Status Report #47 (Starting Tiles, Written Plans)

     Planning stage complete! I literally just have to make the rest of the game now. I'll build the assets, code the necessities, and patch up the rest. By the looks of things I should be done by September. All the hard parts are officially done and it's just a matter of grinding out to the finish line. Hopefully I can get most of it done before school starts because I know I'll be distracted by then.

The status report is beyond the break!

   Completed:

• Sketches for World Map, Dungeons, and the Town
• Ended Facebook Ad
• Environment Tiles
• Final Enemy List
• Boss Battles Planned Out
• Story Structure
• All Text

     Lessons Learned:

• Each Project Is Better Than The Last. That's Why The Old Ones Make Me Cringe.
• I Feel Dramatically More Skilled Than I Was When I Started This Project. The Flaws In Its Foundation Are Blaring To Me Now.

       Tilemaps would have made making TriGrid so much easier! I spent an entire week handcrafting each level after work and it nearly killed me. But it's all part of the learning process. You can't appreciate shortcuts properly until you've been the long way around.

A peek at the floor tiles I'm doing. Still got some walls to do.

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   Downloads:

     TriGrid is almost at 100 downloads on iOS! I've been looking at the stats for other developers making games for the first time and my low numbers are on par with theirs. Unless you have a kick-ass game that can stand out or tons of marketing dollars you can only expect 0-2 downloads a day across all your titles. If you don't pass $180 in revenue you don't get a check at all. One day I'll have a library of games worth buying. Until then I'm just proud to see hundreds of people downloading something I made.
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     I have to make tiles in a way that handles any map type I create. For holes I made 12 edge tiles and use the black part like a cookie cutter for every floor tile. When the maps are all done I can give the dark holes square and linear shadow gradients in Gimp.