Dev Log: January 17, 2025
Haven’t chronicled Perfect Tides: Station to Station’s development in a while. Besides getting caught up in the holidays and travel, there have been periods of frantic optimism and despair, alternating weekly until pretty recently, when a realistic idea of what I’ve got began to emerge. These days I am calm and focused and enormously productive. The game is not expanding. The gaps have been closing.
I am preparing the playtest. It will be rolled out in 4 parts, but I must get everything pretty much feature complete before I begin the 1st round. This is mainly due to the AGS engine’s limitations when it comes to performing updates that won’t break existing saves. But it seems like a good idea to have as real a game as possible in the very first build. And I gotta say, I think I have a pretty real one.
Playtesting begins in February. If you are interested in being a crucial part of the game’s development, I would love to have you. Simply join the Perfect Tides Discord, where the testing will take place, and you will be notified as soon as recruitment begins (this is the only thing I @everyone for - promise!). Or sign up for the newsletter, to be notified by e-mail.
I will be at MAGFest in National Harbor, MD next weekend, from January 25-28th. Not exhibiting this year, just walking around. Say hello if you see me - I’d love to meet friends both new and old.
Dev Log: December 11, 2024
I’m having one of those weeks where I panic because the game isn’t done, won’t be done by x date, will never be done, etc. By now, I recognize this as a need to shift gears, but it takes a few days to fully get there.
One of my giveaway panic-brain behaviors is working on parts of the game that have very little to do with the task at hand, and quickly becoming overwhelmed by how neglected these parts are. Of course they’re neglected… they’re not important right now! You can playtest an entire game without them. From this vantage point, I eventually pivot again to something that IS important - maybe more important than I’ve been acknowledging - but isn’t the thing I’m desperately avoiding. In this way, I can feel like the things I’m worried about ARE getting done, with the best possible attention to quality.
These past 2 days, that brings me back to animation. While this work isn’t technically needed to run a playtest, it weighs heavy on me. My biggest fear is putting off pivotal cutscene animation until the very end of development and making something boring, rushed, not what I meant. I also want the playtesters to experience at least some of the animation, which after all is part of how the game rewards you.
I occasionally work on minor animated scenes in a sort of modular way (draw a frame here and there, whenever I have time) which produces mediocre but passable results, and until a few days ago I was sweating approaching more major scenes that way, due to lack of time. Animation needs more than half of my attention. Animation needs my obession. Anything less would be a waste. And ultimately, it doesn’t take long when I’m in it, because I stick to it until it’s right.
I guess it’s just daunting to go looking for that obsession, to imagine throwing myself fully into so many things, as opposed to patiently, pleasantly chipping away at Game Tasks #1-10000. These creative bursts do not always happen during standard work hours. It’s magical - unpredictable. And it will all disappear into something bigger one day.
Dev Log: November 26, 2024
Tremendous writing day. I’m in the throes of menstrual agony, yet it’s the exact brain chemistry the moment demands!
beep beep
I got to work last night on some Writing System documents, an important aspect of PT:STS that I’ve nonetheless put out of my mind for a while. To help in the development of these systems, Matt poses excellent questions that force me to clarify the game’s vaguest and most disjointed elements. My work last night - freshly listing out each writing project on a timeline with its many approaches/outcomes - was a good start, but a second look at everything this morning through a narrative lens really brought it all together.
After sharing this work with Matt we got on a call and hashed it out further. It all felt like music. There is a surprising amount of narrative power in these systems. And when the systems tell a story, it’s easy to find support for them within the larger narrative. It really feels as if a new and equally compelling dimension has been added.
I spent the rest of the day doing Mom stuff but with the special kind of dot-connecting brain hum that comes on a good writing streak. Amazing to see this kind of progress right before the holiday lull. If I sound delirious, I may just be! But it’s worked out before, and I trust the process.