July 4 (Kickin' Butt, Chewin' Gum)

Phew! What a week it's been for Bit Battles. At the end of the last update, I mentioned beginning work on rewriting the Find & Retrieve gametype. As that was progressing, I decided to raise the stakes a bit and give myself a deadline: by Monday, I wanted to release a test version to the public. The test version needed to have both the Capture & Hold and Find & Retrieve modes as well as a map for each. It seemed like a reasonable enough goal but little did I know the result would be a franticly paced development marathon.

Early Thursday morning I decided to write up a "MUST DO" todo list. I included things that needed to be finished before the online test. The list looked something similar to:

1. Get F&R gametype done
2. Get C&H_TheBreach and F&R_TheBreach maps done
   
3. Get new Battle Information screen done
4. Get warmup mode working
5. Get voting working
6. Get administrative tools working

As I mentioned, it seemed reasonable enough at the time. What I didn't realize, though, is there were a ton of bugs lurking just beneath the surface that would take valuable time to fix on top of the time spent actually implementing entirely new functionality (like the voting and admin options).

The remainder of Thursday and Friday was spent getting the F&R gametype rewritten, tested and fixed. The design was all there but actually getting it to work proved time consuming. Little implementation details like the physics for throwing Nanites (Nanites being the F&R objectives players must collect) took a while to rough out and get working properly.

Saturday and Sunday were spent doing GUI work. Boring but necessary stuff that I try to avoid whenever possible. The new Battle Information screen (which is responsible for showing player and team scores, voting and admin features, etc.) was a real beast. So much functionality had to be packed into it that a complete redesign was needed.

Accompanying the new Battle Information interface was some major backend work: voting and server administration. Players needed to be able to vote to change the map, enable/disable Warmup Mode, kick and even ban players. Server Admins needed to be able to do all of those things including switching player's teams and logging in. Once again, tiny implementation details proved troublesome (like sending a listing of all available maps to the clients for voting purposes).

Monday was the real crunch day. Two versions of the "The Breach" map still needed to be completed, a few bugs needed to be squashed and the game needed to be tested and packaged, all before the official late night testing time. Thankfully, everything worked out and the game was sent out to the group. Unfortunately, several couldn't make it so the testing period was extended for a week to accommodate everyone.

On Tuesday, I released an updated version of the game that solved a slew of issues discovered from the previous day. Most of the bugs were minor fixes but they all negatively impacted server stability. Fixing them resulted in the game running surprisingly well given the early alpha state.

Fast-foward a bit to last night when the first "real" testing session occurred. Myself and two other players joined the game and played through fifteen (!) rounds of Capture & Hold and Find & Retrieve. I gleaned some really useful feedback and found more bugs but most importantly, discovered that the game is indeed fun; fun enough that a group of hardcore-gamers-turned-adults (my target market!) spent nearly 3 hours playing the same map without realizing it. Seeing the game in action, with other, real players playing it was a great experience. It's made the last few months of effort more than worth it and I'm looking forward to the next testing session.

This week I'll be focusing on getting some of the feedback implemented. Most are simple "quality of life" changes to make map navigation or scoring easier to handle. Bugs are, of course, top priority but none seem very difficult to solve. Until next time!