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The beta testers have been doing a great job so far. As soon as I finish fixing a long list of problems I just go back to the beta forum and get a new long list. It seems like it might never end!

Double Beta

This beta test is pretty rough on the testers since they’re not only testing the game content, they are also testing the new menus and battle system which each have their own share of bugs. Hopefully they won’t grow to despise the game by the time they get done.

All the testers have been very patient, even when I  put up a new version that fixes a broken door that leads to a broken room. Not all bugs are bad though, like potions not going away when you use them. That one is fixed now … take that beta testers!

A picture!

Here’s a screenshot of something I just added.

Jade posted a comment about not knowing which potion to use before choosing it and I finally came up with a solution. Now when you point at a potion, instead of saying “Heal a party member for 25hp”, the description text will go away and you’ll be able to see how much the potion will heal. Thanks Jade, I never thought about that before.

Back to beta

Next things on my list are getting the map menu working, fixing the light puzzles that broke at some point for no reason at all and fixing more bugs.

Edit: This beta test is finished now so we don’t need any more testers. Stay tuned for future beta tests.

Hi guys,

The game is getting  very close to the beta phase right now, so I thought it would be a good time to start the beta tester sign up. Hopefully there are enough of you still reading this blog for us to get a nice beta testing league going.

If you have a bit of spare time in the upcoming weeks and you’d be interested in helping us out by playing the game and reporting problems, please send an e-mail to dan@johnwizard.com. I’m only accepting people who played Dawn’s Light so email me from the email you used to buy Dawn’s Light.

Keep in mind that being a beta tester may ruin the experience for some players. You may get stuck multiple times and have to wait for a new version or you might have to replay areas a few times over. You might also see some spoilers from later parts of the game. If you think this would annoy you then you should wait a few weeks for the game to be released.

I better get back to my 100 pages of bugs that I have to fix before beta.

So we’ve been working hard for this last week getting Lilly and Sasha ready for beta testing. As expected, the game is taking longer than expected.

We’re getting closer every day but in the meantime I’ve made a quick preview video. Click on the video to watch it on youtube in higher resolution.

The colored light puzzles are my favorite. I’ve always wanted to do a puzzle like that but I wasn’t sure if it would work. The one in the video is the first one so it’s pretty easy.

I never ended up doing a preview of the new text system but you can see it in the video. It’s got a cool glowing effect behind the text that you might be able to see but it’s a lot clearer in the game. It also has the big text for yelling. The text system was inspired by Twilight Princess. It has really great text.

You’ll also notice the bottom bar that I stole from Aveyond. When I first played Lord of Twilight I knew I wanted to have that in my next game so thanks for that one Amanda. It also completes my goal of making the whole game playable with only one mouse button.

So I should get back to work now. I hope you enjoy the video.

We’re going into the home stretch now. This is the part where we make lists of everything that isn’t done yet. Then after the list is complete we find more things that aren’t done. Sometimes they are really big things that we somehow forgot about. Those are the very worst.

While we’re doing this I’m not going to write any blogs. We need to try to think as little as possible and just follow the list. The more zombie like we can be, the better. Zombies don’t get bored when they develop games which makes them very efficient.

The next blog I write will be the beta announcement so stay tuned if you’re interested in doing some testing.