January 23 (Tick, Tock)

Here's what's been happening since the last update:

• worked on Access Denied map
• ran into some issues with the effects with the Shockwave powerup (fix still pending)
• started work on getting everything ready for the upcoming internal test

Access Denied is really up in the air right now. My first attempt at it ended with a really bland level that also resembled Fragmentation. For my next try, I thought I'd go for a digital cityscape look, complete with massive skyscraper, towers, etc. and a network of digital roads. What I ended up with was a flat terrain with some really tall boxes on top of it. While I like the idea of this sprawling stylized city, I'm starting to doubt I have the time or resources to complete it. I plan on giving things another go this week but as of now it looks like Access Denied won't be included in the internal test.

While testing the powerups, I ran into an issue with the effects for the Shockwave powerup. When the player uses the Shockwave powerup, a blastwave is supposed to emit from their hovertank and forcefully push enemies away. This all worked great in offline/localhost testing but broke spectacularly when connecting to dedicated servers. The blastwave effect is really just a modified splash effect that comes stock with TGE. Unfortunately, splashes (like explosions, decals, particles, etc.) are clientside effects and trying to instantiate a clientside effect on the server is a big no-no. Right now I'm mulling over a variety of solutions to determine which would be the easiest/fastest to implement. Whatever the solution, this problem has to be fixed before Friday.

The larger issue here is that bugs like these are a real problem. They don't appear in my tests because I'm simultaneously hosting the server and connecting as a client. The only way to find them is to have other, real players connect and try and break the game. Unfortunately, getting a dedicated team of QA testers just isn't possible so I have to rely on friends who can spare a few minutes to give things a go. It's really a bit of a catch-22: keep tests internal and have a few random players give things a try or go public, get more players testing the game but risk turning people off by buggy code.

As for the upcoming internal test, I've decided I'd really like to stretch it out for two weeks rather than the one week I had previously planned. This means fixing the aforementioned problems, cleaning some things up, packaging the game and taking care of any last minute issues. I'm hopeful I can have everything done by then but we'll see.

Anyway, back to the grind. Until next time!