May 2022 - Week 141 - Joyous

Summary

• Neon Chrome
• Brains on the Outside
• Critical Role
• Bugs
• Joy
• Difficulty Spiked

Detail

I fix one bug on Saturday and enjoy some time chatting to fellow edindies at Levels café and online. In the evening I pick up Neon Chrome for some twin-stick shootery fun. It's playable with mouse and keyboard but on Sunday I plug in a controller and it's much better.

I fired an idea to a friend's podcast, Brains on the Outside, a couple of weeks ago and they dissected it on Monday. This is an ideas podcast for serious and professional business people only. None of you frivolous types allowed.

Over the past few weeks, on Athena's recommendation, I've enjoyed watching Critical Role. Professional voice actors playing Dungeons & Dragons is surprisingly entertaining.

On Monday I take a break from the Needs work to fix a couple of bugs that Athena has raised. It was possible for the tutorials to lead the player into opening up very dangerous caverns filled with Copperpedes before they have weapons and armour.

Pressing on with the Joy need I find myself re-working a rushed and aborted attempt to implement this three years ago. My original intention was to have entertainment part of conversations. Some conversation statements will satisfy joy but the act of entertaining and seeking entertainment are proper jobs.

I went for a run on Thursday morning. Something I've not done for twenty years so it was a painful experience jouncing 250 pounds of flab for maybe half a mile. Planning to do this a couple of times per week to start with.

On Friday I add the effect of satisfying Joy. This was going to be a Happy Behaviour but Behaviours are now Illnesses. So Happiness is an Illness. Dark.

Athena has been continuing work on test-plans for the UI and will be moving on to the in-game UI next week. On Friday she verified my bug-fixes and did some more exploratory and play testing. This led to some great feedback on the difficulty curve, inventory, catching a very rare crash bug and a bug with armour.

For the next week I'll be finishing the Needs work and fixing bugs. We're planning to make a stable release without the Needs work in the next week or two. :fingers_crossed: