as well.

Uplifted I finished today with a big gasp for air, but at least this week is over.
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Now playing: David Gilmour - I Can't Breathe Anymore
via FoxyTunes