{"id":1056,"date":"2015-11-22T13:07:49","date_gmt":"2015-11-22T18:07:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bootdiskrevolution.com\/?p=1056"},"modified":"2015-11-22T13:07:57","modified_gmt":"2015-11-22T18:07:57","slug":"alpha-or-everything-left-to-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bootdiskrevolution.com\/NEW_BLOG\/alpha-or-everything-left-to-do\/","title":{"rendered":"Alpha!! (or, Everything Left To Do)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Oh, baby baby. I did it! The campaign is now at what I would call a legitimate alpha \u2013 everything playable from start to finish and in a highly acceptable state! After two and a half years of hard work, it feels amazing to finally reach this milestone.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;however. There&#8217;s still a long road to travel before the game is released. \u201cWhat?!\u201d I can hear you exlaim. \u201cJust put the damn thing out already! How much more could there possibly be left to do?! YOU HACK!!\u201d First off, settle down please. Second, I&#8217;m glad you asked! In no particular order, and with no guarantees I&#8217;ve remembered everything, here is the big list of what needs to be done before the game comes out!<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Audio:<\/strong> The assets still need to be created, and then inserted into the game.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Marketing:<\/strong> Once audio is in, I can make a trailer and announce Bleed 2, because right now nobody actually knows it exists and I need to build awareness\/hype. I also have to set up a Steam store page and prepare screenshots, box art, a press kit, and other promotional materials for when I&#8217;m shoving the game in the public eye.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Bugfixing:<\/strong> I have a large list of known bugs that need fixing, ranging from minor animation errors to major problems, like crashes.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Playtesting\/Balancing:<\/strong> I need to run a bunch of people through the game, ensuring it all makes sense and is free of cheap exploits, unreasonable difficulty fluctuations, etc.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Steam Integration:<\/strong> This covers a whole host of features, like in-game leaderboards, cloud saving, emoticons, backgrounds, trading cards and achievements. Most of these I haven&#8217;t properly done before, so it might take even longer than you&#8217;d expect, plus there is a lot of art associated with some of those items.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Menus:<\/strong> Right now there are literally no menus, so not only do I need to create those but I must also go through implementing and testing every option within them. Some are simple, like an SFX slider, but others are more complicated, like button remapping or the accessibility options.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Cutscenes:<\/strong> There&#8217;s a short intermission that plays between levels and an end-game credits sequence, to name a few. Maybe an intro sequence, but 99% of people don&#8217;t watch those, so we&#8217;ll see. Either way, it&#8217;ll be a bunch of art work.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Dialogue:<\/strong> The game is light on writing, but even Wryn&#8217;s death quips are absent at the moment.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Polish:<\/strong> Just general all-around polish. Particle effects and background details and easter eggs and\u00a0 tightening up various things&#8230; the game is good now, but can benefit from a measure of shine.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Unlockables:<\/strong> There are unlockable characters, weapons, air-dashes and more. All need to be tested and balanced &#8212; a few haven&#8217;t even been created yet.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Scoring + Save Games:<\/strong> Neither are implemented at the moment.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Co-Op:<\/strong> The levels&#8217; code will need modifications to accommodate the two-player camera, and some co-op specific bugs need to be addressed.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Extra Modes:<\/strong> Arcade Mode, Challenge Mode, and maybe more?<\/li>\n<li><strong>Tutorial:<\/strong> I&#8217;m considering making an (optional) tutorial to explicitly spell out the controls for new players.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Ports: <\/strong>I&#8217;ll have to get the Mac\/Linux ports made.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Misc:<\/strong> And then there&#8217;s always the list of things I&#8217;d like to include but probably won&#8217;t have time for, like the randomly-generated Endless Mode, or replays in Arcade Mode.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So&#8230; uh, yeah. I&#8217;m not sure how many people will even read to the end of this list, but you can see there&#8217;s a long way to go! It&#8217;s a little depressing in its enormity, but it&#8217;ll be a nice change of pace to tackle some of these interesting programming problems after months and months of focusing purely on gameplay things.<\/p>\n<p>For now, though, I feel I&#8217;ve earned a bit of a rest. No more writing from me this week, I&#8217;m gonna go play some games!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Oh, baby baby. I did it! The campaign is now at what I would call a legitimate alpha \u2013 everything playable from start to finish and in a highly acceptable state! After two and a half years of hard work, it feels amazing to finally reach this milestone. &#8230;however. There&#8217;s still a long road to <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bootdiskrevolution.com\/NEW_BLOG\/alpha-or-everything-left-to-do\/\">[&hellip;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bleed-2"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootdiskrevolution.com\/NEW_BLOG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootdiskrevolution.com\/NEW_BLOG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootdiskrevolution.com\/NEW_BLOG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootdiskrevolution.com\/NEW_BLOG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootdiskrevolution.com\/NEW_BLOG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1056"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootdiskrevolution.com\/NEW_BLOG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1060,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootdiskrevolution.com\/NEW_BLOG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1056\/revisions\/1060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootdiskrevolution.com\/NEW_BLOG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootdiskrevolution.com\/NEW_BLOG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootdiskrevolution.com\/NEW_BLOG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}