Harmonia Windows, Mac, Linux game

0 comments by SimonLB on Sep 21st, 2012

Hey folks, Simon (Synival) here.

At the end of the Kickstarter campaign, I promised a post-mortem analysis that hasn't happened yet. It's nearly-completed and almost ready to post here, but before I get to that I'd like to give a more personal update to clear my own head. This blog will typically be about development stuff, but it feels appropriate now to act like a human being instead of a game-developing robot. Hopefully my programming will allow for this.

It's been two weeks since the campaign was over, and I honestly walked away on high spirits. It was nice to finally get a day off, but you know what wasn't nice? Not having work to come back to. I'd read before that running a Kickstarter is a full-time job with a lot of overtime work, and it's certainly true. It turns out that it's also really satisfying, too; I love interacting with people, developing crazy new features (multiple unit selection, whoo!), doing the art stuff, and managing the project in general. Not sure why, but getting stuff done is always satisfying, and game development has so many facets, I'm content with just working around the clock. Who needs a social life when I have a glowing LCD screen and the Internet? Don't answer that.

So why aren't I working around the clock on Harmonia right now? Something I've never mentioned and will only mention this one time (because I have no interest in pity or making excuses) is that I need to generate some extra income to pay the bills. I'm not in horrible shape financially or anything, but there's no way I can justify working 14 hour days on Harmonia at the moment, and it's a real downer. Not because there's no money, but because there's a long, long list of features that aren't getting implemented, and I'm super duper eager to get back to work on it. Development on the local client is getting close to replacing the Telnet window, and I really wanna do it!

The plan right now is to gather some extra work to save money and resume development as soon as possible. Developing 2 hours a day seemed like a good idea, but for a project that would take six months to complete, it isn't a realistic plan at all, nor is it satisfying. Aggressive job hunting is my life at the moment, then I can get back to work on Harmonia, possibly working towards another fund-raising campaign later on down the line. Dedicating all my time towards Harmonia was really satisfying, even if it was exhausting (and unhealthy), and I'd like to give another stab at it now that we know how to run a much, much better campaign.

As a side note, you know what I hate? Shameless plugging all over the Internet. It's a necessary evil to be sure, and most people recognized that to my relief, but I still felt dirty every time I did it. So, sorry, Internet, for pushing my wares all over your webs. At least I wasn't posting xzibit memes everywhere or something, starting threads in threads because I heard you like threads oh god I should stop this now.

Okay. The post-mortem: It's almost done, but my first draft was really dry and suffered from a lot of tl;dr, so I'm going to clean it up, add some pictures, and possibly split it into two articles. The post-Kickstarter blues are finally wearing off, so I'm feeling motivated again :D

Cheers,
-- Simon (Synival)