Post-KickStarter
Turnover’s KickStarter campaign finished unfunded.
I want to take the opportunity to say thanks to everyone who backed the campaign, as well as anyone following the progress of the game. During the campaign, I have met many nice gamers and gamedevs. The kind words that I have received about Turnover has meant a lot to me.
Work continues on Turnover and I’m pushing forward and planning a campaign relaunch. Running a campaign is super time consuming, so I want to ensure I have every base covered and have addressed all feedback before I relaunch. I’ll post more about it as things solidify.
Story & Cutscenes
Working from my story outline, I’ve begun fleshing out the script for Turnover. In the game, I want to tell the story of Clea, Bartleby Automation, and Grand Robotics that takes place in alternate reality (not that alternate) America. Right now, the narrative will be told during a handful of concise cutscenes. I want to avoid pulling a Metal Gear Solid and interrupting the game frequently, so I’m going to tell the story as quick as I can.
If you’re a fan of political/corporate intrigue, then the story of Turnover will be right up your alley. I understand some players care little about story and want to get right to playing, and I respect that, so all cutscenes are skippable.
Also, I spent the post-KickStarter malaise coding the cutscene class. Now, I can script cutscenes pretty quickly. The cutscenes have a certain style and I really look forward to see what others think about them.
Optimization
A few weeks back I posted about some optimizations I made regarding sprite drawing. Well, I finally had a chance to test Turnover out an older laptop. This laptop covered to test scenarios I was concerned about: an older processor (2.0 ghz) and an older Intel mobile chipset (GMA 4500).
Pre-optimization, Turnover would run somewhere in the 40-60fps range. Now, it easily runs @ 120+ fps. I pretty much jumped for joy to see I have consistent performance among my decently modern system and and older mobile setup. Even though there is still more optimizing ahead, I’m confident that Turnover will run well on a wide range of systems now.
Next
I’d really like to put some serious attention into cutscenes and new levels soon, but an upcoming KickStarter relaunch means my full focus will once again be pulled away from development. So I’ll have to put in more hours to compensate or anticipate pushing back my internal release window. I’m beginning to doubt I’ll have an alpha/beta out by the end of the year. Such is life.
