Life is Crazy, Isn't It?

Yes it's been a while since the last update. The short of it is that a lot of life happened. Making games is something I currently do in my spare time which I ended up with precious little of. I'll spare the grisly details. The important part is that I have more time now and have had a bit of a rest. Now I can spend some time on silly things like making games again. This project was never entirely abandoned but development ended up being far slower than I had intended. In particular random map generation has turned out to be more of a sticking point than I had figured. The mathematical balance of the maps can be rather tight which makes generating random maps harder than I figured. That being said it will be finished when I get it finished.

Tutorial

The original intent was that players would be presented with the game and some basic instructions. Since everything could be clicked on and played with the player was supposed to figure many things out along the way. However the game turned out to be too opaque. The most common complaint was that there was no tutorial to at least explain the basics.

This lack of a tutorial turned out to be a terrible idea. To fix this issue there is now a tutorial. This walks the player through building two lanes, making two deliveries, and implementing a upgrade. Everything else in the game progresses out from here as it creates other types of upgrades, ways to create supply and demand, and things that get in the way. There are now also a few messages that show at the beginning of the scenario. This will be improved upon but for now this should make the basics easier to sort out.

Other Stuff in the Works

The next map is in the works. Scenario #8 will be a rough terrain scenario featuring large but expensive regions. Only small, random parts of the map will be open at the beginning and must be opened. It will be a large map with minimal competition but will require careful planning to get through. The map is mostly designed. The next step is some analysis, testing, and creating the little text blurbs.

Random map generation is coming together. Some of the math and the generation algorithms are together but still not entirely solid.

More achievements are designed they just need to be implemented. The next batch will include some counter achievements in particular.

Longer Term Goals

Here are some other little things that players won't ever see directly but the results should hopefully improve the experience. From the very start Jump Lanes had test code written to prevent bugs from cropping up. This has of course expanded as the game has progressed. One thing that I sank some time into is further planning on improving automated testing of games as I create them. The end goal is to create tests that can simulate a full cycle of the game being played so that the mechanics can be put together before the game is even playable. While this level of testing may or may not end up in Jump Lanes it will be implemented in future projects.

While bugs are inevitable the goal is to prevent as many as possible before the game ever gets in front of a player.