Weekly Development Progress Report, 01/05/17

Another fairly quiet week in terms of hours worked, although with the school holidays over I was able to do a bit more. However I still feel like I accomplished plenty, which is pretty much the story of the month as a whole (see below)

Placeholders Re-Re-visited

I've done a little more work on the tutorial and made further improvements to the medals/achievements section (see last week's blog for more on this), it's now improved to the point where I feel I need to do more work on the shop/upgrades screen as this now looks a little plain in comparison. This is often the way polishing goes for me, I work on the thing that bugs me the most until I have something I'm happy with then other areas I was previously happy with start to look
in need of an overhaul.

This is the 3rd week running I've shown this section, you try coming up with 3 different 'amusing' captions. (No, really, give it a go, send me your ideas)

I love it when a (game) comes together

I've added a title screen and got to work on a basic save game function. I've also added a couple of music tracks that I'm pretty happy with, they fit the theme of the game really nicely. Finally I've been working on scaling the game for mobile devices and improving performance. I've a little more to do on both of these but it's really just to see if I can add a little extra, everything that's there works fine.

Hmm, a game about attacking with zombies and a cannon. What should I call it?

Still to do: I need a music track for the title screen, I need to finish the save system and add a small credits screen (just for music and few SFX this time). I have one more element to add to the tutorial and a few visual and sound effects to emphasize power-ups. That's really not that much.

Super Endless Kingdom update

Helpful citizens, generous dowries and a neatly laid out town centre. What more could you ask for?

I've done almost no coding on Super Endless Kingdom in April, but I've in no way abandoned the project. I now have enough ideas for improvements to hopefully finish the game and I'll get back to it before too long. The game was featured on the Phaser site recently (Phaser is the framework my games are built on top of), with Phaser's creator Richard Davey saying nice things and making the game his staff pick in his weekly newsletter.
It's not too late to give me your feedback, any ideas you have could still make the finished game so give it a try. The most up to date version is on Newgrounds here.

April Stats

In terms of hours worked, April was by far my least productive of the year so far. It's pretty easily explained by the two weeks of school holidays that meant I spent more time looking after my son, as well as birthdays and bank holidays where I took time to spend with my family, and a few days lost to illness. Still, it's something I need to keep an eye on.
I'm pretty happy with the work I did in April, as I've said Zombie Cannon Attack! is getting pretty close to completion. I've learnt a decent amount about optimising my code and social media continues to show healthy growth. Special thanks to my partner for getting the Rubble Games facebook page up and running, but it's also nice to see this blog continue to grow steadily.

Twitter followers: 804 (+253)
April blog views: 366
Blog views/day: 12.2 (March was 10.35)
Hours worked 99.5 (3.3/day) (March was 4/day)