The grind

So last week I wrote about the grind, and during it – I was having thoughts of why I went down the “story/mission” path and how instead I could be happily coding additional features of sandbox game play. These thoughts are fairly useless because the path is set and sandbox game play is something to look forward to in the future. Even more useless considering that I have to power through these moments versus thinking what I might have done wrong or better – in hindsight.

 

Well last Monday the grind started clearing up when the mission finally tarted taking form. The many elements and goals of this particular mission started coming together. To give you an example – for the player – there are two new build able stations, two new destroyer class ships and new command ship upgrades. These come at a cost of intense battles, retreats, and advances. That’s even not mentioning a few other surprises.

As usual it got me pretty excited and happy. I think this is one of the best missions yet. It has this (particularly) neat moment that I hope is very memorable – and the post moment big battle and (hopefully) victory even more so. I was so excited by the battle that I asked my sound designer for a new music track – so that the player feels that bit more excitement via a new musical piece. The battle was so intense that even though I lost the Mark 13 – a ship that I’ve been carefully keeping alive in my fleet – I didn’t reload the game as usual to try to protect it via another try, she died in a worthy battle.

 

So what’s left to do before another iteration – I have to seriously work on some potential alternate paths that might form. For example – the player receives A from B – but what if B has been destroyed? That sort of thing. There are surprisingly a few of them.

 

Even better news is that I have the game’s ending fairly well defined in my mind.