I am slowly but inexorably losing my mind. I’ve been working on Sheeplings for ages, and now I’m finally almost done. I released 0.3 to the public and received lots of good feedback that helped me improve the game. I released 0.4 to a smaller number of people and received even more feedback that made me fix some important details. Now I’m almost done with 0.5 which will be the release candidate.

“Well, get it done, then,” I hear you sigh. But I just…can’t. Making the levels is destroying my mind. The first dozen were fun and new. The second dozen were interesting, since they brought in new gameplay elements. The third dozen had the appeal of bringing in new “logic puzzles” into the fray. And so on. Now I have made 69 bloody levels, and it’s just not fun anymore. Y’hear? It’s not fun! I need 15 more levels for the last quest before I’m satisfied, but I loathe starting up my level editor whilst vainly trying to think of a new concept I haven’t flogged to death like a bug-ridden equestrian carcass.

Isn’t my editor beautiful:

At least it’s almost WYSIWYG. The objects at the top are clickable, and you can place them on the playing field below. You can also remove things (if you’ve clicked the grey box beforehand) and add goal areas (if you’ve clicked the red box). But it’s still a big steaming pile of excrement even worse to work in than vi. Well, okay, not really quite that bad.

Oh well. Let’s move on to my little proposition: can you imagine yourself a level designer for my marvellous Sheeplings? Can you think of some levels that utilizes the existing concepts and characters and limitations, and doesn’t include new functionality like “the sheepdog has a paintbrush and has to re-paint all white sheep black” or similar things? I assume that not a single person will take me up on this offer, but if – for some reason – you would be interested I can offer a free copy of Sheeplings once it’s done, and your name in the credits section of the game. Making levels really isn’t such a chore, so you don’t have to be totally put off by my ranting; it just gets extremely dull once you’ve made so many of them.

In a vain escape from finishing the game I’ve started making small promotional pictures I intend to use on the homepage later:

My God, I have no shame.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 5th, 2007 at 4:48 pm and is filed under Indie Games, Sheeplings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.