Yesterday…

Yesterday was interesting an interesting day, and one like no other in the last few years.

I had finished the in-game help and finalized the tutorials earlier this week.

So the first thing I did when I woke up was to speel check all the text in the game. (See, that’s funny!) I then wrote the credits, which were a bit short. I stopped full screen resolutions under 640 pixels wide from being switched to, even if the hardware supports it. I fixed a small bug with the main toolbar when the user interface was scaled. I looked over some minor balancing issues that have been nagging me.

Then I turned off asserts, (those are debug checks to make sure everything is running properly, but tend to slow things down) and then I made a build of the game.

And then I didn’t have anything else to do. And that’s a strange feeling.

Well – there are things to do – just not in the changing code, art, or data departments. There might still be minor bugs, there might be crashes that haven’t been found. But today I’m calling the game content complete. Banished is done, and so without any further delay,

Banished will be released on February 18, 2014

I know I can be quoted as saying that I wanted the game released in January, but over the holidays I ended up taking some time off from development, and apparently writing full in-game help takes far longer than you might expect.

Testing progress has been slow over the holiday season, so the current build will be tested until release, checking everything I’ve touched in the last month and a half – the final tutorials, help system, and minor code and balancing tweaks. Just to be sure things are in working order.

Ah, I remember when I quit my job and thought I could make a game in one year. It took three times as long, but it was definitely worth it, and the process was really satisfying!

Cheers!