New Home

I moved this blog to a new location. 

You can now access the blog on my website: blog.robitstudios.com

Thank you.

Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates.

Here's your TAG progress update:

Most of the dialog is finished. I still need to add some tutorial type dialog. Robbie (http://twitter.com/beta_red) gave me a very nice compliment and said that he laughed out loud in a couple of places. That's more than I could hope for as I don't think I'm a particularly funny writer. 

I've done a full play through of the game which revealed that there were a lot more bugs than I had realized. Based on everything I've read about finishing a video game, that shouldn't have surprised me, but it did. I've worked out almost all of them, luckily. But, I know there are more lurking under the surface ready to wrap their sticky tentacles all over TAG and pull it deep into the sea. Speaking of which:

I'm confident that I will have a finished version of the game available this fall. I'm going to have a beta version available for play-testing in a couple weeks. I'm going to set-up a forum so that anyone who tests the game can post their findings and get updated builds, etc. 

Tomorrow I'm heading to Florida for a week of sun, fishing and relaxing. As soon as I get back, I'll be ready to push TAG to completion. Thanks for everyone who's been following the development of TAG. You've all been very motivating. If any of you want to play-test the game, leave a comment here or hit me up on Twitter. 

It is the courage to continue that counts.

It's unbelievable how close TAG is to completion. The list of things left to do is shrinking everyday and the feeling is almost indescribable. I've never had a project that took this long and I remember so many moments along the way where I felt that there was an infinite amount of work left.

One section of the game I saved for last was the underwater diving scenes. My girlfriend reminded me the other day that when I was originally sketching out the ideas for TAG, the underwater treasure hunting was one of the first things I thought of. Over two years later I got around to putting it together. It was worth the wait. I had a lot of fun doing it and I think it's one of the best parts of the game. That really only leaves a few things left.

Here's what's left to do (off the top of my head):

• Final cut scenes
• Flashback cut scene
• Final boss
• Credits
• About half of the game dialog (currently a lot of place-holder dialog)
• Complete game play-through
• A few minor bug fixes (some of them could be considered busy-workish)
• Playtesting (which means someone besides me and Robbie will play the game *gasp*)

Speaking of Robbie (http://twitter.com/beta_red), he is still working on a couple more tracks. I'm currently listening to the new song for the pyramid/volcano levels and it's really beautiful. The soundtrack for the game has come together so nicely and you can expect to see digital download of it available on BandCamp and maybe even a CD run too. If I could get Robbie to create music for me for free for the rest of my life I'd always have a stupidly happy grin on my face. He seems to really get what I'm looking for. I can use a couple words to describe the feeling or mood I want and he just nails it every time. If you're a developer looking for a talented musician for a project, you can not do wrong by hooking up with him. 

I suppose that's all the news for now. I'm going to keep plugging away at that list and try to get this game into your hands sometime this fall!