Dev Diary 31: New Year
Currently, the state of Lab 77 is as follows:
176 of 180 bugs have been squashed. Of the remaining four bugs, two require further testing and two require more work.
Artwork, music and sound design are being worked on.
Having ended last year on a high with the revamped main menu I wanted to start this year from a similar point of view. While in Munich in the holiday period, I realised there may be a bug when attempting to load a game when no save game exists. After returning home, I tested this and found that there thankfully was no bug since the game would just effectively load a new game starting on level one. However, I realised that this may cause confusion for the player. Therefore, I decided to implement a small improvement wherein the game would simply notify the player that no save game exists to be loaded. I did consider removing the button if no save game existed, however remembering my previous issues with UI design, implementation and especially with the keyboard UI navigation I decided not to tempt fate and instead implement a simplified, if perhaps more rudimentary, solution.
While in Munich I also realised I had made a minor procedural mistake. Admittedly, I rushed the implementation of the new conveyor belts a bit, and as such I forgot to actually check that the old ones had all been replaced. Thankfully I did make a note of this in my list of bugs, and having made the check it turned out to be a necessary thing as I found two old conveyor belts that had not been replaced. This is why rushing things is never a good idea, and I really should have taken the time to ensure I finished the task as it did not take me long to find the two errant conveyor belts and replace them.
Next on the to-do list is more testing. I need to test all the small changes I have made thoroughly, as well as the steam achievements which I have been putting off as I am worried things will break. However, once I have done this I can move on to implementing Wwise and the remaining artwork as it comes in.
That is all for Dev Diary 31, more to come in two weeks.
-Olav