Week 29 – Fast Month!

Whoosh! Over a month of free time right now. Progress will be much more rapid. This week should bring about the game’s release. It is basic, but it allows all of you to follow along with the progress as a live site instead of just reading these blog posts all the time.

If I told myself 30 weeks ago that I would have a functioning game by now… back when I knew nothing of web development and I couldn’t even tell my echoes from my alerts… I would have never believed myself and I would be questioning my sanity after being visited by my future self.

But seriously, I would have never thought this would happen. Although I am one of those people who is acutely aware of all their strengths and weaknesses, I was still doubtful over whether or not I would succeed in this. When you have a game this huge and complicated laid out in front of you and you have no skills to deal with it, you know, it’s a little daunting.

Yet I am disciplined enough to know not to celebrate early. The game isn’t fully done yet and the sheer amount of work left is enough to make anyone run for the hills! But if everyone gave up when times got tough we would still be living in caves.

We come a long way since the start. Let’s not forget this isn’t just me here. Harmless and Laura have been amazingly hard working and we are very fortunate to have them on the team 🙂 Harmless has been a bit quiet recently with his music but says he can make much more soon. Laura, on the other hand, has crafted another four masterpieces:

From top left, Sight, Grenade, Bugcatcher, and Radar.

In preparation for the coming alpha release, every art piece has been added to the game!

I’m getting pretty good at this web design stuff now.

Anyway, talking about alpha, yes it is supposed to be out next week, and it should be. I’ve made a list of everyone who will have alpha access. It includes everyone who has expressed interest in CCSO for an extended period of time. If you think someone is missing, do send a message.

• ATimeParadox
• boomerg
• bowserjr
• cheesecoffee0
• ElDromedario
• glimmer
• Halpo
• harmless
• josephvl
• Laurasnake
• NeroZero
• retry
• sirboomalot
• Supersausagedog
• smittywjj
• THEFANG

That’s 16 people, plus myself. I ask you to refrain from inviting others at the moment – I wish to keep CCSO:Alpha restricted for the immediate future.

Further to the inclusion of art, I have added a basic navigation system around the site to make it possible to navigate – before I would just type in address names to navigate pages lol.

I’ll setup a second blog post when the alpha goes up so there is somewhere public to track and post bugs.

Like I said last week, this update would be small. I have been very busy this week. The dissertation is done, and I had to make presentation too that will be assessed at the university late in January. I’m back home now. But this does mean I’ll be able to work on CCSO full-time for the next few weeks ^_^

I want to touch up a few parts of the game and perhaps add a few more components before I try to get the alpha game online. I still aim for it to be done by this time next week 😛

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As I look back on how far the game has come, I wonder if in two years from now I’ll look back on this blog, possibly abandoned as things move on, and remember how CCSO all started?

In two years the current CCS setup may be completely dead as everyone would have moved over to the new version. The game there will stop being updated as CCSO comes into existence. It will be frozen in time. I wonder what all of us will feel as we rediscover the game long into the future.

Sigh, is reminiscence a positive or negative feeling? It’s like a mix of both.

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See you next week with the alpha!