Dev Log: October 16, 2024

For the first time since the game entered a story-complete state, I have done a full playthrough. This was mainly to test for values in the code that, when left unchecked, will crash the game.

earbuds in the stormearbuds in the storm

Adventure Game Studio is a finicky engine, whose saved games will break if serious changes are made to the script, so I needed to do this in a single run between daily game dev. I started yesterday evening and finished this morning.

Observation #1: I’ve gotten so much better at programming! There were not nearly as many problems in a full playthrough as I encountered in PT1. I mostly credit this to a deeper understanding of functions, local variables, and general code hygiene practices I’ve picked up over the years.

Observation #2: Oh my god, this game is long. I knew I was dealing with something bigger than PT1. I occasionally stopped to read when I thought a scene needed my attention, and I needed to stop a few times to fix bugs. But even if I’d skipped everything and played cleanly, this would’ve taken hours. (For reference, I was able to do a clean playthrough of PT1 in 30-40 minutes.)

I’ve discussed this a bit with editor Matt (who, in hindsight, I could never manage such a beast without), and we agree the game will be best enjoyed in chapters, each one averaging around 60-90 minutes when the player is engaged. This is a game I envision the player living with for a few weeks.

That said, it’ll be out of my control when it’s released, and I’ll be delighted by how thoroughly I’m wrong. Looking forward to people’s multi-day insomniac streams, speedruns where Mara clips straight through to the credits, microdoses of 1 chapter per month, and the one guy who skips every word to chase Pure Gameplay.

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Blog Games

Date
October 16, 2024