January 4 (Wax On, Wax Off... But Mostly On)

Another fun-filled week of work on Bit Battles comes to an end. I'm fully in "get this game to beta by February" mode which means tieing up any loose ends and getting things to as close to release state as possible. It also means crunch time for me. Before my February 8th deadline, I have to finish the final two multiplayer maps and revisit some aspects of the GUI and HUD. Doesn't seem like much but each of those items are multi-step tasks and in the past getting even a single map finished has taken about a month (Gateway being the quickest at roughly 3 weeks start-to-finish). To make things a little more interesting, my goal is to devote roughly the first week of February to testing which means the deadline for beta is really January 31! I certainly have my work cut out for me but I'm going to give it my best shot and see where I end up come February.

As for this past week, it was a busy one filled with all sorts of polishing, tweaking, fixing and revamping. The GUI in particular was the target . As anyone who's been following the blog knows, the GUI has been something of a thorn in my side from the very beginning. I've never been able to nail down the look, it's always had some usability issues and it's just plain boring to work on. Thankfully, I'm happy to report I succeeded in revamping the interface. I'm happy with the graphics side of it and everything is laid out in a similar, logical way which takes care of the usability problems. Barring any unseen issues and occasional tweaks, I'm ready to call the GUI done which is a milestone in itself.

Speaking of interface usability, I added some quality of life features: server favorites and a HUD that allows players to stop, pause and fastforward recordings. The server favorites system was a necessary addition and simple to add on top of that. It's all hooked into the server browser as well which means players can sort servers by favorite status, name, map name, battle type, number of players, ping and locked status. Nifty. The recording playback HUD was just something I whipped up in an hour or so. I suspect it'll be useful for those that like to watch past battles (like me!).

I'll be devoting some of tomorrow to finishing up the interface revamp. There's still the end mission GUI (which acts a summary screen, showing what team won, who had the highest score, etc.) to finish as well as tweaking some other HUDs. I'm hopeful I can have all of it done by tomorrow; if not, what's left will have to be pushed back until after February 8th because finishing the last two maps will be the priority come Monday.

Speaking of maps, the first round of testing for the training campaign went well. I fixed a few bugs and tweaked some AI behaviors to make them react appropriately to cloaked and out of sight players (i.e. don't shoot at what you can't see). All in all, I'm happy with the way the campaign turned out. Players learn about the game and how to play and aren't bored to tears in the process. Mission accomplished, I say.

Next week (weekend included!) I plan on finishing up the interface (finally!) and starting (for real this time) on SegFault. The remainder of the month will be focusing on getting SegFault and then Access Denied to a playable state. Until next time!