Well, if you haven't heard, the Bacillus Kickstarter campaign was not only successful, it was 288% successful.
275 people bought the game before I even finished it. I'm going to take that as : people think this game is pretty neat.
I only expected around 30 to pledge to around 9 times that is amazing. And about 300% the funding goal is even better.
But now the pressure is on me (and Omar) to create an amazing game (Oh boy). Don't worry though, I'm working incredibly hard. I'm writing this blog post after pulling an all night coding session, fixing bugs and improving the AI code. And the already has some pretty amazing updates thanks to the kickstarter campaigns.
Since the campaign, I've been able to implement : Subspecies variation code, switching from arrays to vectors to make the game run faster, and an improved AI code (the old AI code had 48 unique behaviors, this one has over 50,000 unique behaviors).
And even though, I don't like talking about things that aren't in the game yet, it looks like the next step is to do a huge improvement on the collision detection code. This might not sound too exciting (because collision detection is already in the game, and holds its function), but implementing this new system will allow me to change the flagella animation. The current flagella animation is just a sprite which shows the flagella move according to a sine wave, which looks ok - but is kind of unrealistic. The new system (and that's if this system get's implemented correctly), will simulate the flagella like a string off of the bacteria, moving the bacteria will cause the string to 'rotate', and when you rotate the bacteria the flagella will 'curl' with the bacteria. I'm not sure if I'm explaining it correctly (as once I've been up for 14 hours now, and my brain shuts down at 12), but what this adds up to is better animation.
Surveys have also gone out for the kickstarter backers who backed <$40. And it already looks like 90% of them are in. Which means I need to find a creative way to answer all those questions (or maybe I already know what to do and am not going to tell you yet?).
For those of you who pledged >$40, I'm waiting on the money to transfer to my bank account so I can send you a T-shirt. Thanks to amazon, that can be anywhere from 5 days to 3 weeks. So please be patient. There really isn't a rush, since the game wont be finished then, there's still plenty of time to get your input in.
Oh yeah, did I mention I did an interview for GameAspect.com a while back (when the kickstarter just started). It finally got posted.
Thank you to all the backers of the project, and more updates coming soon.
275 people bought the game before I even finished it. I'm going to take that as : people think this game is pretty neat.
I only expected around 30 to pledge to around 9 times that is amazing. And about 300% the funding goal is even better.
But now the pressure is on me (and Omar) to create an amazing game (Oh boy). Don't worry though, I'm working incredibly hard. I'm writing this blog post after pulling an all night coding session, fixing bugs and improving the AI code. And the already has some pretty amazing updates thanks to the kickstarter campaigns.
Since the campaign, I've been able to implement : Subspecies variation code, switching from arrays to vectors to make the game run faster, and an improved AI code (the old AI code had 48 unique behaviors, this one has over 50,000 unique behaviors).
And even though, I don't like talking about things that aren't in the game yet, it looks like the next step is to do a huge improvement on the collision detection code. This might not sound too exciting (because collision detection is already in the game, and holds its function), but implementing this new system will allow me to change the flagella animation. The current flagella animation is just a sprite which shows the flagella move according to a sine wave, which looks ok - but is kind of unrealistic. The new system (and that's if this system get's implemented correctly), will simulate the flagella like a string off of the bacteria, moving the bacteria will cause the string to 'rotate', and when you rotate the bacteria the flagella will 'curl' with the bacteria. I'm not sure if I'm explaining it correctly (as once I've been up for 14 hours now, and my brain shuts down at 12), but what this adds up to is better animation.
Surveys have also gone out for the kickstarter backers who backed <$40. And it already looks like 90% of them are in. Which means I need to find a creative way to answer all those questions (or maybe I already know what to do and am not going to tell you yet?).
For those of you who pledged >$40, I'm waiting on the money to transfer to my bank account so I can send you a T-shirt. Thanks to amazon, that can be anywhere from 5 days to 3 weeks. So please be patient. There really isn't a rush, since the game wont be finished then, there's still plenty of time to get your input in.
Oh yeah, did I mention I did an interview for GameAspect.com a while back (when the kickstarter just started). It finally got posted.
Thank you to all the backers of the project, and more updates coming soon.
