Something amazing happened this last week – we finally released beta! The response has been quite positive. Thank you to all of those that have bought beta to help support us and thank you to everyone for reporting bugs and providing invaluable feedback. Even with all of the help, this still has been the most intense week ever for me (Jasson). Here are my stats from last week.
- Bugs Fixed: 50+
- Hours worked: 110+
- Hours slept: 6/day
- Times I went outside: 3?
- Cups of coffee consumed: 25+
- Times I whined to Kelley about being tired: too many
- Number of day jobs quit: 1
Overall it was a good week for me and an amazing week for Crea. Over the span of the last 10 days Crea has been transformed from a clunky tech demo to a (mostly) playable game. The beta has breathed life back into the forums and the IRC.
Wonderful fanart by beta tester Lune
I am currently close to being done on fixing the obvious multiplayer issues – the ones I can reproduce. Once that is wrapped up I plan to release a new patch and fix any other multiplayer issues that slipped by. Hopefully that will be a small list so I can quickly move onto fixing water and being done with bug fixing for awhile. I’m considering implementing a few small nice-to-have features and then moving onto doing the major mod API refactoring.
I am anxious to start this refactoring because this is my chance to clean things up that have been bothering me for awhile – something developers love to do. However, I am also quite cautious as this refactoring could cause some large regressions or entirely new bugs. It could also drag on for more than two weeks if I’m not careful. Consequently, I am meticulously planning things out and will be breaking tasks down as much as possible. Additionally, lots of unit tests will be written to assist in catching the wild bugs before they get away – kind of like pokeballs.
Oh yeah, also since I quit my day job and things have calmed down from the beta release, I am now doinglivestreams again. Yay! Come listen to ambient music as I code away.
Screenshot of beta tester thejdubb02′s Crea abode
The game has been sweet ever since I picked it up last week. I’m excited for what it is, and for what it will become. You may want too cut back on those Hours worked a bit, because as much as we want the game, we also don’t want the developer too keel over in the process.