The Game Mage

Documenting one mage's journey to follow his dream and die trying

TomeSpire 04/19 Sprint Retrospective

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Good morning. You look hungry. Can I interest you in a bowl of breakfast soup? Cream of Apple. No it’s quite different from apple sauce, why do you ask?

Remember how last post I was talking about getting an address for TomeSpire that wasn’t my own? Because CAN-SPAM? No?

Okay so here’s the short version: if you want to send a newsletter to people the CAN-SPAM act requires you to put a physical address somewhere in the email. Presumably so that when people get annoyed at my moth jokes they can mail me subpar canned soup in protest.

I do want to be able to send people email (if they want to receive it), and I do not want them to know my home address (I have enough soup), so TomeSpire needs its own address.

Originally, I thought, (FORESHADOWING), that I would be able to get away with just a P.O. Box. That seems simple, right? After all, it’s almost certainly never going to receive any mail. What a fool I was. A FOOL!

There’s a whole cascade of research that took up the entire sprint’s Operations capacity, and basically comes down to “if you want an address you need a D/B/A, if you want a D/B/A without your real human name and address on it, you need an LLC.” At least in my locality. This almost certainly differs depending on where you are.

Why do I care about it not having my real human name and address on it? Aside from generalized privacy concerns? Because sometimes the internet decides to get upset about stuff. Even stuff that was totally fine a few years ago. And I don’t need someone sending the cops to my house because they think I’ve unfairly characterized birds in a video game.

So I guess we’re founding the LLC?

Okay So What Did We Actually Get Done?

A pixelated game interface displays inventory management for seeds and crops, including turnip, carrot, cabbage, and pumpkin, alongside options to sell or buy seeds and view upgrades.

Prototype 1, Sprint 2

We’ve decided to lean more into the magical themes we had started exploring last sprint. “Stardew + Incremental” leaves a lot of options on the table, and who said you couldn’t be a wizard? Nobody said. They don’t get to make the rules. It’s our orb and we’re going home.

So we dropped some systems that weren’t quite working the way we hoped, and picked up some systems that seemed interesting to explore.

  • Now you can earn money. Yay capitalism!
  • Now you can spend money. Boo capitalism!
  • Unlock more plots with money! More plots means more crops means more capitalism. Yay plots!
  • You can see your crops and seeds in an inventory.
  • You can sell your crops for money to buy seeds to grow crops to sell for more money.
  • There are four crops!
  • Watering cans are so last sprint. Y’all got any of them Mana Cans?
    • A pixelated, bright blue mana orb with a glossy appearance and small markings on its surface.
  • We dropped the trowel tool, crop rotting system, and the watering can chore loop. They don’t really work in an incremental, and we didn’t want to be friends with them anyway.
  • Tools are now plot-state-aware. If it needs to be watered, it gets watered. If it needs to be harvested it gets harvested. This works a lot better in a game that wants you to click a lot.
  • TomeSpire’s got a business plan. It’s many pages long. It says things like “but what if we tried to Do Art and also make a living?” and “we’re going to keep trying until we figure out what works or go insane. Probably both.” (It doesn’t say either of these things, technically, but it says the Boring Legalese versions of them).

I also reorganized the company share drive. That probably doesn’t sound like much, but The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up is profound.

The Broth, or The Foundation of Things, or What Would I Want To Have Known Before This Sprint If I Could Have Known Them

  • Some states make it real hard to start a business and protect your privacy. This is probably intentional, and probably coming from a good place (fraud protection, not making it easy to do illegal things, etc) but I think actually probably just hurts the people that don’t have the time or money to figure it out.
  • Buy some assets. No really. Ash has been leveling up his pixel art skills in lots of ways, including re-coloring some of the pixel art assets we bought off the shelf. Don’t think you have to do it all yourself, because almost nobody does.

The Bread, or The Accoutrements, or Other Things That Go On The Side And Are Also Good Maybe But Aren’t Really A Meal On Their Own

  • Sometimes ideas explode. Don’t feel bad about it. It happens to everyone and it’s very natural. Just take all the shattered pieces of the idea you thought you had and place them gently on a shelf for later. (This might be a metaphor about one failed idea spawning 20 new good ones and not letting it derail your sprint. Maybe.)

The Broccoli-Cheddar … Wait, That’s The Broth Again, or The Things Coming Next, or That Which I Naively Believe We Might Actually Be Talking About Next Time

  • We’re starting this sprint in cleanup mode. Probably not from the aforementioned idea explosion that probably definitely didn’t happen.
  • We’re thinkin’ ‘bout menus, and how you navigate between the various areas of the map.
  • And about XP, when you can gain it, how we track it, and what it does.
  • It is entirely possible that I’ll get the LLC filed. Perfect world? Yes definitely. Real world? There’s some complications, so we’ll see.
  • Fish?

Look breakfast soup is totally a thing and I’ll brook no dissent here. Soup, like life, is happening at all times in all places and is meant to be enjoyed. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go fill my bowl.

Conjunction Fermentation
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