Super Toaster X: Learn Japanese

New: As you’ve probably noticed by now, each devlog is separated into sections: art, music, code, level design, behind the scene and the occasional “design” category. From now on, everyone will be responsible for writing about their own department. I’ll write about art, Trevor will write about music, Sahand about coding and Goulven about level design. This means that I won’t be writing your sections anymore so that I can invest that time in creating new art.

This will have the advantage of each “expert” talking about their own field. Trevor can go more in depth when talking about music and Sahand about programming or Goulven about level design. Each section should have between 50 to 100 words, so the devlog remains short and concise (unlike this one!).


"Hi there!
So, not a lot of exciting stuff happening this week, mainly me just fixing the silliest mistakes I made(such as the duck pretty much defying the laws of physics) and working on particles for shooting. Anyway, there won't be a gif again since it's not something really worth showing on its own, definetly not in its current state, sowwy ;-;. Hope we can show you something bigger next time!"
-Sahand


No news. Trevor was still working on the song last we talked.



Besides spending time to find ways to manage the game more efficiently, I did something I had been dreading for a while… creating my own font. I pictured this to be long and boorish but it wasn’t that bad actually. Here it is, for your criticism:


I’ve also worked on the tileset. I couldn’t stand to look at those ugly grey blocks so I whipped something up. It’s such a relief to put some more colors up there:



Since so much this week has been about management, I thought I’d write a bit more about that.
At first, the only thing I had to manage was myself as I was alone. As Trevor, Sahand and Goulven finally joined in, I had to find a way to be efficient about this.

It started with Team Letters which I send every weekend. Then we switched to Google Spreadsheets. I’ve been doing the transition to the Spread Sheets ever since. I’m writing less and less in the team letter and more and more in the Spreadsheet. It’s just a lot more convenient to keep track of things that way.

I can sincerely say that the management is getting more and more efficient compared to the beginning.
People use the spreadsheets to keep track of their hours. It also allows me to know if people are working on the game. If a person doesn’t do anything for a few days, I’ll check to see what’s up. I also know what people are working on during a given time period. It also allows me to keep track of the costs to stay within budget.

In a different tab, I write comments about things being worked on, things I’d like to be changed. In yet another tab, I write a to-do list where everything is ordered by priority. Once a team member has finished a task, he can move to the next objective down the list. I keep this list updated with new assignments so there’s always something to do. It prevents people starting to work on random stuff all over the place.

Aaaaaannnnd that’s it! I went over the word limit this time but I really wanted to explain how things would work out from now on.