Knowing what “Done” looks like

It’s important to know what “Done” looks like. It’s a phrase one of my friends uses when talking about programming.

So far the development of Waves has been in what I would consider a pre-production phase. I know that alot of people think it looks finished because it’s graphically very polished but the reality is that while I could release what I have now to the world I wouldn’t be proud of the result. It’s not done yet.

I’ve actually spent the last few weeks figuring out what “Done” looks like and I now have a list of everything I need to do to ensure that I can hit it.

It’s a big list and as I work through the tasks it will only get bigger. That’s just how lists work.

This at last means that I am confident about what will actually be in Waves when it gets released for the first time since I started. If I had sat down at the start and designed an Arena Shooter then what I designed would not be what Waves has become and this would be bad. It would be far more generic and much less interesting. I’d be ticking off genre tropes on a list rather than finding out what works and why some things are fun and others aren’t.

Waves won’t be coming out this year. I’m confident of this. With only about 6 weeks left in the year to realistically get anything done it means that the first beta version won’t happen until sometime in January next year at the earliest.

Sadly the part that is going to take the longest time is as always going to be the GUI. I hate doing the GUI so if you happen to be an amazing (and cheap!) Flash designer then you might be able to help with that. Feel free to get in touch if that’s the case.

It’s a good feeling knowing what “Done” looks like.