Wednesday, July 29, 2009

The Warm Wind Blows

Welcome, friends, to the heat-stroke inducing days of summer. Gather round and I'll tell ye a story.

A legend, passed down in vessels of poesy and prose, tells of a group of hardy men and women whose daily struggles were said to produce a video game of such profound quality that old school gamers wept openly upon its arrival. Grizzled and jaded veterans of the Last Great Console War emerged from their dank hovels, shook off their nightmares, and once again plunged into the great black sea of the Sega Genesis.

At first, all was quiet. But soon bubbles could be seen rising from the darkness and the old school gamers burst forth breaking the surface of the long dormant seas. They marched ever forward, bundles cradled in their arms, eyes fixed on the horizon. Their weary feet carried them... onwards to one final quest.

Some say the bundles were weapons. Others say jewels. But the wisest among the witnesses knew the truth. They carried light itself.

That's kind of how we picture the launch of Pier Solar. It may seem like hyperbole but you know what they say, "If you want to hit the target, aim a little higher."

With aim like this - that target is getting pwnd.

We thought it was about time we let you know that progress on the game continues. As you can see, the weekly updates will be scrapped for a more sporadic update schedule. There's really only two options for us if we insist on weekly updates. We can ruin 90% of the game by showing it to you before the release date, or we can bore you with weekly updates consisting of, "Yup, still working on it."

I don't think either of those is an entertaining option.

In case you're wondering, "WHAT'S TAKING SO LONG?!" we have this to say. First, stop yelling, it's rude. And secondly, what's left of the game is simply down to pure construction and it's a matter of man hours. And, sadly, when you're doing the work normally reserved for a 100 person full-time team, with six people who are working whenever they get a free hour things progress slowly.

Though they do progress.

I got a chance to look at a new build of the game recently (complete with some of the more complex bug fixes). It's looking fantastic. We're still in the production phase of things but it's good to catch some of the bigger issues early. That way we don't have to intentionally ship bugs and kill whoever finds them before word gets out.

Though the latter sounds like an awful lot of fun.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

The Calm Before the Storm

Apologies for the lack of updates, our efforts to get Pier Solar out the door are making anything else WM related take a back seat. We're still working hard and a lot of things are beginning to wrap up. Our NPC dialogues are now officially done - and that's about doubled the size of our script. A quick once over for editing purposes and then off to the translators.

In the meantime, and while we're all toiling away under hot, hot sun, make sure to enjoy the first weekend of July. Happy Canada Day to all our exceedingly polite fans and Happy Independence Day to all you guys just south of them.

Oh and happy National Sovereignty Day to Iraq!

We just tried four times to come up with something witty to say that wasn't politically incorrect.

We got nothing.

Cheers!

-WM