Castle Of Illvision - 25

In the last eight hours of work, the project jumped about 12%. This is for two reasons; First off, I did work a lot on it this weekend - the one year barrier is hitting me pretty hard and if I could be done with it beforehand I’d be happy - but also I’ve started taking into account what actually is required for me to finish the game. Some of the stuff I had originally planned won’t actually be necessary. I’m not cutting content either, it’s just some stuff I overplanned for. I more or less only have three boss fights and some story left to write to end the game.

• Time spent on the project so far: 158 hours

• Currently working on: Final bosses

• % of the game complete according to my current planning: 88.26%

Castle Of Illvision - 24

We’re almost at the one year since i’ve started working on this game. For what this project is worth, it’s an extremely long time, but at only 150 hours of work done, it’s less than one hour of work per two days, so that’s not too bad. Now that the player has access to the way of opening certain doors, I have four big challenges left to create before the game is completed!

• Time spent on the project so far: 150 hours

• Currently working on: Eastern botanical area

• % of the game complete according to my current planning: 75.76%

Castle Of Illvision - 23

Almost done with the graveyard area but it’s taking a bit more time than it should because of all the bespoke puzzles and situations I’m creating. On the other hand if I was going to make it cookie-cutter identical to the rest of the game, what would be the point of adding anything?

Anyways, I’m really almost done with that part, then I have another area before the final gauntlet!

• Time spent on the project so far: 148 hours

• Currently working on: Graveyard area

• % of the game complete according to my current planning: 74.70%

Castle Of Illvision - 22

I had about ten hours of work done on the project last weekend so I managed to complete a few zones of the castle, now i’m working on the graveyard/library area where the player will be able to pick up the last clues needed to complete the game. I’m wondering if my puzzles are too hard or too obtuse, but I’ll add plenty of hints! Also, no-one will play this far, so it doesn’t really matter.

Gotta stay positive :D

• Time spent on the project so far: 145 hours

• Currently working on: Graveyard area

• % of the game complete according to my current planning: 70.73%

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Castle Of Illvision - 21

I’m not terribly proud of my progress in the last weeks or so, I haven’t worked on the game as much as I wanted, but I’m almost done with the forest area south of the castle. It took me a bit more time because (of course) I added new mechanics I didn’t use anywhere else in the game so that required some more planning and coding.

I still have a fair chunk of the game to do, but I’m certainly picking up steam, can’t believe this has been one year already!

• Time spent on the project so far: 135 hours

• Currently working on: Forest area final touches

• % of the game complete according to my current planning: 65.70%

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Castle Of Illvision - 20

Happy new year everybody! Castle Of Illvision is still going strong, especially now that I have some holiday vacation to go through (let’s not argue if doing game development during your game development vacation is a good idea (it’s probably not)) and I’m pushing the game forward, now it’s about two thirds of the way done! The biggest puzzles of the game are coalescing together and are becoming solvable and the final stretch is almost in view! I still have 26 rooms left to add, but I’m trying to keep things simple with regards to new mechanics, so they shouldn’t take -too- long!

• Time spent on the project so far: 130 hours

• Currently working on: Back to the forest area

• % of the game complete according to my current planning: 60.06%

Castle Of Illvision - 19

More than halfway done through the game! I’ve been adding more content to some hidden castle nook and crannies alongside proceeding with one of the core puzzles and now I’m ready to go back outside to the waterfall area and beyond. Now that I’m further into the game, I’m wondering about how I let the player save anywhere and how that could impact the game. Is there an inherent problem with this? You can pretty much load, try a puzzle, fail, reload and try again with no issues at the moment. I’m wondering if I should add a way to prevent abuse.

I probably won’t, the goal of this game is to get through it without it being too frustrating. Maybe I’ll add something so players are rewarded the less they die/reload so there’s an incentive to do well without being penalized.

Actually that’s a great idea!

• Time spent on the project so far: 120 hours

• Currently working on: Back to the waterfall…

• % of the game complete according to my current planning: 51.98%

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Castle Of Illvision - 18

It’s a bit of a shame that this project started in February; normally I would’ve expected to be done with it much sooner, but that’s how things go! I’m still working on some second floor content for the castle, mostly optional content at this point, but content I need nonetheless. I wish I could say I’m going to give the game a big push during the holiday vacation but…

• Time spent on the project so far: 118 hours

• Currently working on: Creating second floor castle content

• % of the game complete according to my current planning: 48.78%

Castle Of Illvision - 17

I’m now working on creating content for the second floor of the castle (Day 3 version) and that’s a pretty big chunk of the game for sure. When this is done I’ll move on the waterfall area, which will then lead me to the library area, from which I’ll be able to end the game! Wow! I’m less then halfway there but it’s like I’m almost done! (I’m not almost done).

Here’s a picture of my map I’m using to design the rooms and what’s in them, it’s not perfect (I have to enter all info for each day into very small font size), but it does work!

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• Time spent on the project so far: 115 hours

• Currently working on: Creating second floor castle content

• % of the game complete according to my current planning: 46.95%

Castle Of Illvision - 16

I solved my saving issue and rebuilt my save from scratch, it wasn’t -too- bad and I refactored some of my flag logic so it’ll be easier to work with in the future. I’ve also tweaked the game so it keeps one backup per day of you playing, so you can always copy that file over if you lose your progress. I kept on working on adding more content to the castle and things are back on track, now I’m working on the pearl puzzle again!

Here’s a random screenshot of some dork jumping down

• Time spent on the project so far: 110 hours

• Currently working on: Saving woes

• % of the game complete according to my current planning: 41.62%

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Castle Of Illvision - 15

Well, it sure happened, I saved over my game while trying to work on the ‘save-anywhere’ special item. I typed ‘save’ when I launched the game, so the game promptly saved over my file without any fanfare or confirmation. This is a big issue now - I have to find a way to rebuild my save as it was if I want to continue working on the game - and it will be a big issue in the future, players just typing SAVE and losing all their progress isn’t something I want. I’ll have to figure something out. Probably a second save that you can RESTORE if you mistakenly save over your principal one…

• Time spent on the project so far: 105 hours

• Currently working on: Saving woes

• % of the game complete according to my current planning: 38.72%

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Castle Of Illvision - 14

Things are still moving forward with Castle Of Illvision, and I’m about 37% of the way done, content-wise. As you might have gathered, the game is played over four days and the content of each day is connected with the other ones. I’ve added a tiny bit of my planning doc to this post so you have an idea of how I figured this 37% number. It’s hard to know how it correlates to time left on the project (would it really take me 200 more hours to finish?) since content creation is quicker than adding new mechanics. I’m currently working on content around the ‘bath’ puzzle and I still have day 2 and 3 to complete for that one!

• Time spent on the project so far: 101 hours

• Currently working on: Content creation

• % of the game complete according to my current planning: 37.04%

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Castle Of Illvision - 13

I’m putting more hours into the game - but not enough, of course - so while things are starting to pick up steam again, they’re not going as fast as I want them to. I’m adding more rooms to the castle and creating content for paths that were locked beforehand.

• Time spent on the project so far: 96 hours

• Currently working on: Content creation

• % of the game complete according to my current planning: 33.08%

Castle Of Illvision - 12

I give today a good 3 hours uninterrupted work boost on the project and it was fun! I think that if I was able to work full time on Castle Of Illvision, it would’ve been completed since a long time ago. I’m almost done with the rooms of the castle and I’ve made a few puzzles as well! 443 unique text entries so far, that’s a lot of writing!

Still hanging in here!

• Time spent on the project so far: 92 hours

• Currently working on: Puzzles

• % of the game complete according to my current planning: 27.75%

Castle Of Illvision - 11

Starting a new job sure didn’t help! I’m still going at it, adding new areas, puzzles and dangers! I had to refocus and figure out what the critical path through the game was, but now I’m back on track and I just need to add more texts until the next big feature bump!

• Time spent on the project so far: 85 hours

• Currently working on: Castle area

• % of the game complete according to my current planning: 22.71%

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Castle Of Illvision - 10

Still working on some mechanics that I need for the rest of the game to work, when I manage to get these working like I want I’ll be able to resume content generation. Hopefully, this is the last big roadblock of new mechanics before I can start progressing through the finish line and manage to tell the whole story!

Here’s a random, unrelated 3d thing.

• Time spent on the project so far: 73 hours

• Currently working on: Castle area

• % of the game complete according to my current planning: 17.07%

Castle Of Illvision - 9

I’ve finally resumed work on Castle of Illvision! I have to admit that resuming after a while left me a bit confused of where I was and where the game was going, but now I’ve done some more progress to the castle area and I’m ready to start working on another - probably final - big mechanic of the game, stay tuned!

• Time spent on the project so far: 70 hours

• Currently working on: Castle area

• % of the game complete according to my current planning: 16.92%

Enemy Database - 7

I’m almost, almost done! I’ve been so busy lately, I couldn’t finish the few features I wanted to have in the game before releasing it! But now all I need is adding audio (pretty easy) and testing everything to be sure that the whole game works as I want it to (a bit harder) but it should be done this week, then I’ll be able to resume work on Castle Of Illvision!

Time spent on the project so far: 55 hours

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Enemy Database - 6

A lot of stuff was done since last time I posted, but I haven’t been working on Enemy Database as much as I wanted to. My other A Game By Its Cover jam games were all done in a week and were short affairs, but real life stepped pretty hard on my personal game development time, so….

In any case, all active and passive skills are done. I only have one system to finish and write the rest of the story and this’ll be completed. I tried to be a smartass and save while my game was recompiling and I just corrupted my save file so I’ll need to replay a bit of the game in order to get where I was with my development, I added some debug options so that shouldn’t take too long!

Time spent on the project so far: 42 hours

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Enemy Database - 5

I’m still pushing through this, the customization sub-system is almost done, I also almost finished creating the loot interface. There is quite a bit of complexity in all of this, but I have most of the design down, after finishing with this, I still have a few more mechanics to implement, but then I’ll be on the polish/finishing touches home stretch!

Time spent on the project so far: 31 hours

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