Hello!

I know it's been a while since I announced that there would be a public demo for The Outbreak Story, but I'm pleased to let you all know that it's coming on December 13th of this year!

The demo will have over 1 hour's worth of content and will be released on Itch.io and Gamejolt.

Greetings, and stay safe
-Bas

Hello!

Since I'm supposed to write a postmortem after finishing DevTober, I figured I might as well. I suppose it's a good way to get my thoughts in order, too.

For this year's DevTober, just like last year, I didn't start a new project. Instead, I just kept working on The Outbreak Story, but made some kind of progress on it every day. Also like last year, I kept a Twitter thread of my progress that I updated each day. The goal wasn't anything big, it was just to see if I could actually set some kind of schedule and follow through on it. And it worked, though I struggled with it at times. Still, as someone who struggles with art block/writer's block on a regular basis and has trouble staying motivated, I think this really helped. The desire to see this through to the end also gave me a boost when it came to my motivation.

What went right?​
•I actually managed to make progress on the game every day and update the thread.
•I managed to implement some things into the game that, before this month, I kept putting off. This includes adding character profiles. I suppose the extra boost to my motivation from wanting to see this through to the end was what enabled me to say "screw it" to myself and add those features.
•While working on the game for DevTober, I encountered and fixed numerous glitches that had been in the game for a while. Aside from the glitch that broke the bestiary (see the thread for more details on that) there were several glitches that I didn't even know were there, or had forgotten about, that are fixed now. There was also an issue that was less of a glitch and more of a coding oversight, and that was that the different cleavers that Noah can wield are supposed to have different damage types (iron, silver, etc.) but I had forgotten to implement that, so all of them dealt iron damage even if their description in the equipment menu stated otherwise. This has also been rectified.
​
What went wrong?
•No proper project management, as usual. This is a skill that I still need to work on.
•Most of the stuff I could show for DevTober is pretty minor stuff. The reason for this is that at this stage of development, most of the stuff I'm working on falls into spoiler territory. (That said, now that I'm thinking about it, I don't think this is as bad a thing as I thought it was... I mean, minor details like one of your party members walking away to pet a nearby cat still add something. In the example I just gave, it's a bit of visual storytelling that serves to humanise a character.)

What could I do to improve next time?
•Actually have some proper project management, like a Trello board, or something along those lines.
•Have a clear goal in mind. (the goal for this year's DevTober was more or less just "make some progress each day of the month and post it" which is a good motivator, but it's not really a clear goal. I should have something more concrete to work towards.)