The Progress - END

Our due date is coming up and things are very hectic here at TTgames.
For this blogpost we wanted to share some of our final thoughts while finishing this game and give you all an insight into the mind of a programmer the last days before an important assignment has to be completed. We are very excited to see how our final game will look like and if you and the rest of the players will like the final result. We of course hope that all of you will appreciate ‘Naked Molerats’ and that the majority will become addicted to our game. 
Our head programmer Sander has been working tirelessly over past few days to make sure everything goes smoothly and no problems will occur during our presentation.

He has been coordinating with the other members of our team and helping wherever he can, while still doing his best on adding more and more features to the game. Our communication started of very lousy, but as time passed by we started to become better at it and we have become a well oiled machine. In the very beginning we had some problems connecting with each other, which resulted in various miscommunications. We were searching for the best approach to keep each other up to date. At the end of this project our communication was what we wished for how it should be. Every week we shared our personal progress and Jeremy divided the remaining tasks. By upholding this system we were able to put our game together piece by piece in a very organised way.

We all are trying our very best to create a great and complete feel to the gaming sensation our customers all deserve. However as our due date nears ever closely as time continues to flow so endlessly, there is only so much we can do in the short amount of time we have left. 
There is still much to do and much to add to what has already become a magnificent project in our eyes. One of the things we are currently very busy with is adding a lot of our sound effects and background music to the game. Just to give an indication of how hectic things are at the moment, tomorrow morning Sander and Rowan are going to record some last minute background music and Deion has to add and edit footage for the trailer, nonetheless we have the confidence that our game will be completed on time. Just like the music we are primarily trying to add the final and (although small) key features to maximize the gaming experience. As we continue in the process it is great to see how everything keeps falling together and how our teamwork bears fruit.

When we were making the design plan for our game, we had a lot of nice ideas which we put into the ‘could category’. We decided to put as much in our game as possible, because of the excitement shared by the entire team. This was caused mostly by the fact that all of us have played worms (a similar game) and we all wanted to see our ideas come to life so badly. But as time went by and we could see the rate of our progress, we slowly started to see that we weren’t able to put a lot of this ‘coulds’ in our game. We just simply had too many ideas to implement them all. In the beginning this discouraged us a bit, but finally we understood that we just wanted too much in the time available. Even though we could not see all our plans spring to life we are still very pleased with our final result and we are under the impression that we created a good and fun game to play.  

This was our final blogpost, the final time reporting our weekly progress. We enjoyed informing our fans and now all have fun playing ‘Naked Molerats’. We hope it will amuse you for hours and hours to come! It saddens us to say goodbye to everyone, but just like all good things this blog also has to come to an end, GOODBYE EVERYONE!

The progress - part 2

For this blog we thought it would be a good idea to tell something about the origin of our name “Timeous Tranquility Games”, or TTGames in short. After that we will talk a little bit about the art of the rats and decoration objects. Finally, there is something to read about the more technical side of the decoration objects and what we are going to do in the near future.

Before we even made the official project groups, a couple of us already had an idea of who to group up with. Due to some issues with balance, however, that group got split up. That old group consisted of Sander, Rowan, Jeremy and some other guys and was called Crepe Games. When we got split in two separate groups, we had to decide which group got the name and which one got the game to make. Obviously we got the game and the others continued as Crepe Games. There was a bit of trouble since we did not have that much time left to come up with a name. Of course there was some fun in coming up with one and after a while we came up with DoubleTGames and TTGames. Despite knowing that people might say ‘titty games’ instead of pronouncing is as ‘tee tee games’, we still thought TTGames sounded a lot better and went with that.

The only problem left was that we had to find something that TT could stand for. We were looking for something that reflects our group and sounded a bit intelligent as well. We were pretty much all very relaxed and a bit lazy at times, so we wanted something like ‘rest’. Obviously that does not start with a T, so the word we came up with was tranquility. Then we still had to put a word starting with a T in front of that. So we had to find an adjective that fits with tranquility. We started thinking about something like ‘time’ or ‘timed’ and after a little bit of thinking we decided that timeous was the right word. It fits very well with most of us; being relaxed for the most part, but work hard from time to time. For example the day(s) before a deadline. That fits perfectly with our name, so the decision was made and we became Timeous Tranquility Games.

Sander, our most skillful programmer thanks to his pre-knowledge which he acquired through a course he followed in highschool, also likes to do a bit of artwork. And since we're making ''naked molerats'' he was drawing out his naked molerats. Needless to say, these things were hilariously drawn, the shape and the sheer ugliness caused a lot of laughter in the team. We decided that this cannot be in the final product, so he made another version. In that version the molerats still looked absolutely hideous, but not quite as before. Now we're using sprites that are more humanlike but still resemble the essence of a naked molerat, which is what most of us had in mind in the first place. The rest of the art he has done looked okay for an early version of the game, but probably need to be polished a bit more. By the way, the reason that Sander did a lot of the art us because he has tablet on which he can make drawings quickly.

A problem that we are currently facing is walking over terrain decorations. Walking over terrain is working fine, but the decorations make things a lot harder. These decorations make the game more fun, but maybe we should focus on other aspects of the game before putting many hours into this problem. The game is still playable if we make the molerats just ignore the decorations, so it may very well be a better option to leave that as it is until we have done some more important stuff. Speaking of more important stuff, we still need to start working on the modding system. We have got pretty much everything planned out, now we just need to program the whole thing. Which is going to be a close call considering how much time we have left. As our name suggests though, now is the time to stop resting and work much more on the game.

This was this week’s blog post. Apologies for the late posting time. Our next and probably last update will be about our final product and things we will add over the course of the next two weeks. Though we will probably do some tweaking here and there over in the weekend after.

- TTGames