News!

You know, a while back when I said I was going to try to limit myself to just a few items to work on so I could get an update out I was being honest about my intentions. Unfortunately my job gave me a serious case of the 'fuck its'. Every time I opened up the file and tried to work on what came next all I did was state at the screen for a minute or two before closing it and doing something else. This wasn't like the writer's block I had previously, I just didn't have the time or inclination to plan about where the game was going next.

Well that's changed now. I'm going to get back to working on the game soon and hopefully have an update ready sometime in November. I'm sorry for staying out of touch for a while, but without anything to say about the game I couldn't find any reason to post.

Poll Time

Starting a new job is good in that it helps you to not be flat broke. It's bad in that it severely restricts your free time. Because I have less time to work on the game and I wanted to start to bring in a few new sections that I've completely ignored up to now, I've put up a poll on the right so that I won't completely disregard some of the material already in the game that some of you want to see. Now I could, of course, update all of the current progressions in the next version, but I don't think any of you would want to wait until the snow's falling for the next release.

Vote early and vote often. I'm not going to set a hard line on what the poll will guarantee, but the more interest I see in a certain section the more likely I am to work on it.

About Time

Okay, I finally got to the point (mostly) where I wanted to be with the next update. If you look to the panel on the right you'll see a short description of what's been added, but I'll try to elaborate a little on what's actually in the game now. Aside from the obvious there's not a but of a debugger in the game, lovingly called Cheat-o's. It does not, I repeat: does not cover all game variables and circumstances that may occur during the course of regular play. It may very well be buggy because it has not been tested on it's ability to work at all times in the game (that would take far too long for me to do by myself and I've already dragged ass enough as it is) but what is does do is get you to the nice juicy parts of the game that may take a while to get and that you may not know exist.

Secondly, the next event/date with Raven is only half completed. Why you might ask, well because depending on what you choose to do or where you choose to go gives a branching pathway to a place I've nowhere near fleshed out enough to be able to have this event set up there properly. It will probably take me a while to get all the items and people that are supposed to be there set up and likely won't happen by the next update (think 2-4 versions down the road). But don't worry about having the Raven relationship break because of it, the debugger can reset Raven to an earlier state.

Now some of the things I've put in this version escape me because I didn't write them down and it's been a while since I worked on them, but this is what I can remember:

• The next mission is available to you at Peterson Starbase.
• The next alien transformation sequence is accessible depending upon where you are and how far you've already come.
• The next alien encounter in space is out there for you to find.
• You can now take Raven to visit other planets (only the option to visit Jaevol III is completed so far).
• A debugger is active in the game (possibly buggy depending on when you're using it).

Please use the Mediafire link if you have the option because Dropbox will only allow a small amount of downloads with my account.

Mediafire
Dropbox

And in case you don't want to sign up to get the DayDreamer player, I've provided the links below. Again use Mediafire first.

Mediafire: DayDreamer
Dropbox: DayDreamer

Plan B, or maybe C

Well I was hoping to have an update ready some time in May, but RL and writer's block combined to put the kibosh on that. Now, however everything seems to have settled down and I'm almost ready for a release. I only have 1 or 2 more scenes to write so I hope it'll be ready before July, but no promises. If you kindly glance to the right side you'll notice an update it status for the next release, but it's only general information and a full(er) changelog will be coming with the release announcement.

Taking Questions

For those of you who care about the book you can find in your cockpit, I put it there to add a little flavor to the game. I would like to have more information in it but I have no idea what any of you would like to know. To fix that, I'm going to let you ask any question you would like to know here. I will try to answer your queries in the next update of the game, but I do have to put a caveat on this open forum; the more general your questions the better because it will allow me not to have to create such an intricate backstory. I can't imagine that I would outright refuse to answer one of your questions, but that brings me back to my initial point so I'll just say I'll try to answer any question about the universe the game exists in that you have.

Please put your questions in the comment section of this post.

Update

Alright, version .06 of Spaced 2 is now ready. Aside from being proud of myself from actually getting something done, Spaced 2 is now larger than Dungeon at approximately 50 mb.

The changelog (as far as I can remember from the last edition) goes as follows:

• Bug fixes: the bugs preventing you from seeing certain scenes with Raven have been dealt with, the error with alien attack on the starbase should be gone, and a bunch of others I can't recall at this moment have been eliminated. Just remember, I didn't go through every single permutation of my game, so I'm bound to have missed something along the way. If you find a bug, please let me know.
• More Raven content. All of the new material is associated with the residence, so you'll have to buy that to see it, however, old material that was previously unable to be seen (such as the second half of the shopping adventure) should now be available.
• The residence now costs 250,000, and as you start off with that much it shouldn't be too much trouble for you to see the new scenes if that's all you want.
• More areas to explore: the underworld of the Casino is now open to you with a few little events for you to enjoy, though it is far from finished.
• New missions: the Starbase Commander now can give you your first mission.
• New text: I've taken advantage of the new DayDreamer build and converted most of the game dialogue into colored text. I know for a fact that I didn't get it all, but all of the things I missed are tied directly to the rooms (and there are a ton of rooms in this game) so I decided to put that off until the next full build. Because I went through and redid all of the text, there should be far few spelling/grammatical errors in the game, but I want to know from you how easy it is to read the game text in the new colors: Is it tough to read against the white background, is it tough to discern from the black text, etc....

There are some other (minor) additions to the game that I'd rather you find on your own, mostly because they only add flavor to the game and don't impact gameplay at all, but also because I believe they'd be more enjoyable if you didn't go in knowing that they were there.

Anyway, enjoy.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/95d6dh4sp0cllp6/Spaced%202%20.06.ddz?m
http://www.mediafire.com/?m598yzr08fqggoj

Good News Everyone!

Well...more a good news/bad news/good news kind of thing.

In my free time I have been able to get around to programming, not as much as I was doing before, but it's better than nothing.

On the negative side, for those of you who were looking forward to a third part of Dungeon, well that muse seems to be MIA. I've tried to get up the desire to write additional scenes for that game, but all I end up doing is staring at the game editor. For the time being Dungeon is in a state of limbo.

So, you might ask, what have I been programming? Well aside from a brief foray into trying my had at RAGS, I've been adding pieces to Spaced 2. I've gotten to the point where I'll be releasing an update after finishing off two-three more scenes (sometime in the next week or so).

I'll give a more detailed changelog when the new version is released.

P.S. I was hoping that I wouldn't have such long gaps between posts, but once a month is about all I could expect from myself.