sandy and the flood were different events -- my city of paterson flooded (but had power) during hurricane irene, and had no power (but didn't flood) during hurricane sandy. both interrupted my ability to work on the game; with irene i had to stay at my father's place for a week, and with sandy we weren't forced to evacuate but we had 9 days without power, so i couldn't do much work on the game besides read through the notes and make plans and such. still that's only a week or so out of 52 weeks, not a big loss, though annoying
Ah, I didn't realize that Irene caused so much damage. It seemed everybody was just like "it's a dud" at the time, but I didn't follow too closely. But I guess what I meant is, aside from the disruption in work, did seeing a large area flooded up-close give you any uh, "inspiration" (for lack of a better word) for your game?
I just see large-scale destruction as a kind of surreal thing, I remember one time a small creek we have here flooded tremendously, like, into a raging torrent. It completely reshaped the landscape. I went and looked at it (from a safe distance, though probably still closer than would be reccommended) and it was just... like reality had been shuffled. It was even weirded when the water left and I rode my bike through the area, there are like completely new channels with flowing water that became permanent, and other changes to the landscape. Not to mention 8/13 bridges were washed out completely.
as for updates, like eva said i'm working on the final areas of the game -- the final ~100. there are planned to be 1000 hand-made areas, and i'm working on the final 10% of them -- about half of those 100 remaining will be normal exploration areas, and the other half will be dream mode (shmup) areas. i'm going at a rate of 1-2 areas per day so those shouldn't take all that long (another two months i'd guess). after those are done i need to finish up a few more minor tasks, and then put it into playtesting (anyone who volunteered in this thread will be pm'd a that time), and likely will release the game in late spring or early summer, unless of course the playtesters suggest so many improvements that it's worth it to implement their ideas before release
Cool stuff! I'm glad that the game is in the home stretch, I'm looking forward to it.
Eva thank you too for the update
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