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Progress Report

December Update

Hey, everyone!

I somehow managed to carve out enough time last month to finish the final bonus level of the game. I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to do that, so PHEW! This means I’ve officially FINISHED EVERY LEVEL IN THE GAME! Opening up the game files and scrolling through everything feels pretty crazy; the past few years have really flown by, and now I’m looking at the light at the end of the tunnel. Everything still seems like development will be finished over the summer.

Now that I’ve finished the levels, let’s look back at my checklist: essential systems? Done. Music? Done. Battle design? Done. Tilesets and level design? That’s a big done.

While all that’s great, I still have some big things to check off the list before I can release Jimmy upon the world. First, I still have a lot of miscellaneous sprites to finish; most of these were finished parallel with the level design, but I did skip some of them, including a couple of towns. However, this is only going to be a fraction of the remaining development time. I’m going to try to finish the bulk of those while the semester is still going so I can start adding dialogue and scenes unimpeded for a month straight over winter break. I’ll finish any remaining sprites as I get to them in the story. After that, it’s testing and balancing, and, well, release. Holy crap.

Progress Report

November Update

Well, last month I prophesized doom and misfortune (but mostly slow progress), and the prophecy has come true. That’s not to say that I’m behind schedule, though; I was able to finish one of the bonus levels last month, which is about all I expected. That means level design is very close to being complete, which is super exciting.

It’s going to be another slow month. I’ve got two more major essays I’ll have to grade this month and some smaller essays in between, and I’ll have more social obligations than my hermit lifestyle is used to. All that said, I’ve only got one level left to develop, and it’s already fully planned out and most of the art assets are complete. It’s still very large; I can’t get into specifics, but it has some roguelike aspects that require more under the hood than a typical level, so I’m not sure exactly how long it will take. I’m betting, though, that I’ll have it done before the end of November, and I might make a few inches of progress beyond that.

Hopefully, next update I’ll be working through some of the last prep work before I begin adding dialogue. After that? Balancing, testing, sweet release.

Progress Report

October Update

Development’s been flying by recently, so I’ve got another optimistic (more or less) progress report. First, in case you missed the update, Jimmy’s on Steam now!

Second, I ended up outperforming my expectations last month and knocked out FIVE levels instead of the four I was shooting for. This puts me in a great position for the rest of the semester, as I’ve now finished every normal dungeon in the game. The only level design I have left are the two larger bonus dungeons. I don’t want to go into too much depth over their content (I’d much rather let that be a surprise!), but I’ve set aside a lot of time to get them finished, so they’re both going to be pretty big.

That brings me to this month. Unfortunately, my day job just kicked into overdrive, so I have a feeling that I’m going to be out of commission for a good chunk of the month, and November isn’t looking much better. This month, I’d like to at least knock out one of the jumbo bonus dungeons, which should give me November to finish the other one and get a bunch of miscellaneous spritework done before I start adding dialogue and scenes, which I’d like to start during winter break.

So, it’s going to be a slow month for updates and a hectic one for me, but I’m hoping for some slow, steady progress. Right now, though, we’re on time and ahead of schedule!

Announcement

Store Page Up on Steam!

Check out Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass on Steam here!

I've been threatening to actually expose this game to the public for years now, and I've gone and finally done it. It's still going to be about a year before Jimmy's done, but I know it's important to get a Steam page up ahead of time, so here we are.

One thing I'm curious about: I'd like to get my demo up on there, but I wanted to confirm whether or not you need to pay the app fee again and set the demo as a separate app before you could link to it. Does anyone have any experience with that?

Other questions: what are some next steps I should take? I know I should be prioritizing marketing. Should I be sending the demo to publications? Other than tumblr and twitter, should I be doing anything more with social media? Shoot some ideas at me, because it's a big scary world and I'm scared.

Progress Report

September Update

Alright, so, last month was pretty awesome. While it did take me a bit longer than anticipated to get the trailer out (mostly because the world map took so long to finish), I still accomplished everything I set out to do. Speaking of the trailer, I’ve been very, very happy with the reception it’s gotten. If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out here. It's also currently on the FRONT PAGE! Thanks again, Libby!

I also knocked out two more levels last month, which puts my total remaining levels down to five normal levels and two super big bonus levels that have ETAs that are more difficult to predict. Unfortunately, the semester just started, so I’ll have to work, which means less game dev time. On the plus side, I’m grading fewer hours this year, so I’ll be able to get more work done. I’m also grading a different course, so that might throw some of my predictions off a bit, but the early semester stuff does seem like it’s going to be more or less the same in terms of how much time it takes, so I’m expecting to get four more levels done this month. That’s going to be the main thing I focus on.

Another thing I’ll be focusing on: Steam. I actually started the Steam process last month, but it’s taking a bit longer than I expected. Right now, my store page is under review, so I imagine I’ll have a link for that pretty soon.

Anyway, that’s about it from me. I’ve gotten a nice chunk of exposure thanks to the trailer and Nitro Rad’s recent video. I’m super thankful to him and to everyone who’s interested in this game. Thanks for believing in Jimmy!

Announcement

Trailer Release



Hey, everyone, here's the first official trailer; I hope ya’ll like it; let me know what you think!

Also, I've updated the demo. Like I noted in my last blog post, if you’ve played the demo already, there’s not really a need to play it again, as most of the changes are pretty minor. Here’s an attempt at a comprehensive list of the changes, but I made lots of these a while back, so I’m probably forgetting plenty:

Show
-Slightly updated world map will reflect a few locations more accurately.
-Lower level thresholds for avoidable encounters.
-Monster action text is on the screen for longer when performing useless actions or charges.
-Animated battle backgrounds have been implemented.
-Three new minor scenes involving Buck have been added.
-Lag should have been reduced or eliminated entirely, especially in Cloudy Hill and the Wilted Lands. Giant Garden might still be laggy for some players; let me know.
-Non-Jimmy characters now have two manual slots instead of one; this won’t affect the demo since there’s only one available manual, but this will be much nicer in the finished game. If you use an old save file, Buck’s personality trait will show up in a manual slot; you can just unequip it and it won’t affect the bonuses he gets from that trait.
-More stealable stuff and some steal success rates have been improved.
-Elevated bridges have been replaced with simpler ones in Giant Garden and Cloudy Hill (part of fixing the lag).
-Fixed lots of small bugs and tweaked some dialogue.


ALSO, I wanted to release all of this along with my Steam page, but apparently there’s a bit of a review process, so I’m going to start that today and will make another post once that’s done. Thanks for taking the time to keep up with Jimmy, and I hope you enjoy the trailer!

Progress Report

August Update

Since I’m getting near the end of the level design/mapping for Jimmy and am within a year of finishing development, I thought I might have some interesting enough stuff to say to start giving a little monthly progress report, so I’m going to do that!

This month is going to be pretty big in terms of showing stuff off. I’m putting level design aside for a few weeks so that I can tackle some of the bigger promotional stuff I’ve been putting off forever. This mainly means that I’m going to mostly focus on getting a Steam campaign together. I’m admittedly a little scared of this since this is going to hopefully put Jimmy in a bigger context than the RPG Maker community and the slightly broader coalition of stragglers I’ve accumulated on Tumblr and on Twitter (but I LOVE my stragglers). This is something I know I have to do, though, so I’m giving myself a deadline for this month because if left to my own devices I’ll just work on the game itself rather than promoting it and then unveil it to great critical acclaim to my close friends, family, and the stray cats that hang around my back yard.

Since I’m going to be doing the Steam thing, this means that I’m also going to get a more polished demo together. If you’ve played the current demo, then there won’t really be a need to play the upcoming one, as it will be largely the same, though there will be the new battle background, some more dialogue with Buck, some quality of life improvements, and some stuff under the hood which will hopefully eliminate any lag that some players were experiencing.

I’ll also be getting a promotional video together, so I’m going to have to finish up a bunch of stuff I’ve been putting off–mainly getting all of the battle backgrounds together and getting the world map 100%. If I have time, I’d also like to finish two or three more levels this month. It should be an unusually diverse month for me, and I’m excited (and a little scared) about the upcoming promotional stuff. Stay tuned!

Progress Report

Done with Music!

This week, I finished the last track, which puts the total number of tracks at 87. To put that into perspective, the last full-length rpg I made–A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky–had 51 songs, and it was a 40+ hour game. Of course, Jimmy doesn’t reuse dungeon themes, so it’s naturally going to have a lot of music, but that should give you a decent understanding of the scope of this monster.

It’s possible that I missed a track or two in my planning, so the final song tally might go up a bit, but now that I’ve finished the music, that’s going to free up more time to finish up the level design, so I expect that to go a bit faster from now on. I finished up the mandatory levels (other than the final one, which I’m saving for last) earlier this summer, and I’ve been working through the optional dungeons. Because I’m an idiot, though, there are quite a few of them. I’m looking at twelve more, and I have two bonus dungeons that are much larger in scope, so I still have a lot of dev work to go, but by the end of the summer I expect to knock out about eight or nine more of those.

Also on the agenda: in August, I’m going to try to scrape together a finalized demo, promo video, and I’ll take steps towards getting on Steam. I’m not sure exactly how much development time I have left, but it’s looking like Jimmy will be complete within a year. Woo!

Miscellaneous

New Battle Backgrounds!



Now the battle backgrounds are animated, which means, of course, way more work for me! I’ve been wanting to do this for a while, so I’m feeling pretty ecstatic now that my buddy has written this script. Every continent in Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass will have its own unique battle background and battle theme. Since enemy graphics are static, I wanted to have some more visual intrigue for the backgrounds, and I didn’t want to TOTALLY rip off Earthbound, so I hope these new backgrounds come off as unique and awesome.

Special RMN Fun Fact: The background I posted has 12 frames of animation. I just did one yesterday that has 42. Why have I done this to myself?

Progress Report

Annual Progress Report

Hey, everyone! It’s been another year of dev work. Looking back at my last annual progress report, it kind of feels like I haven’t moved much in a year: I’m still working on music and level design. Yeesh.

That said, I knew that was going to be the biggest chunk of my development time, so I’m not too surprised. I ended up having to work a lot more in my day job than I expected, and that really kicked back a lot of my projected dates.

I still did A LOT of work; the soundtrack is up to 75 tracks, and I’m down to single digits, so I suspect that by the time summer hits, the music will either be totally done or I’ll be down to one or two tracks. Once that’s out of the way, that’s going to clear up more time to work on the remaining levels, and then I’ll be finishing some sprite work (most of which I’ve been doing along with the levels), eventing scenes, adding npc dialogue, and playtesting/balancing.

Speaking of level design, by my last count I was down to about 25 levels. I’ve been managing about a level a week during the school year, so I expect that rate to continue except for when I’m going to be incapacitated by work, which will be soonish, unfortunately, but luckily once I finish the music and gain the glorious free time of summer, I’ll be sprinting through the remaining levels and should be finished with that aspect of the game around fall.

I was hoping to push for Steam last year, but I was waiting on a script that’s still kind of up in the air, so it was easy for me to just keep cranking out music and levels. As I get closer to finishing, though, getting a promo video together and getting on Greenlight (or I guess Direct, whenever that comes out) is becoming more of a priority, so I might just skip that script; it’s not really essential, but it’ll make battle backgrounds cooler. If I finish the level design before that script gets to me, then I’ll just say screw it and go forward. Or, I might get fed up and do it early; we’ll see.

I DID make due on my promise of getting the demo out last summer, though, and I was very happy with the feedback I got on it. I’ve been updating my version of the game and will release a more polished demo around the same time that I get the promo video together, which will be around fall at the latest, I suspect.

Last year, I was projecting getting the game done some time this year; well, I was a hopeful, bright-eyed youth then. Now that I’m closer to the finish line, I can say that Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass will likely be finished around spring/summer 2018. The next annual update is going to be A BIG HAPPY CHECKLIST OF FINISHED STUFF.
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