Monday, June 11, 2012

City Across the Sky: Update 2

Weather! Haha
I've been pretty hard working on the final stages of CAS (though, at this point, it's more of a grind to the finish than anything). All of the cutscenes have been implemented and for the most part, I can't seem to find and reproduce any serious bugs that I don't already know about, so that's good. At this point in development, I'm working on doing the last 10% or so of the game: adding music and sound effects, adding NPCs and NPOs, adding extra chests (though not yet filling them with items), making sure that the weather and times of day change at the right intervals, creating and placing enemies around the maps, etc (the full list will is viewable at the bottom of the post).

These final stages are definitely the most important parts, because I was somewhat unhappy with what I had prior to these points; now I'm beginning to enjoy walking around my own game, and the first time I hear music in-game is a great feeling. What's great is I've already heard these songs out of game hundreds of times, so I can't wait to see what people think of the atmosphere and maybe even to a certain extent some of the other things when they see and hear it all for the first time. CAS was always supposed to be a game based on the atmosphere and to an extent, the exploration. My original goal was to work on three or four different games focusing on different aspects of a bigger game I hope to make in the future. CAS took...a little* too long to make and I ran into A LOT of problems, both with design, organization, and my ability as a programmer. It is my first game however, so I didn't expect anything spectacular, just a finished work to prove to myself that I could finish; I'm nearing that goal now.
*Much too long.

Ultimately, what I'm saying is that I'm happy that I'm nearing the completion of CAS and I'm happy with what the game has become despite all of the problems it has and that I've run into, but I'm more ecstatic about my games to come and what I'll be able to create with the knowledge that I've gained from creating this game. So expect greatness. Ryan Huggins~

Here is a list of all the minor things left to do. This will be my last post before I release, so instead of updates, I'll remove and add things to this list as they are done or as problems arise.


  • Adding Music and SE (35% done)
  • Implementing Music and SE into SAVING and LOADING
  • Making sure that all Cutscenes work correctly and a full playthrough is possible.
  • Making sure that Weather/Time of Day change correctly (40% done)
  • Creating and adding enemies to the maps
  • Adding NPCs
  • Adding NPC dialogue
  • Adding NPOs (critters like butterflies and stuff)
  • Rewriting dialogue of cutscenes 
  • Rewriting STATUS updates 
  • Rewriting and adding new STORY updates
  • Implementing CHESTS and ITEMS to be found by player
  • Implementing more interaction objects (for atmosphere and exploration)