Summer 2022

Another release (0.9) has gone out. I was disappointed that there were two notable bugs during this release. I fixed them and did a re-release (0.9a). This led to a true up moment for myself in learning to be better at quality control.

I’m not being thorough enough with my beta testing. I have to remember to take a step back and pretend that I don’t know what’s happening in the story. Players don’t know what’s going to happen nor when. So, they click on anything and everything and in completely random order. I need to do the same. I also need to try and do less reading and spell checking in one sitting. Since I know the words, I will accidentally read past a line, instead of carefully examining each word. I think one scene per sitting would be ideal. It will take longer, but will ensure less chance of errors.

My other downfall is not carefully looking at my variable assignments. This is the second time I have put in a syntax error that unfortunately looks fine to the scripting language, but in reality doesn’t set the variable as I want. That’s a problem. So, I also need to re-check all variable settings in each release very methodically and review it three or more times in different sittings. Especially considering I am only assigning/reading variables maybe a dozen times in each release. It shouldn’t be hard to squash that.

I received a lot of very positive feedback the past couple of releases. It’s important to remember that folks like this are what help me stay focused and help when there’s negative criticism. Always, always as a creator you need to accept and appreciate the good comments and use the bad comments as a way to look harder at what might be going right or wrong in your work. But never internalize the negativity. That is a quick path to losing your spark. Well, that’s all for this time. Take care.