Friday, June 1, 2007

Hello Sailor

I'm developing a graphical text adventure and I wanted there to be some sort of record of the development process. I have a horrible memory and can't recall details very well when it came to writing my previous text games. Hopefully this process will be interesting to other people developing their own interactive fiction games.

I'll do my best to not post any spoilers for the game.

The current progress, as of June 1st, 2007, is that I have the first few scenes complete and ready for testing, from a gameplay standpoint. I have photos from several actors that I have integrated into the game. I have contacted a few musicians and have a few songs ready to go. I have the plot taken care of. Everything else is left. I'm trying to get the game done by December, 2007. I'm honestly not sure if I am going to make it.

The game is called Cryptozookeeper. That name does not ring off the tongue. In fact, the few times I've spoken it, I've reacted as if I had just said the name of a pop punk band, only in Cryptozookeeper's case, the embarrassment is all mine. Ah well, it's distinct and otherwise perfect.

Pinback: Say "C-Z-K" when you say it out loud. Sounds hip and x-treme that way.

He's got a point.

One last thing: I'm going to try to keep track of how many lines of code I'm able to produce each day. I read a post on rec.arts.int-fiction from Andrew Plotkin where he stated that some of his Interactive Fiction Competition games took 15-25 days. I haven't finished Delightful Wallpaper yet, but I am pretty certain it would have taken me at least six months to write a game that size, possibly a year. I think I am coding much too slowly. Hugo will tell you compiler statistics, and so far I am at 21,474 lines, with 877 words in the game's dictionary. I guess I'll know before too long if that pace sucks.

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