Last week I was working on story mission IX. I was planning to add new side mission and wasted a lot of time trying to make it work. Due to various limitations, I couldn't make maze missions work well, so I decided to put them away for a while. Now I'm working on mission IX, which is a few days away from completion. Like always, I can't write about story missions. Instead, I thought that maybe it would be interesting for you guys to know how I develop Sector Six. So, here's a day of my life: I wake up late, 10-11 AM, then go to do my daily chores - cleaning, cooking, taking care of cats, etc. My father and brother work outside on our farm, my mom usually busy with something inside and I'm the only one who can do those chores. After chores are out of the way, it's 1-2 PM. This is when development starts. My main tools to develop Sector Six are GameMaker: Studio 1.4, Audacity, and Notepad. That covers programming, graphics, writing and sound editing.
Home sweet home. On a good day, I would code, write, make sprites and do whatever current update requires until 7-9 PM. While the game is being compiled I check Steam community hub and other Sector Six places if there are new comments. That's why I can respond to them so quickly =P On a bad day, I would try to do what I need to do, fail to do it and quit for the day. If I could, I would work 8 hours every day but it is not how it works. I need cool names and new attacks for enemies, interesting sequences for story missions, ways to add new content, ideas to fix game design problems and sometimes I just don't find them in my head. So I go do something relaxing and wait until my brain finds the right way to do things. I'm slowly learning how this all works and results are getting better. In 2016, there used to be not only bad days - there were bad weeks. Now bad days are much less common and even on the worst day, I force myself to work on something easy at least for one hour. That's from where the small fixes and improvements come. After 7-9 PM on a good day, I end development for that day and go rest. I watch shows, YouTube and play games. Or sometimes I go to work on side projects. Most of them are abandoned after a one day, so it's a waste of time, but I can't help it. Sector Six development is going slowly and I just need to try all those ideas that I get and that cannot be applied to Sector Six. Sometimes I go manage my so-called network - Twitter, Facebook, Zuurix.com, Steam groups, Discord. I don't do that often because I don't get much from that. The network will be useful, once I become more popular as a developer. Sometimes I have no game I want to play, so instead, I make games. Sometimes I do everything - play, watch and work on side projects until 1 AM night. That's why I wake up at 11 AM. There are only three things I want to improve in my life: 1) Get more money for my hard work. 2) See more player feedback - comments, videos, screenshots. That'll improve naturally over time. 3) Get a bit of social life going. Not too much, because I'm introvert =] Anyway, right now I am kind of stuck on mission IX. But I've already had a bad day on this, so I'm hoping to do some good progress soon. With every story mission it's becoming harder to come up with new ideas and if I had more time, I'd spend it to polish dialogs and other things. For example, defense system core boss would be much better if I had more time. Technically I have an unlimited amount of time but I decided that this is it - I need to finish Sector Six, 3 years of development is enough. I need to start making a new game, that is not limited by old decisions, so I'm going to cut some corners. Going to cut a corner here and end this echo just like that. Until next time!