As I’m coming close to finishing up this project, I have to admit there have been a number of times I’ve almost completely given up.  The self-doubt in my head has often filled me with thoughts from “You don’t have enough time” to “The game isn’t fun enough” to prevent me from finishing – among some other issues such as some massive deadlines at work that have kept me weekends and late into the evening and some time that friends have needed.  But I cannot thank enough my family who have been supportive of my efforts in completing the game – especially my wife.

Once the contest is over, I will unlock all my private posts about the game as a “post-partum” view of the challenges I have faced in creating the game.  (By the way, I like the term “post-partum” better than “post-mortem.”  It’s more apropos and less morbid.)

Already I feel I’ve had to make a number of compromises to make the game possible within the timeframe I have.  From a technological standpoint, I am very happy with the performance of FreeSpin3D, however, I believe I have pushed it and Flash to its technological limit in terms of processing power and speed for software-only graphical rendering.  I’ve also used a number of mathematical tricks and artistic flair to give the game some polish.  So I am very happy with how the game looks from the artistic standpoint.  So from both an artistic standpoint and a technological standpoint, I am very happy with the results.  Although, from a coding standpoint, I’d love to get a code review with someone to figure out how to reduce the bloat in the Main Document class and to see common strategies and paradigms for creating elegant, modularized scenes and functionality.

My only doubt is gameplay.  “Is this fun?”  And much like most AAA-games, you can have the best technology and some fancy eye-candy graphics, but if the game isn’t fun, then what’s the point?

For now, the point is finishing the game and getting it published.  This is only the beginning and I’ll only get better.