Black Golem

Blog Continued

Hi and welcome back. There wasn't anything new on this blog for five weeks now. As I've mentioned over at the Nordenfelt blog I vowed myself that I won't do any blog post until Nordenfelt 0.3 is done. That was in the last week of October. Finally version 0.3 was released this Monday and I resume dumping my game dev thoughts on this site.

One lesson I've learned from this authorial abstinence: it does not feel good when you're out of blogging for so long time. It's like a valve is closed.

Acceleration

To make a clean cut after releasing Nordenfelt 0.3 I've investigated my work journals for comparing the TODOs with the DONEs.

The good news: the engine is ready. Now it has everything to run the assets. Many parts are data-driven and therefore no longer need changes in code. Sure, there will always be tweaks and additions but the large part is there. And it works.

The following diagram shows the work effort per version, measured in weeks:

As you can see the engine effort was very high up to now. Upcoming release cycles will have much less engine work and more time for assets and game play.

Some time ago I wrote an article about how to quicken release cycles by organizing development vertically. Vertically means "feature by feature". It's a good approach but basic systems have the annoying trait that they are atomic. And some of these atoms are huge, e.g. the particle system. These parts make you think: "Man, I'm still working on this piece of invisible, under-the-hood system. There's still nothing to show and it's already November!". That's where the second interpretation of the diagram comes into play: the effort per version (read perversion) decreases. And this is what makes me glad. I can go one with realistic hope for faster turnover times.

Here I come, version 0.4!

Cheers,
Thomas