Here's my LD game:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-28/?action=preview&uid=18059



Now that I'm burned out on that, I can recover from being burned out on Painters Guild.

My "Women in Painters Guild" article 'backfired' in one community, meaning it got some hate and views. Views are good.

[Painters Guild: Leonardo da Vinci]

My plans for what's next in December:

- Finish painting requests (varying difficulty, different patrons).
- Turn what I have so far into a minigame called Painters Guild: Leonardo da Vinci.
- Make a teaser video for the full game or for Leonardo, not sure yet. This will require cool video editing: text and music.
- Release the teaser video then the minigame. Hope for some media coverage (especially for the minigame, press likes playable games).

Development continues normally throughout that. If the minigame idea works I'll do another one in January, if not I'll try something else (alpha version maybe).

I could try a small twitter campaign for the release date of Leonardo, showing paintings with hidden numbers or something. We'll see.

3deep

Women in Painters Guild (article on IndieDB)

Doing Ludum Dare, probably not many updates in the weekend. My game is about a slice of bread.

Yeah Rebusmind, that's what I was thinking, but I don't know anymore. I think I'll have to use "windows" for UI stuff, like when you hire an artist a window pops up and you can move it around the screen. Same for buying furniture.

That's a good idea ANtY.

I won't bother with the UI too much for now. Focus on more important stuff. After LD of course! This weekend I'm gonna make a silly game for LD to recharge my Painters Guild motivation.

Finally, I wrote another IndieDB article for Painters Guild. This time it's about women in the game. I'll post the link here when it's authorized.

Why isn't the UI on the top part of the screen?

I thought it looked better on the bottom, don't you think?



Image for comparison.

Gold (florins) UI:



Does it look misplaced or intrusive?

Did a couple more UI buttons.



They seemed too small for their importance. The first one is for hiring artists and the second one is for buying stuff for the guild. So I added more fluff.



Still not sure how they're gonna look like.

Second attempt at date UI:



Feb 7? That's my birthday!

I fixed a bug that was annoying me for a while, took over an hour but all I had to do was break the loop in the end. I don't even know why it works, I'm just glad it does.

Speaking of times, the bottom left now shows the date.



The border around it isn't final, just my first pass. I'm not very good at creating UI elements, but I think it's important to have a first pass so the second and third attempts can be better.

Everyone gets angry. Everyone.

Tried a twitter thing today and it failed. The idea was "RT to get a shoutout in the next video", nobody RT'd. Either the timing wasn't very good (morning here) or people really don't care about getting a shoutout (very likely).

The paintings tweet was successful, though, with almost 30 RTs that built up a nice following (61 now). People would RT and some would follow right away while others followed after the painting was done. I'll do more of these and try other actions as well.

Another thing I could do is an announcement trailer soonish. That might go better with the press, who hasn't shown any interest in the game so far.

How is the spawn rate of the customers handled? From the screenshots it looks like you just have them come at a set interval, but are you planning on making it dependent on things such as prestige of you guild and such?

Yep, exactly! It will depend on prestige and on the date (busy or calm time of the year). The type of customers will depend on prestige as well, so you start out selling paintings to poor franciscan friars and end up creating works to the Pope.

I should make a video tomorrow addressing these concerns, I've gotten enough comments saying that the game seems too fast.

Maybe I can adjust the timers, adjust the spawn rate of patrons and film myself talking about time and my plans. If I can include the day/month/year part of the UI with time passing too, that would be ideal, 'cause then I can talk about rhythm/pace too.

Thanks guys. I'll try to balance my timers to the slower side. The gameplay will be more about strategy and less about doing things fast enough.

Videoblog #1

Made a little twitter marketing now with this:



Then I made the paintings, example:



It was moderately successful. Gained about 20 followers for @GuildOfPainters, now at 48. Some followers on my account too (@AD1337).

I made a videolog but I'm waiting to see if my musician can make background music (one of the game's soundtrack) before releasing it.

[Small:]

love all the new stuffs

Thanks!

One thing that has been annoying me for some time is the lack of rhythm. The game is a constant flow without variation in gameplay intensity, there are no calmer and more intense moments. I think I found a way to fix this. There should be times when patrons are more likely to come to you asking for art, just like how shops are busier near christmas. I still don't know which time of the year should be more intense, I'll try to research this.

It could also be more intense and less intense years, or a beginning of the month compared to end of the month thing. It will depend on how the time scale of the game ends up being like (1 day per second maybe? I want to cover a large time scale, about 1450-1650).

The 1-day-per-second time scale would mean 2 game-months per minute, and 10 game-years per hour. So to play from 1450 to 1650 would take 20 hours, which is quite a lot. Your first hired artists would start dying about 4 hours (40 game-years) after you start the game. For those that get to be somewhat old, at least - some should die young.

Oh, maybe I could have differently scaled rhythm loops.

Small: You have 5 calm minutes and 1 intense one each year (10 game-months of calm, 2 game-months of intensity).

Large: You have 40 mins of calmer gameplay and 20 minutes of more intensity. That's 8 game-years of calm and 2-game years of intensity. It could be divided so that some event happens every 5 game-years. So in 1545 there's something big, then it slows down and climbs back up to higher intensity in 1550, only to calm down for 5 more years.

I'll try to work on patron spawn rates with these rhythms in mind and see what works.