the first thing i did when i saw this comment was show my gf
thank you for waking the witch, and for the kind words. especially, for the words of confidence in my abilities. i'd really like to work my way up to delivering full-length rpgs!
I had worried that the RTP heroes would be constraining, but it was really like digging up old toy figures and catching up with them. Supremely enjoyable process.
I spent 50 fucking minutes running the Dog Gauntlet, trying to get to floor 2 so I could have a ghost of a chance to fight a Skeleton + Dog troop, while still having enough MP to blast both.
There's your lighting line, right there: "Overall my takeaway is that my games, especially my larger ones, should rely less on planning and make more room for testing."
It's so, so easy to get carried away typing away in a document about the perfect game in your head. And, like you said, it's easy to think you know that, without actually knowing it, until you've put in the practice.
I'm guilty of docubating, myself. I think I put off the making, and the subsequent testing, because seeing my perfect concept become imperfect reality stings a lot.
But it's important to press on, because the sting means that the medicine is working.
The ALT-Enter issue is because I am using the RGD executable replacement. It's something I have to restore manually. The mouse issue was a simple error--I neglected to set the new "mouse multiplier" when going to fullscreen, which tells the game how big each of the mouse zones in a window should be.
You're right, I could've just hooked these up real quick and went on my way. I had a fixation on doing everything "the right way" e.g. building my keybinding menu and -then- hooking up those default keybinds, which sucked up a lot of time. I was worried that I'd have to tear it down and rebuild.
Basically, instead of doing these sort of quick-and-dirty fixes over the course of the month just to get a tech demo out, I ended up doing them all at the end. I ought not have been so scared of doing work twice, and more worried about not getting to do it at all.
I definitely bit a bit off more than I had time to put in. A lot of time ended up going in to systems that I had to cut--the shops, the deck editor, and the dungeon itself. I'm thinking I probably should have just set my eyes on a battle demo with some dialogue between, but that's hindsight.
There's missing indicators for target selection, missing displays for the enemy's cards as they're played (so you can read them the first time they come up)... Lastly, the card frame needs some adjusting to stress the importance of those 0-speed cards (as they're the only cards that can start a Chain).
Alright, thank you for clarifying further! I saw only the 5,000 USD associated with each prize and started to sweat a little for whoever ended up winning it.
I'm a bit confused about answer 4. What constitutes "working with the developer to create the game," exactly? It sounds like they just publish the game on Steam, itch.io, etc. and take a cut.
For many of us, who have to work a day job to keep the lights on, turning our game into our career is only feasible if we get paid during the development time. So if the promise is for a portion of the game's sales, then we wouldn't be able to work on the game AND work our day job or day jobs. If one of the winners is stuck in a position like that, are they just stuck, since they no longer have the right to publish their game and fund their next project that way? It almost sounds like getting second place is a safer career move than winning.
