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Jan. 23rd, 2006 04:37 amToday was a pretty good day even though I was saddled with a nasty cold for all of it.
Added what I hope is the last feature that Fluxx needs: indication that the player whose turn it is can't do anything until other players have gotten rid of cards first, due to a Hand Limit, Taxation, or the like. We didn't have any sort of mechanism for that in our original plans, but alpha testing showed that it was needed. Without it, the player trying to move would click on cards and wonder why nothing was happening, not realizing that the game was waiting for his opponents to discard. Once they did, the player would be prompted to play a card. All technically correct, but just too confusing for human use.
But it's still not quite beta-ready. As current testers know, Javolin (Volity's official client) is leaking memory all over the place psssss and it might be worst of all in Fluxx, which (out of necessity) has a more complex UI than any of the other games we've got so far. Nobody's looking forward to it -- least of all![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
radiotelescope, who is doing the most work with the Javolin code right now -- but I think we've got to finally turn our attention to squashing that bug before releasing Fluxx as a beta.
daerr placed an order on Friday for a beefy remote server, which will become the new home of all volity.net operations. If the turnaround ends up being fast enough, we'll likely add our move onto that machine as a prerequisite to the Fluxx test. Things are definitely coming together, though, and the day will come very soon when I will turn wearily to face the next obstacle, and realize that there aren't any more.
It may seem strange (sometimes even to myself) that we're -- that I am -- spending so much time with Fluxx, that simple card game, when we're supposed to be working on this whole big system that's meant to be network of other peoples' casual games, not a showcase for our own. But we need at least one sure-thing killer launch title, and this is ours.
Sometimes I feel like I'm merely telling myself this to stave off despair, and, well, that's so. All software projects that take more than a weekend start to drag under their own psychic weight, I think. Being able to actually play the game over the last week, though, has made all the difference, because holy crap it's actually fun. My primary emotion regarding it has transformed from doubt to impatience. I have been so tempted to make a case for pushing it out the way it is, but I can't do so when I know it still has frustrating flaws. Even though it's "only" for beta, I still want this to be good.
Added what I hope is the last feature that Fluxx needs: indication that the player whose turn it is can't do anything until other players have gotten rid of cards first, due to a Hand Limit, Taxation, or the like. We didn't have any sort of mechanism for that in our original plans, but alpha testing showed that it was needed. Without it, the player trying to move would click on cards and wonder why nothing was happening, not realizing that the game was waiting for his opponents to discard. Once they did, the player would be prompted to play a card. All technically correct, but just too confusing for human use.
But it's still not quite beta-ready. As current testers know, Javolin (Volity's official client) is leaking memory all over the place psssss and it might be worst of all in Fluxx, which (out of necessity) has a more complex UI than any of the other games we've got so far. Nobody's looking forward to it -- least of all
radiotelescope, who is doing the most work with the Javolin code right now -- but I think we've got to finally turn our attention to squashing that bug before releasing Fluxx as a beta.daerr placed an order on Friday for a beefy remote server, which will become the new home of all volity.net operations. If the turnaround ends up being fast enough, we'll likely add our move onto that machine as a prerequisite to the Fluxx test. Things are definitely coming together, though, and the day will come very soon when I will turn wearily to face the next obstacle, and realize that there aren't any more.It may seem strange (sometimes even to myself) that we're -- that I am -- spending so much time with Fluxx, that simple card game, when we're supposed to be working on this whole big system that's meant to be network of other peoples' casual games, not a showcase for our own. But we need at least one sure-thing killer launch title, and this is ours.
Sometimes I feel like I'm merely telling myself this to stave off despair, and, well, that's so. All software projects that take more than a weekend start to drag under their own psychic weight, I think. Being able to actually play the game over the last week, though, has made all the difference, because holy crap it's actually fun. My primary emotion regarding it has transformed from doubt to impatience. I have been so tempted to make a case for pushing it out the way it is, but I can't do so when I know it still has frustrating flaws. Even though it's "only" for beta, I still want this to be good.