TomeSpire 04/28 Sprint Retrospective
Famished! You look positively famished! Sit down right now, it’s soup time. Cream of Bisque. No that’s not just a fancy name for “I put all my leftover soups in the same bowl,” why do you ask?
There’s two big threads to pull, which makes sense, when your company is exactly two people wide. As much as I love juggling plates (fun fact, I never did learn how to juggle), there’s only so many I can keep spinning in the air.
On the business development side of the house, we’re running along full-steam towards the LLC. If everything had worked out according to plan, I had intended to open this retro with a triumphant “we done did it! We did the thing!” A fanfare of trumpets. Children weeping in the streets. Ticker-tape parade. That whole thing.
Unfortunately, both banks and the government move at their own pace, and there’s very little control I can exert there. I’ll tell you that the due diligence phase is basically done. I know what paperwork I need to file, I know who I need to file it with, and I’ve figured out the corporate partners who can help me get it done. Literally the only roadblock is money landing in the game studio’s bank account so that I can click the buttons that launch the ship. Tomorrow maybe? Hopefully?
On the technology side of the house, we basically tore the game to pieces and then reassembled it. It was horrifying. Like imagine a scene from Hellraiser where someone opens the Lament Configuration and then the Cenobites show up and spend nine days methodically disassembling their moist flesh only to put it all back together in terrifying new ways. Like that. But the game code.
It’s good. The new shape is beautiful. But there was some pain along the way.
Okay So What Did We Actually Get Done?
Okay so the headline here is the game is running again. At the start of the sprint it was not running. It was not even walking. One might, if they were being charitable, argue that perhaps they had once seen it crawl.
- We got maps. The maps got areas. You can move smoothly between them.
- We got plots. The plots got states. And the tools know.
- This is only 30% as horrifying as it probably sounds. Sentient tools aren’t currently on the roadmap. But it does mean you don’t have to constantly pick the right tool for the current plot-state.
- We got mana. The mana got an orb. It is very cool and we’re quite proud of it.
- Why water crops with water when you can water them with mana?
- Mana: it’s what plants crave.
There were a couple more hidden delights, but you know what? I’m keeping them secret. I’m not telling and you can’t make me.
The Broth, or The Foundation of Things, or What Would I Want To Have Known Before This Sprint If I Could Have Known Them
- Start the bank transfer about seven weeks before you could possibly anticipate needing it. You know what, you should probably just go start a bank transfer right now. Get it going just in case. It’s like putting a potato in the oven. You may not want a baked potato right now, but what about you in seven hours?
- Sometimes it’s okay to break the build in service of putting the parts together in a better order.
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
- Not switching the tools is a good affordance to the design of an incremental game. It’s okay to switch and manage tools in a farming game, because the pace is different, the loop is different. In an incremental where you’re managing several tens of crops across multiple different map screens, it gets frustrating.
The Bourbon … Alcohol’s A Food, Right?, or The Things Coming Next, or That Which I Naively Believe We Might Actually Be Talking About Next Time
- We’d like to get the Tome Menu working. A book can be a menu. Who says a book can’t be a menu?
- XP, but more. Like you can gain it, sure, but what would you say it does around here?
- Reworking how the player purchases plots. Current design is functional but not great.
- More kinds of plots, maybe? Sort of a stretch goal, but definitely on the horizon.
- Who said you couldn’t grow a fish? Not with that attitude.
- If you can plant it, you can grow it, and the whole world looks like a shovel.
If broccoli-cheddar implies that cheese sauce can be a broth, and minestrone implies that pasta noodles can be an ingredient, then I think we can clearly demonstrate that macaroni and cheese is a soup.
Listen folks, it only gets more unhinged from here. Hope you’re ready.