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The
MGC Times
September
2011 Newsletter
Dear
customers and fans,
Wow. The past two weeks have been amazing. I don't even
know where to begin...
I
guess the first thing I want to do is to thank everyone who has already
pre-ordered Dirk Dashing 2. Thanks to you, last month was my best month
of sales ever. The pre-order sales so far have paid for about 90% of the
cost of the musician and 2 artists that I hired. A few more days of sales, and I will
finally start earning some income from this project!
I'm
also overwhelmed by the hundreds and hundreds of e-mails I have
received. When I released it a week early to my existing customers and
newsletter subscribers, I received lots of encouraging letters
containing praise, suggestions, bug reports, and more. The bug reports
were especially invaluable, because I was able to fix a lot of high
priority issues that I hadn't previously known about (crashes, game
freezes, and such) prior to the official release. So thank you!
Following
the pre-order release, I took a few days off to rest and recharge my
batteries. But now I'm ready to go again!
- Troy Hepfner
My
Online Store Provider Has Changed
BMT
Micro, Inc. now provides the e-commerce services that power my online
store. They were highly recommended by some of my fellow indie
developers. I've been using them now for 2 weeks, and I am VERY happy
with them. Their customer service is beyond excellent - they not only
helped me set things up, but they also stepped in and helped one of my
customers when I was out of the office.
Through
BMT Micro, my online store now has these brand new features:
-
A
gifting option, which is something many of my customers have asked
for!
-
Payments
using Google Checkout and Amazon Payments
-
Toll-free
phone and fax orders (at no charge to either you or me) - BMT's
telephone number and hours are here
-
German
customers can purchase using a Commerzbank account - see details here
Dirk
Dashing 2 Production Update
Last
week, I put together the official pre-order video trailer for the
game. Check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XqETL1zm2I
At
this point, I'm in a mini-planning phase for how I want to tackle the
remaining development. I would like to have the next beta update ready
by the end of October, which would include the Part 3 levels. So I
need to figure out what I can do in the next 7-8 weeks.
There
are four different development areas that I have to consider:
-
Fixing
the bugs identified so far
-
Building
the remaining levels
-
Implementing
the interactive music
-
Adding
requested new features
Here's
what I'm thinking about each of these areas.
Fixing
bugs. As
I mentioned, it turned out to be a good idea making the game available to my existing customers a week
before the official release. With a lot
more people playing it, many previously unknown bugs were discovered. So
far, I've had about 60 bug reports come in, as well as dozens and dozens
of great suggestions and enhancement requests.
I've
assembled a spreadsheet with all of the bug reports and requests, and
assigned a priority to each one:
1
- game crashes, freezes, installer issues, and other bugs that prevent people from playing
2
- normal bugs: game features that don't work or don't work properly, but
don't prevent people from playing
3
- minor bugs, like spelling errors, buttons that don't highlight
properly, etc
4
- enhancement requests
I
had about a dozen priority 1 issues, most of which I was able to fix in v0.6.1
and release before the official pre-order launch. I also have about 30
priority 2 issues, and another 20 priority 3 issues.
Ideally,
I would like to tackle some of the priority 2 issues for the next beta
update, as well as a few priority 3 issues.
Building
levels. I'm eager to start building levels for Part 3, but there are
two priority 2 issues in
particular that will affect the save game format and the way I'm
building levels: 1) adding different skill levels, and 2) marking the
items when you pick them up so you can't replay a level and collect an
infinite number of weapons and gadgets. So I need to work these
two issues first. Otherwise, if I wait, I'll have to retrofit
more levels later. Fortunately, I don't think these two issues will be
difficult to solve.
Interactive
music. For the pre-order release, we just did simple music loops
for each level. But Jesse and I would like to tie the music directly
to the plot developments and game events to make it more interactive.
Not many games do this, and we think it's an opportunity to do
something really special with Dirk Dashing 2. I'm also thinking this
might give the game a good chance at qualifying for the Excellence in
Audio award in the 2012 Independent Games Festival. The deadline for
entry submissions is October 17, so if we're going to enter the game
in the IGF, we need to get this done ASAP.
Adding
new features. I think many of the requested features can wait
until the game is closer to being finished, but there are a few
requests that would be beneficial to implement as early as possible.
These include some minor changes to Dirk's inventory to make it easier
to use, and some tweaks to the game's controls to make it even more
playable.
By
the end of this weekend, I'll figure out my plan of attack for all of
these areas, and get started. Stay tuned!
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