Hello everyone,
The last couple of months have been a whirlwind for me. I got and left several jobs and have been looking for full-time employment.
I enjoyed my time working on Dungeons of Daggerhelm as it was my first real game. Getting used to GML syntax, applying what I've learned in a variety of areas, and exploring what I could do with the software at my disposal.
Unfortunately, being my first game, DoD has major issues, one being that it is coded rather horribly. Irreversibly, in fact. Everything is so crudely constructed that the slightest change in the way things are done would send the entire system sprawling. Most of the code is written in such a way that it slows down the game for most people who have older computers, laptops, or other smaller devices. That's not what I wanted; I wanted a game that anyone could play, no matter what computer they had. Dungeons of Daggerhelm shaped up to be the reverse of that, and this has troubled me.
Multiplayer was something that I wanted to implement at some point, too. Co-op was a focal point of the initial design. However, due to the point above, this is going to be nearly impossible. I constructed the game in a single-player perspective only for prototyping purposes, and neglected to take into account the necessary steps to ensure a smooth transition to a multiplayer, online, lobby-based function.
As it stands, due to the major problems listed above, I have decided, hesitantly so, to shelve Dungeons of Daggerhelm indefinitely. I may come back to it when I have a fuller grasp of GML, perhaps even start over from scratch. But not right now. It makes me sad, because I had been working on the game since June of 2014.
However, what's done is done.
So, what's next for me? What's next for Rendered World? To be honest, I don't know yet.
I am hopeful though. I have been slowly building a rough prototype of a game called Quantum Frontier, a true top-down space exploration, sandbox, spaceship combat game. Since it is a true top-down game, it is far easier to manage its parts, however made slightly more complicated due to it being a sandbox game, and made even more difficult due to it being a space game.
But the initial thought I had prior to even starting work on this project is still there: consolidation.
DoD was a mess simply because I did not consolidate or organize its parts thoroughly. GML's inheritance was not even implemented until about half way down the road, which caused major game infrastructure inconsistencies.
However, Quantum Frontier is already shaping up to be far more manageable than DoD ever was. Adding new content is so easy, because it involves copy-pasting, maybe, 3 lines of code, instead of hundreds.
I will probably expand on this idea. But the gist of this post, either way, is that Dungeons of Daggerhelm development is on indefinite hiatus.
Thank you,
Jacob Giambalvo
