[ RELEASED ] Autumn of Death: Black Friday II

[Danvzare]

I've finally entered the polishing phase of the game development process. What this entails is testing, making notes, fixing, then rinsing and repeating. I ended up with nearly 40 items to fix or change from just playing through the introduction of the game, and it's taken me all day just to mark most of them off (I've still got nearly ten items left). I can't imagine how many problems I'll spot after actually managing to play the game all the way through.

But that's just today, for the rest of the week, I've been prepping myself for entering this polishing phase by doing up the GUI elements and making an icon for the game.



I'm very proud of how the icon came out. It took me an entire day to make it though. It resizes nicely as well.

The polishing phase is all about prepping the game for Alpha testing, where I have someone else play through the game while I watch and make notes. So I need to get it to as good of a standard as possible, since the person I'll have do the Alpha testing, can only play through the game for the first time, once. (And he probably wouldn't want to play through it a second time anyway.)

After fixing the problems identified during the Alpha testing, it'll be onto Beta testing, where I send the game to someone I know for them to play it and report back any problems they encountered.
Then after fixing those problems, it'll be onto the release.
The biggest uncertainty is the Beta testing phase, since people are busy doing other things, and will get around to it when they get around to it. But I'm hoping to enter the Beta testing phase by the end of this month.

[Danvzare]

The polishing phase continues. I've tested the game, made a list, fixed everything on it, tested it again, made another list, fixed everything on it, and now I'm in the process of testing it again. And to top it all off, I've still got to go through the entire script, spellchecking it all! 

The things I've been fixing are more than just simple bugs though. I've also been putting hints into places where someone might try a sensible (but incorrect) solution, correcting artwork or adding something to it, and just generally polishing everything up.



As an example, the inside of the barn now has flickering shadows, and the sprites of the guys who I took from the previous game, now have ears. I've also improved the setup icon a bit more.
It's taking longer than I anticipated, but I'm getting there.

[Danvzare]

The polishing phase continues apace. It's taking a lot longer than I expected, but I should "hopefully" be out of the pre-alpha stage sometime next week and into the alpha stage.

I've fixed a lot of problems with the game, but it's all been either coding bugs, or additional dialog. So there's not really anything new to show art-wise. So why not another background from the flashback portion at the start of the game.



The next item on the agenda is to spellcheck the entire script. After which I plan to give the game a quick test to make sure the bugs I fixed are actually ironed out. Then finally, I'll be getting someone else to play the game while I watch! 

[Danvzare]

This week I finished the boring and laborious job of spellchecking the entire script, and then entered the alpha testing phase, which is where I have other people play through the game while I watch and make notes.


Here's a screenshot of what one of the bedrooms now looks like. It's changed a bit since it was last shown.

During the alpha testing, I've fixed a few minor problems, a missing hint here, a bigger clickable area there.
The only real major change was one of the puzzles, where I realized that there essentially wasn't a puzzle where there should've been one.

Next week I plan to enter the beta testing phase, where I give the game to other people and wait for feedback.
I'm also hoping to get a short trailer made for the game. I'm not too good with cinematography, so I'm planning on conscripting my little brother for the job, since he's got quite the knack for it.

[Danvzare]

This week I finished fixing up the problems encountered during alpha testing, and have sent the beta off to two different people to play through in their spare time.

Now it's just a matter of waiting until I hear back from them. So if I don't make an update next week, just assume that it's because no progress has been made as I'm still awaiting feedback.

Once I hear back though, it should only take a week or two to sort it all out and release it.
Unfortunately there's no screenshots to show this week, but rest assured that the game is basically in the last stage of development.

[Danvzare]

I've updated the game pages and uploaded a trailer announcing my game's release date.

My brother put the trailer together, and I think he did a brilliant job at it.

The release date by the way is the 28th of November.

[Danvzare]

The game is finished, and I've made a completed game thread which can be found here.

This thread can now be locked.