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 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.