DBalthazaR

After entering the Alpha stages of development for Tessellation Desolation, I have gotten a better idea of the release date for the game. This date is not precise, but it is a reasonable estimate. Seeing how work has developed for this game, the estimate is that the full-game will be able to release around Spring of 2016. This is not definite, and quality will dictate when this release will actually occur.

There are several unknowns preventing a date from being set in stone. Namely, this game will have abstract art and sound. The art that has been presented does not strictly represent what will be in the final game. The entire game might be more reliant on textures than it currently is, or every spec of detail might be of a mathematical model that procedurally applies textures to objects. The art design is still entirely up in the air for the final game.

Concerns about the art specifically have risen from the backlash I received on Steam's Greenlight. I certainly understand that there is some level of quality desired at face value in Steam's community hub. Mostly because this is a direct interface to potential consumers. However, I was mistaken that it was clear that this game is unfinished. Granted, even if it was well described and understood that gameplay is the more polished substance currently, and final art and sound will follow, I doubt responses would have been different. They are the market, and if the market wants to have support given to things immediately ready to distribute, then I will have to respect that. Regardless of what Valve gives as the impression for Greenlight, it is ruled by the community. Of course, everyone had their reason for saying something degrading about Tessellation Desolation, and no general concept I fabricate from observation is going to be definite in why they were so harsh. Even if it were more detailed -- with better art and sound -- they could still just hate it.

Anyway, art and sound are a large concern for an unknown reserve of time needed to complete Tessellation Desolation. Some aspects are well known. I have an artist lined up to produce stills for cut-scenes. It is inspired by my really basic thumbnail that I have been using for the face of this game. Basically some simple art -- more detailed than what I made -- reflecting an inked and colored comic book style that will represent in-game propaganda. Whether or not this propaganda is going to reflect historical representations is not entirely known. It could be made to look modern, futuristic, or even just be strictly relate-able to the game world.

Another concern about experimental aspects concern puzzles. Several puzzles have reasonable ideas behind them, but they all need to be tested. How a puzzle will work, when it would appear, and its difficulty are the things I have been looking at to determine what constitutes a good puzzle in the game. As the only presented material for Tessellation Desolation has been samples of how the game will work, I do not have any really strong puzzles publicly available. Some obstacle based maneuvers do exist in the prototype, but I think they highlight general game mechanics more than being reflective of a puzzle. Though I do find it hard to distinguish some maneuvers from puzzles. For example, in the prototype -- at the end of the level -- there are gaps to spiked beds. One of the gaps is quite large, and while the initial thought might be to go from a triangle to a line to float between all of these gaps, the large one is too far to successfully cross using only these two shapes. The square rotates faster than these two characters, and so before switching to the line, the player must switch to the square to travel enough distance to be able to clear the gap when turning into the line. Overall, I would not call this sort of thing a puzzle though. It is strict to the general mechanics and can be practiced anywhere for a desired speed boost.

Other work has an accountable amount of time. Actually producing an object, a shading program, building a level to test, and decorating a scene(with a known level of detail) has a pretty clear completion time-frame at this point. These construction based activities are what I have used to formulate my guess for a release in Spring. Again this could completely change. I have a lot of puzzles and obstacles to get through before mechanics can be fully balanced. This is to ensure that the gameplay will make sense with the chosen level designs for the full-game. Then bugs will have to be sorted, which is an unknown, but for the scale of this project seems less of a burden than it could be. After this is done, befitting art and sound will be used to invigorate the game. Then a final quality control test to determine what could work better and where, before the final release.

This is my current development timeline for Tessellation Desolation. Not too much has changed honestly. The start of this project was entirely focused on making fluid and interesting mechanics before getting hung up on an aesthetic. So for now, I am just: overseeing mock-ups; producing test samples; building rough final levels; correcting mechanics; then polishing up the crude levels. There is a lot that can be done using simple geometry to make art, and I strongly think what is most suitable will be known better when the mechanics, and level outlines are more final.