Mayday Madness

Hotdamnit – I’m still not very good at this blogging thing, frequency-wise anyway. It’s the 1st of May, or at least it was a few hours ago. Production on Quantangled continues in varying combinations of small bursts, quick fits and longer, more drawn out ponderances. Hopefully that will all average out to somewhere around steady-ish. I really, really would like to release Quantangled this year, but I think it’s still too early to tell exactly how long it’s going to take at the moment.

Part of the reason for my uncertainty is that I’ve been having a bit of a restructure of the control code, simplifying it to something more intuitive, although that means some of the user-interface code I’d previously done will also require an overhaul. Still, it’s all for the better, honestly. It might even, eventually, allow me to shoehorn it onto some kind of mobile computing touch screen device. That’s not an immediate concern, however, I’m still focussing on PC and Mac as target machines. Although this is all necessary and productive, visually it doesn’t look like much has changed, although I’ve added a few more graphics and sparkly particle systems along the way. I’m longing to get onto the next phase now, building more puzzles and blocking out the rough level structure, then I’ll have a much more tangible sense of achievement and a clearer image of my overall progress, at least until I approach the end phase, then it’ll be back to polishing the minutiae that eat up my precious man hours like some kind of tropical flesh eating disease. Sorry, got a bit dramatic for a moment there…

A few weeks back I produced and uploaded a concept video on Youtube, it even says coming 2012 – that’s commitment! I’ve also created a Quantangled page on the website and a Facebook page for it with a big, funky timeline-header image, so that’s most of my web and social media crosses ticked, other than the really, insanely important part of telling people that stuff is there, you know, that marketing stuff that traditionally indies are really rubbish at.

I’m hoping not to be really rubbish at marketing, but it’s still too early to unleash my best moves in that arena. Pity, actually, as this week/weekend’s SciFi London festival would have been a good place to start on that. Fortunately there’s a few more choice events on the calendar this year that I’m keeping an eye on, although I haven’t worked out how to turn the Olympics into a marketing opportunity yet. The Olympic torch does pass within 300 yards of my flat though, but I’m not sure Hackney Council would appreciate me spray-painting my website address along the public highway in 20 foot tall letters that can be read by the BBC helicopters, so I might put that particular guerilla-marketing plan on hold…

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