Summary:
In which work on the demo continues; contact -info and -buttons are added; the credits/legal screen is updated; new (stand-in) menu-music is selected; a short-story e-book is made; crowdfunding is investigated--and found (perhaps) problematic; and seeking a publisher is contemplated.
Greetings and salutations!
For this week's screenshot, a look not at something from the game, but at something
adjacent to the game: the cover to a PDF e-book containing a short story that takes place in the same setting.
The week just past was a bit of a slow one again. But nevertheless, a few things did get done:
The first major part to the work of the week just past was in moving towards building a playable demo.
To that end, I've been working on the process of creating a distributable build with Panda3D. In previous versions of the engine, this involved running certain commands, using a special "rtdist" (which I think is short for "runtime distributable") build of the engine. This has changed for the version that I'm using at the moment; the new version seems, thus far, somewhat more streamlined.
However, it has also come with some issues.
First of all, this deployment method isn't yet part of the main branch of the engine, and certain fixes in the main branch hadn't been merged into its branch. I requested on the Panda3D forum that this be done, and it quickly was.
However, that introduced a new issue: at some point during development of the main branch, a new bug had been introduced that prevented the first level from loading. I sought out the commit that seemed to have caused it, and reported it on Panda3D's bug-tracking page. They requested an example that reproduced the issue, and I isolated it enough to create a short and simple case that did that. And thereafter the developers fixed the problem, and, at my request, merged the fix into the branch that I'm using. All of this was done in rather quick order, I'm glad to say!
But with that working, the build system itself continued to be problematic. Thus far, with help from the Panda3D forum, I've managed to deal with or circumvent a few issues, but a successful build is still a work-in-progress as I write this.
Aside from the build itself, I did a few bits of demo-related cleanup and polish-work during the week just past:
To start with, there is now a simple "splash screen" that appears before the main menu, stating that the version in which it appears is a demo, and giving some contact information. In addition, I've placed a "get in contact" button on the main menu. This brings up a dialogue with buttons that direct the player to various means of getting in contact with me, hopefully making it a little easier and more convenient to provide feedback.
The credits/legal screen saw some cleanup, with the text reflecting the new fonts and music-pieces in use, general cleanup, and some updates and additions to my own portion of the text. That last is rather brief and simple, and I'll confess that I worry a little that it isn't good enough--after all, I'm no lawyer. :/
And finally, I selected a new piece of stand-in music for the main menu, and cleaned up some issues with the logic thereof.
Moving away from the demo entirely, in the week just past I put together a little side-item: A PDF e-book version of a short-story set in the world of A Door to the Mists. It's a little extra that I currently intend to include with the full version of the game, and perhaps use as part of the promotion thereof.
This short-story actually pre-dates A Door to the Mists; it was written for a small forum-based writing competition a few years ago, as I recall. Its protagonist is a warrior of the nomadic Khayeht tribes. He embarks on a fateful raid on a neighbouring tribe--and discovers a situation much graver than he had expected. Much like A Door to the Mists, the mist-world has a significant place in the narrative.
The process of turning the original file into an e-book was fairly straightforward, hindered primarily by my unfamiliarity with the process and with the quirks of LibreOffice. And indeed, I think that I have the document done and ready!
I may have mentioned previously that I've been considering a crowdfunding campaign for A Door to the Mists. If not, then... well, I have. I started to look into this in earnest in the week just past. It's possible to run a campaign from this country, I do believe--others have done it, as far as I'm aware. However, it looks as though there may be some complications when crowdfunding from South Africa.
As I'm no lawyer, and not terribly well-versed in business, I fear, this makes me rather nervous. As a result, I'm considering looking for interest from one of the smaller indie publishers. (I'll only attempt this once the demo is out, and some feedback on it gathered, I intend--I imagine that it will help to have something to show.) And aside from allowing me to dodge my uncertainties regarding crowdfunding from this country, having a publisher might be a boon when it comes to marketing.
And finally, there were a number of other tasks done in the week just past that don't seem worth mentioning here!
That then is all for this week--stay well, and thank you for reading! ^_^
