2012/03/19, 19:45 by checker

I decided at pretty close to the last possible minute to have a small “thank you” party for the first set of SpyParty beta playtesters, and I invited some friends from the press who have been covering the game for a while. Scheduling things during the evening at a big tradeshow like GDC is basically impossible…there are so many other conflicting events and parties and meetings that you have to just pick a date and go with it. I picked Tuesday night, and tried to make it a short party, scheduled in-between other big events, but in a bizarre twist of fate I still ended up landing right on top of the SimCity 5 launch event, a game being made by all my old friends from Maxis. Oops.

Anyway, the idea behind this party was to get the hardcore playtesters playing together in-person and say “Thanks!” with beer and snacks, but also to get them mentoring the folks from the press, who haven’t seen much of the mid-game yet because they haven’t played enough games. I don’t know how well the mentoring thing worked out since it was not exactly a quiet contemplative training environment, but everybody seemed to have a good time, and that was the main goal. Huge thanks to Jonathan Blow for letting me use his suite for the party, and to Luis & Mylene and John & Alice for bringing the food and drinks!

I took some pictures, maybe you can recognize some playtesters and press…

And, now we’re in the home stretch for the next batch of invites. I’m plowing through the list of bugs and feature requests from the first batch, and the next invites are going out really soon™. Here’s the current todo list:



put portraits up along side for cast characters

also spy!



how to center text? allow two lines worth of space? uneven spacing?



have box with ? on side for casting characters – progress status and neat

don’t get that click on guy selects during cast characters

character/level chooser mouse tip for select versus next/prev

mouse overrides cursor keys in menus if over item…don’t override if key change but no mouse change

why is volume not working on last 30 seconds timer on sniper machine?

sniper review tells on waiting screens – sort of

basic infrastructure for this



chooser through animations playing on loop!





text title and description support



require sniper okay to continue



bug_ambassador



double_agent



inspect_statues



seduction



steal_statue



transfer_book



check_watch

mouse clicks are going to background window on spy side

does spy side keep mouse cursor on results screen?

sniper camera moves on results screen

pgup->PageUp

fix statue pad size

multiple affordances controls

display bumpers/QE/mousewheel?

update action test text as affordance changes for Signal Double Agent?

or kill it if it’s not an active affordance, so have to restart?

document action test is same button?

put small icon next to it?

update while in lobby

Update Failed on download bar…needs to test more

remove briefcase verbs? or ignore them?

write forum welcome/intro/faq posts

update readme, or just empty it and point to the focum post?

how to report bugs post

post threads for known bugs

tutorial video, walk through Spy and Sniper practice mode as if I was showing you how to play at a playtest

ctrl-delete delete next word, use ctrl-right code…uh, and fix that

updated lobbyserver won’t accept old connections, even to update, idiot!

start sniper while other on results -> no -> sniper -> assert(level) – yay, found it!

needs to zero play id on starting sniper because still current

need to fix gameid/playid thing…I’m constantly stomping the gameid

store gameid/playid pairs from server, then look up based on playid



store playid on server as well

can’t escape from sniper results after play attempt? IsLobbyGameOver busted

add string wrap to property parser, or general line continuation?

I haven’t decided how many people to invite in the next batch, but it’ll be somewhere between 20 and 50, depending on how confident I’m feeling. Yikes, 50 strangers from the internet!

2012-03-23 15:19:45 – Crossed some stuff off. Working on the missions preview code, so people will be able to see what all the tells look like before playing.

2012-03-30 13:24:10 – Added a bunch of stuff I’ve been working on that wasn’t on the posted list!

2012-04-03 17:18:30 – Well, it turns out the mission tell preview took a lot longer than I thought, and I still didn’t manage to hook it up to the Sniper waiting screens, so it’s just in the practice menu for now. I shouldn’t have done this one now, but once I started I failed to stop working on it.