Build Label: Gimel 8-August-2011 10:06

This is in equal measure both the most boring and most exciting screen capture of Tako thus far:

This is an actual ‘campaign’, and the little placeholder bonhomme in the center is the actual avatar created by the player.  There’s no real world generation (that won’t come until much later), no assets (not quite so later), and no gameplay (much sooner), but this is a pivotal moment in Tako’s development: there is now an actual game canvas I can start tossing paint at!

Roadmap

Not necessarily of interest to anyone except for me, but here’s Tako’s roadmap at the moment:

  • Pre-Alpha Milestones.
    • Aleph: Initial gameplay exploration.  Led to a revamp of the Tako concept.  (Completed May 9, 2011.)
    • Beth: Mantles!  Such a fundamental part of what makes Tako Tako is the concept of Mantles, so I wanted to get them implemented early.  (Completed May 19, 2011.)
    • aui: Spent a lot of time building a basic UI system, which is already paying off.  (Completed August 2, 2011.)
    • Gimel: Travel and events.  The player will be able to explore the campaign world, trigger events, and win or lose the campaign.
    • Daleth: Combat encounters.  Many events will trigger traditional-JRPG-style combat encounters!
    • He: Metagame.  Though each individual campaign in Tako should take only 20~30 minutes to complete, each time you play, you unlock new Mantles that will be available for play in the next campaign.  Hopefully will spice up gameplay enough to keep the game interesting!
    • Zayin: World generation.  With all the rest of the elements of the game in place, it will be possible to build the real campaign generator.
    • Heth: Data!  Everything functionally is complete, so it’s time to add content, content, content!
    • Teth: Platform requirements.  Tentative milestone for deciding on, and implementing, a delivery platform.  At the moment, this milestone would really just be making a proper NSIS installer rather than packaging the initial getdown files in a zip.  🙂
  • Alpha.  The end of Tako-Heth roughly equates with Alpha.  Features and content are all complete, and it’s just time for testing.
  • Beta.  Broader testing, especially of multiple platforms.
  • Release!  Done and dusted!  Since Tako is just a hobby project for me, I reckon this means putting it on a shelf and starting on a new project.  🙂

Since I’m working in my spare time over and above a full time job and family, I reckon that each of the milestones Gimel and beyond will take roughly a month of work to complete.  That puts the Release milestone at roughly May of next year.  Guess I have something to keep me busy, anyway!

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