Had another meeting with my chief game-tester and rubber duck, Simon. It was pretty productive as usual, and we uncovered some interesting bugs in the storage system, an interesting quirk in pathfinding, and an issue with monster respawning. None of them are particularly complex, and I should be able to get them all fixed up tomorrow.

We also had a chat about the overall state of the game, and I was able to show him the new starting map I’ve been working on my immediate plans. It seems like there’s still such a lot to do, and I’m not sure I’ll make my (completely arbitrary) deadline of next week. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if I don’t make it — I’m going to be working on this for a long time to come — but it’d be nice to go back to full-time employment with a clean to-do list.

Mainly, it’s content. All the main systems are in place, which is great; I just have a lot of items, recipes, NPCs and quests to make. I’m starting to wish I’d written some more tools, to be honest. I often don’t like to make a tool too early, lest I get caught up in making them too nice and never actually making the thing the tool is supposed to make — so many game ideas over the years have resulted only a half-baked engine and a really nice level editor.

But I could really do with an item editor, and a monster editor, and an NPC dialogue/quest editor. Making an NPC in particular is a bit convoluted. I may have over-stretched myself right at the “finish” line. We’ll see where I’m at by this time next week…