Hello!
I said it'd be radio silence until I finished Broken Minds. Well, I'd like to break that radio silence, if only to update you on a few things, and let you know how likely it is that I will finish Broken Minds by my November deadline.
Today I just passed a very significant milestone: I completed all the mini-games.
I can't remember if I've mentioned this before, but Broken Minds has some very interesting, if not a bit tricky and esoteric, mini-games that were a real pain to code. There are many of them in the game, and it was really dragging down production time.
But now I can finally say THEY'RE ALL DONE. What does this mean?
Well, it means that I am much closer to finishing the game, and what lies ahead isn't as monotonous, though it is still going to be tough.
So, what's left to do?
Today I'll be working on redoing the crime scene environment in the game. Over the course of development, I've realized that the way the crime scene is set up does not properly reflect every aspect of the mystery, so I'm going to go over it and try to make it more accurate.
After that, it will be fairly straightforward. I need to write and create CGs for the extensive "wrapping up" sequence, where the detectives put a nice shiny bow on the mystery. Not to spoil things too much, but I'm also planning on having some animated cutscenes. I imagine that's what will take up most of my time from here on out.
After I do THAT, it'll be writing the twelve different endings. They're all short, but there are a lot of them. Then comes the true ending, which is very CG-heavy as well. Then comes a bunch of polish, like redoing the map, redoing the navigation buttons, redoing some of the menus in the main menu. And there are a whole bunch of other polish things that I have to do that I won't bore you with.
And then it'll be done. But all this is why it's been taking so long.
In other news, I have a few things to announce. I don't know when I'll get a chance to release a Games Update, but you can expect to see more of them once Broken Minds is finished. :)
— LockedOn.