Getting something up!

Good Evening,

It's funny. I am a big believer in getting something up and out there even if it's in it's early days. For me, it gives me a little push to continue working on it - the knowledge that there could be eyes watching and expectations to be met.

It's not always a good thing but more often than not I think it's worthwhile doing, especially if you're uploading it for free so there's no downsides to any customer.

But once it's out there it's natural to leave it to settle and come back in a few days, weeks, months and see how you're feeling about it. Fresh eyes and all that. But today I found myself uploaded the very first part of a new project and then spending the next 3 hours uploading it again with a small fix here .. a little improvement there and suddenly I'm left thinking I should have just waited until I was happy with it.

But I'm not happy with it.

Lighting issues.

One of the problems with "James and the Trucker" is my decision to try and set it at night, in a wooded area, behind a truck. It didn't allow much natural light and thus I had to make it by default not pitch black but not too light that two guys getting it on at the side of the road wouldn't go unnoticed.

But then James got the truck and behind the truck I found that it was DARK ... and I mean DARK. You couldn't see the Trucker, James, anything. And what followed was me placing artificial lights in awkward places to illuminate the scene. This is why you may notice that James is actually easier to see once he gets behind the Truck.

Stupid early mistake leads to inconsistency in the art. A lesson learned for sure.

Font and text issues

When I first uploaded the project it was pixelating the text pretty badly. I developed the project in 1080p but it's embedded on itch at 1600 .. which is smaller! This is so people who are using 1080p monitors hopefully don't have to scroll or do anything awkward to start playing.

It took me far too long messing with the settings and I'm still not 100% sure what the issue was or how I fixed it but it's looking much nicer and easier to read now! Hurray!

Quality or Quantity

Because I know I want to get to work on a much larger story - the idea of making a project like this with lots of little 5-10 minute stories appealed to me. But I've uploaded the project and so far there's .. one story. Hardly a massive showing.

I'd like to think I can get at least another up by the end of the week but I also want to add sound and polish and maybe even go back and fix the lighting on James.

A decision has to be made there and I am the only one who can make it.

Anyway..

I hope if you give the game a go - that you enjoy it and let me know any and all feedback you may have.

You're the best!