Christmas Morning!

I've got to be bluntly honest: the last 24 hours have been like one long Christmas morning. :D

Take a look at the Showcase entry for Membrane Massacre. Go. I dare you. Gah! Just shy of 300 downloads in 24 hours. I am utterly wow'd and humbled. Not too much feedback on GD.NET, but on IndieGamer.com, Allegro.cc, and TheGamingUniverse.com, I got some very good (and motivating!) feedback. (Gads, that's like 1 download every 5.1 minutes!)

Anyways, the general suggestions that I got were pretty consistant:

• Control scheme needs an option to allow for absolute-control, rather than the current relative control. (ie. WSAD always moves you in THAT direction)
  
• Not exciting enough. Cells just sort of sit around and aren't aggressive enough. True.
  
• Graphics are ugly. Very true. :)
  
• Too short. Again, oh so true.
  
• Needs a way to gauge level destruction, to add an element of time and challenge. TRUE!
  
• Needs a pause button!
  
• Needs a menu system!
  
• Needs volume control!
  
• Mouse-wheel'ing should scroll through weapons!
  
• More interesting enemies! (ie. resistance to weapon types)
  
• More weapons!

The best part, I think, (for a developer) is that I agree with all of these. There's really a LOT of stuff that I can/should do to this game that would improve it a lot. And the best part is that I'm quite motivated to do so!

For a while now I've been a little depressed that my games have lacked a real level of polish to them, and I keep on telling myself that I'll really polish up "my next project". I've finally decided that, well, no more! I'll stick to Membrane Massacre, polish it up, and heck, maybe even see if I can take it to the shareware level. ;)

Naturally, this means a lot of work. And time. Mostly time. My code isn't the prettiest there is -- recall that I hacked this together in 15 days :P -- but I'm actually surprised at how easy it's been to add new features. I don't think expansion will be a problem, but I really really regret not doing ANY commenting. :(

In conclusion, this means that MM will be staying in the spotlight for a while longer. I'm not sure how long it will take me to do all of the polish I want to do, but it'll probably somewhere in the realm of a month or so. There's so many awesome additions I can't wait to add, so I don't foresee motivation drying up anytime soon. Especially not after the awesome reception I got from today's release!


Post-Mortem?

Oops, I've really been shirking on this. I'll be traveling home this weekend, where my non-dev PC is, so maybe I can focus on doing that. There's more than enough for me to ramble about. ;)


With that, I wish you all a good night, and I can't begin to thank all of you enough for taking the time to play Membrane Massacre. It really does mean tons to me. :)