SEAR DevBlog week of 6/30: Bug hunting

The gang's all here

This is going to be quick and dirty.

The source of the primary bug that kept me from pursuing the trailer in May has now been identified. Somewhat ironically, it doesn't happen in the shipping build, only in the editor - it's a construction script issue which doesn't fire in the shipping build. Of course we still need to fix it in the editor as it's preventing full testing of the phase transitions, but that shouldn't be too bad (hopefully). While chasing that down we found a number of performance improvement opportunities as well, and the prototype will be better for it once they're all implemented. And last but not least, related to the first item, we can do a shipping build now (last week there was a bug preventing that as well). So lots of invisible progress.

On the art side, the last vehicle (Wasp) is in the project now, enabling me to take a screen cap of the parking lot with all 5 vehicles shown. Very proud moment! We are still working on concepts for the box art, a task which I must admit I find really daunting. I've written six novels and been heavily involved in the cover art for all of them, and it's always hard to make it sing. You want it to be just perfect, but perfect is an illusion (and, of course, the enemy of good). Work proceeds apace, but I have to actively keep myself from sabotaging it with too many demands. A couple new music-related art pieces also had more work done this week - a revision on the hazard music object to make the red circle on the ground a little more aesthetically pleasing, and a first draft on a purely aesthetic object that will kind of float in the air and highlight during parts of the music.

This is another week where the team carried the progress. I had a funeral and a number of other personal issues arise this week, and didn't get as far on my assigned tasks as I would've liked to. The fact that the project still saw progress despite my lack of availability this week is, once again, testimony to the power of a team and the risks of developing alone. Will be working this weekend to try and make up for lost time.