Halloween Countdown

October 7, 2016

The days are getting shorter. The leaves are getting sparser. And Halloween is looming. It’s a good thing then, that Sleuthhounds: The Halloween Deception is nearing release. I’ve reached the point in development where the end is in sight. It’s at this point in a game’s development where it becomes meaningful to create a list of all the outstanding items that need to be completed.

As of the time of this writing, here are the counts for the outstanding items in different areas of the game:

Animation 12
Audio 5
Backgrounds 7
Game Engine 4
Performance 3
Scripting 23
Special Features 1
User Interface 3
Total 58

A few notes about the numbers:

  • Not all To Do items are created equal. For example, incorporating all of the recorded lines of dialog takes much longer to do than correcting a typo in the in game journal.
  • Of the outstanding 58 items, 9 of them are on the largish side and will require more than an hour to implement.
  • The To Do list contains everything I’m currently aware of that still needs to be done. However, as I continue to refine and test the game to bring it to completion more items may emerge. So the counts should generally go down but may occasionally go up as well.
  • Some items are closely related so finishing one item may at the same time finish another item.

You’ll notice over on the side of the website that there’s a new panel cleverly called “Countdown to Sleuthhounds The Halloween Deception”. This panel shows the current state of the To Do list. Each day I’ll update the panel to reflect the updated count of outstanding items. So you’ll be able to follow along and see the game getting closer to completion!

Disclaimer: Once the game has released I’ll be removing the panel. So if you’re reading this blog in the future you won’t see the panel. Important note to the Internet: always date your blog posts.