Saturday, March 6, 2010

Jools Watsham's Developer Diary: Some Publisher Action!

Saturday, Mar 6, 2010: Well, well, well, what do we have here? We have some more publisher interest going on. Finally! Why is it that it never just rains, it pours? Hey, I'm not complaining though. This time they actually said "We are ready to move to contract," which is what I want to hear. :) So, now we have a couple of publishers interested in Spirit, and one ready to pull the trigger on Face. Now, even though I am over the moon about this and ready to explode; a project is never real until the ink has dried on the contract. Having said that though, I am feverishly working on the Game Design Document.


In other news, we sent the Red proposal off to the publisher only to find out that due to GDC being next week we won't be hearing or doing anything about that until the week after next - great timing! I wouldn't be surprised if progress on Spirit and Face is slowed down due to GDC too. Argh!


I haven't heard anything back on Puzzle. So, that could mean the publisher is too busy to review and respond or they just aren't that into it. Time will tell.


Our development progress on Spirit is going great. The foundation for the AI is coming along very well. I've been adjusting parameters for the player controls and had some encouraging results. What we have going is already leagues above similar titles on the DS. Sure, that probably sounds arrogant, but I'm just telling the truth and echoing what others who have played the game have said. I'm not sure if other developers just don't try as hard as we do or if they don't have the experience we do. Oh well, it makes us look better anyway. :) Now, before anyone goes crazy and thinks that's an attack on all DS developers, it's not. This perspective is relative only to the genre we're working on with Spirit. Other developers, such as Wayforward, do an outstanding job with their games. Contra 4 is amazing (a little too difficult for my liking), and I'm really looking forward to Shantae.


We have one other publisher we're in talks with about some future DSiWare action. Their focus is purely on digital distribution. So, that's exciting too.


Lot's of potential stuff going on. Let's hope I have some concrete news next week.


Hope you're having a great day. TTYL.

Jools