Thursday's EP3 Update!

Building a game is all about data management. Sure, you have your AI, engines, game play elements, etc. But at the very end it is all about the data. Moving data X to point Y by time Z. And while QuitIt! is really an Entertainment app with some game elements, it relies heavily on data management. For those that have played QuitIt!, you may notice the smoothness in animation. QuitIt! is pure 2D, but if you watch the anims, it really doesn't look like we're using a flip book of animation, like so many 2D apps use. And that's because we're not! There is a complex web of data that is used to properly animate everything in the game. Which translates to ... a lot of data!

Over the past few days, we've upgraded our tool chains. What this will allow us to do is have better control (hopefully) over how Accessories are placed on Lumpy. But in doing this, it basically required that we reprocess all of our animations. Once reprocessed, we then had to process the data to generate the runtime data.

In QuitIt!, there are roughly 1000+ asset files. Around 185 of those are sound files, about 350 of those are textures, and the rest are data. During an average snapshot at runtime, we have loaded into memory around 128 sound effects and roughly 53-60 textures. All these assets are juggled around on the fly when you switch Pokers and get new Gifts, providing a seamless play experience.

Now that's a lot of data! Which means that it took quite a bit of time to make all those changes. As we're a small company, and I'm the only tech guy, I was the one doing all that reprocessing of the data. I finished all the data processing yesterday and am validating everything. While it's awesome we got all that behind it, it's not so awesome that it chewed up so much time. The upside is that this should allow for a better Accessories (eg. hats, beards, etc) experience as well as continued expandability for QuitIt!