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So, one of the first things you learn in a learning environment for game design, is the game design document. A sometimes-vital work that gives you all the information and plans for a game, its features, everything about it at a glance. Depending on the game this could be a single page in a notebook or a multi hundred-page document. I hate design documents. Who needs em? My preferred method is to jump into the gameplay, start designing and coding on the fly, more often than not using actual production art. If I can’t see it, I can’t wrap my head around it. Now occasionally I do make up a design doc, but usually only on more complex projects like SLOA or Roll’N Bonez. In the case of Scratch N Score, I did not. I jumped in, started coding gameplay, had a whole thing already done and implemented and working… and then I realized I was wrong. My whole plan and process for each player’s turn was broken and just wasn’t going to work. Then I started a new job, plus I had two games in with the beta testers who kept sneaking bugs into my code… *ahem* Well they did an amazing job finding bugs, which I had to fix, then they found more, which I had to fix. So, the project for this sat dormant on the hard drive, collecting virtual dust until recently when I grabbed the vacuum, cleared the dust away and tried to figure out one burning question. ” WTH was I thinking?! “ Now that I’ve opened it back up, I figure I can re-use about 50% of the existing gameplay code, the rest is a scrub. Now this is a simple game, so we’re only talking a couple hundred lines of code. If it were a larger one like CashFlo was? Then we’d have some issues. I have plans now and have already started reimplementing part of the scoring display, which will lead to reimplementing the other parts of the code I had to scrap. It’s a work in progress but I can at least see now how it should flow and that will make it a lot easier to move forward. Word of advice for anyone who randomly stumbles across this post and reads my ramblings, design your stuff. Even for a simple game, it can save hours of refactoring, sometimes even days or weeks. I guess it depends on how much you value your time! In my case since this is a hobby, no big deal. Had I had a deadline with a publisher tapping their fingers? That would have been a problem!

Welcome! It’s time to roll out the latest version of the website! Easier on the eyes, and definitely easier on me to maintain. I also stripped it down a little bit, removed some stuff like logins, ability to comment, etc. None of that was worth the moderation time since 99.9% of all the signups and comments left were all just spambots anyways. The site worked before, but I never really cared for the layout much. It was cobbled together and yes, it worked but it had issues. Now I love dark mode in most apps normally, but the site felt way to black if that makes sense. So now, we have a brand-new design that will make it much easier to update in the future! Today also marks the release of our latest title for the Infinity Game Table, Roll’n Bonez. This pirate themed dice game is fun for all ages and full of surprises! Roll your dice and let’s just hope the Kraken doesn’t come for your booty!     Click the image above to check it out!