I wanted to write for quite some time, a lot of things has been have been happening lately. Like Yoda said: "Always in movement is the future" and I can foresee a lot of disturbance in the force in the year to come.
The good news, is that I finished school, which gives me more free time ... in theory, But I will probably change job which should require more work hours, therefore less free time. I also learned a lot of things about myself and I am starting to make adjustments to adapt myself to this new reality.
Right now, I work on tiny portions of projects here and there, you can follow the progress on Gitlab. It allows keeping my mind busy and makes me forget my problems for a while. So things are progressing slowly for now, so it's hard to see when something new will be released.
The big master plan of doom
I decided that every thing I do, from hobbies to work, is part of the big master plan of doom. The idea is to subdivide the plan in tiny pieces that can easily be achieved. It works like lego blocks, you design new models of lego blocks, then in unlocks the possible buildings you can create. As time passes, you design new blocks allowing the creation of more complex structure. This is why I decomposed everything in many small pieces, Especially the computer programming part, it makes it easier to produce and looks less overwhelming.
Glymmer: This is the dialog system engine. The latest modification, which are still in progress, uses bitmap for background glyphs allowing much more beautiful user interface. It could also support game icons in the text (Think: magic the gathering or civilization).
Once this is done, the next milestone is the connection with the database. This should be enough to implement most of the menu interface in Wizardry Legacy. This is where you will start to see some progress.
Changing technology
One thing I have in mind is to change my development tools. So I was thinking of making a small game project that will completely use this new technology. It would become a reference game for other projects later. I would like to test a new language, compiler, build system, game library and deployment on distribution platforms (ex: itch.io)
Poker Dice: This is the dummy game I want to make. It's a simple poker dice rolling system where you hold dice and roll the rest in order to get the best hand. I should be able to make this on it's own without any other libraries I designed.
Game Projects
Wizardry Legacy: I will always have a few free games. They will be used as tests dummies to make sure the engines I am making works and are not buggy. Wizardry Legacy is one of those games. It will mostly be used to test the user interface and the maze engine. I intend to keep the game simple, I will probably drop the tactical positioning and the multiclassing features. Might keep this for other commercial games.
Bubble Burst: This game is sleeping on my computer. Last time I touched this game, it seemed somewhat balanced but required further testing. I am mentioning this game because I learned from it's design that using AI to play the game and collecting stats greatly improved the design of the game. I would have never been able to make the necessary adjustments with just physical board game testing. So I intend to test all my board games digitally.
Saving the world system: In the recent weeks, I had many ideas that could unlock this game's design process. It would make the game playable and much more interesting. The idea behind this system is to create cooperative/solitaire games like Eldritch Horror, Elder Sign and Arkham Horror. The idea was to redesign my Eldrich Express into a new Steampunk themed game that could be published on it's own. The system could then be reused for other themes.
So this is all I have so far. I don't like making people wait, but it seems I still have more important priorities to deal with.