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TomeSpire 05/07 Sprint Retrospective
This is the part of the post where I extol you, EXTOL YOU, to have some soup. Do you? Do you have some soup? Or do you hurt me with your cold, soupless eyes. Do you rebuke the calming warmth of the avgolemono? How could you? Monster.
Hey. Guess what. We’re a company now! Like. For realsie reals. I mean, technically we were already a company. You can be a company too, today, if you decide real hard and operate as “Yourself, Inc.” You can just do things.
But no, I mean, we’re a company in the “registered with the state” and “lots of paperwork” senses. TomeSpire Games LLC. All official-like. It was approximately more paperwork than getting a driver’s license, and less paperwork than buying a house. I’m not entirely certain that comforts me. Either starting a company is too little paperwork, or buying a house is too much. Your call.
So anyway, just in case any of the grade school teachers who thought I wouldn’t amount to anything are reading this: guess what. Small business owner. Who’s laughing now? (It is me. (I am the one who laughs. (The laughsatz haderach, if you’re nasty.)))
Okay So What Did We Actually Get Done?
Can I interest you in a fine selection of visually distinct areas with their own unique flavor? Yes? No? Yes.
- First of all, look at this little guy. LOOK AT HIM.
- I don’t think I’m allowed to unilaterally decide that we have a mascot. And if I did, it’d probably be a moth of some kind. But man. Protoghost (for Prototype 1 ghost) would be in the running. Protoghost.
- Also, he’s our first official Discord emote.
- There’s five distinct areas with five distinct visual aesthetics.
- There’s a minimap for navigating between them. Originally we had buttons at the screen edges for this, but the minimap works so much better.
- Unlocking new plots on a map works for all such plots on all such maps, which is important because it’s basically the core game loop.
- The plots know what kind of plot they are, which is important because planting a fish in the farming map is not a very effective “create more fish” strategy.
- Fishing is a thing you can do now, which is important because the answer to “Fish?” is now “Fish!”
So there used to be this twitter account I followed. Man. Y’all remember twitter? 2016, those halcyon days of yore. Anywho. There was this twitter account I followed that was just git commit messages from the video game industry. It was wildly unhinged and extremely my bullshit. “Arms no longer rotate backwards into Hell and release the Possum Army ahead of schedule”-type shit.
I hope someday people look back on these sprint retros and they think, “yup, that tracks,” about whatever my life trajectory ends up being.
The Broth, or The Foundation of Things, or What Would I Want To Have Known Before This Sprint If I Could Have Known Them
- Just go ahead and start the LLC. Do not try to operate as a sole prop unless you plan to remain a sole prop. There’s nothing wrong with being a sole prop. But we always knew we would be an LLC, and the time I spent trying to “avoid the headache” of doing the needful just created more work for future-me.
- Do the refactor. It always feels like now isn’t the right time. We spent last sprint doing a refactor that let us get a bunch of stuff right this sprint. Probably there will be more refactors in the future. It will always feel like we’re not making progress and it’s pretty much always the right thing to do regardless.
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
- The minimap took, like, an hour to make? Or something? Like it’s not always the thing you spend all week trying to get right that really ends up winning the day. Sometimes it’s noticing where the grain of sand was causing friction and taking a moment to sweep it out of the way.
- Visual variety makes things feel “alive.” It’s weird the extent to which having a couple different flavors of “unlock the next plot” adds visual interest. We added two or three variants to each map region for unlockable plots and it was a night-and-day difference.
The Bacon… Bits? They’re a Topping. This is Almost Soup Adjacent, or The Things Coming Next, or That Which I Naively Believe We Might Actually Be Talking About Next Time
- We’ve been promising the Tome Menu for a long time. And you know what? We’re going to keep promising it. Promises will continue until the Tome Menu improves, or something like that.
- XP. Probably. Maybe. Look, we know it’s coming eventually. I think we’re still trying to figure out what XP will do, actually, by which I mean how the unlock and progression system will work, and until we know that it’s more of a placeholder for an idea of a concept.
I’ve tried making avgolemono soup like. At least three times. And it’s never worked for me. I’m not sure if I’m doing it wrong or I’m just not meant to enjoy a soup with that much egg in it? I like soup. I like egg. Unclear. The thing is, I keep trying. There’s a metaphor there, I think. Maybe all soup is a metaphor? I’m gonna have to sit with that one for a minute.