Share a Draft: Company growth and the development approach of Fragments of Him

[Tino van der Kraan]

Dear AltDev community,

In the course of the last few weeks, quite a bit has happened for our small company. It helps me, and hopefully others, to write this out and create an overview. The topics that I've elaborated on are:

- Value of dedicated work space
- Update on the progress of Fragments of Him
- Outlining the development approach of Fragments of Him

Draft: http://www.altdevblogaday.com/?p=31113&shareadraft=baba31113_53185e056e87c

The draft is available for 7 days after which I intend to set it to publish. Hopefully, the content and quality of the blog is of value to the AltDev catalogue and community.

Cordially,

~Tino van der Kraan

[Joseph Simons]

Seems good to me. I'm also curious as to your approach of making a horizontal slice before your vertical one, and would definitely like to hear how that pans out. All the projects I have been apart of have just done a vertical slice, so will be interested if you feel that it was worth it after the fact.

-Joseph-

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[Christian Schladetsch]

Hi Tino,

Thanks for your further post. 

I will write this email response as I read the post and write down my thoughts as I do so.

In the second sentence, "should not be taking" should be "should not be taken". Next sentence, I think the common term for "Indie" as in independent is "Indy", but I may be mistaken.

Again with the vertical white-space? You only need one break between paragraphs.

Ok, after reading the rest of the article, I give up on any attempt to edit this way. Your writing style is fine, but very reliant on using repetitive turns of phrase and is particularly verbose.

Also, the level of detail is very high. I don't need to know about your intern. Perhaps this is just me, but I don't feel that it is worth the extra text.

Perhaps "could be told in an impactful way" may be rephrased "could be told in a compelling way". Inpactful is not a word.

I would italicise all use of the phrase "Fragments of Him".

If bullet points are intentionally ordered, then they should be numbered. Otherwise use bullet points to indicate that ordering is not important.

If you link to external pages, it's better to provide a link that has descriptive text and hide the link,

The phrase "classical royalty free" should be "classical, royalty-free".

In general, the article text is very verbose. For example:

The result from this phase can be used to figure out if the core value of the game can already be experienced. Usually, the first result will not create the experience that the design has in mind. From this point onwards, a lot of iterations need to take place that will nudge the game towards where it needs to be. When the core design is present and representable for the game’s intended experience, we can include playtesters into the iteration cycle who will be able to tell us whether or not the design and game is working as intended. While that happens, we can direct our attention towards creating a vertical slice.

Could be:

We internally iterate over the game-play experience, then pass it over to testers for feedback.

And I do not think there would be much information loss, and rather a gain in terms of readability and simple clarity. In fact, this and similar paragraphs could be simply deleted without damaging information loss. 

I think there's value in your description of vertical slice vs. horizontal slice, but again, it could be edited down. I won't provide more pedantic editing details, partly because I am sure I have already attracted resentment, and partly because this email format, where I cannot directly suggest modifications to the text, is extremely inefficient.

Again, vertical whitespace matters - at least be consistent! Try to reduce the number of words to a minimum to get the point across. 

Thanks for posting again about a game that I personally think is very good.

Regards

Christian.

PS. The last sentence with the trailing smiley is entirely redundant.

Christian.

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[Tino van der Kraan]

Hi Joseph,

This approach to development is also new to us but it feels the right way to approach this project. When we have more insights on how this works out we will be happy to share our thoughts and experiences here.

Hi Christian,

Thank you for taking the time and effort to respond.

A little more than a year ago, I received my bachelor degree by going through a study program labelled as "Indie Game Development" at the International Game Architecture & Design academy in Breda, The Netherlands. On this I base the justification of writing 'indie'. It may be the abbreviation is improper or even incorrect and that that someone at that academy screwed up.

The vertical whitespace is not my intention. It has something to do with the lists I'm using although I can't figure out where the problem lies. Here is how it looks in the visual editor, text editor, and the final result. I'm not sure how to fix this.

Link: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8443942/AltDevBlog1.png

I appreciate the thorough feedback on my writing. It is difficult to find people that can eloquently explain what could be better. With your feedback, I have made adjustments to the text.

You are right that AltDevBlog's mission does not justify including a section about our new intern. The additional audiences I had in mind when writing this are likely to be more interested in that information. I have removed the intern section. Usually, I like to write a little more light hearted.

When you lay it out like that, it does make my writing look verbose. I'll try to work on that. It's not my intention to waste people's time writing more than necessary. This could be attributed to nature of how I think when writing.

We hope the game will not disappoint you when it is done.

Cordially,

~Tino

PS. New draft link: http://www.altdevblogaday.com/?p=31113&shareadraft=baba31113_5319a23ea8163 (Vertical space still forms an issue)

[Adam Martin]

View in firefox or Chrome, Open the "Inspector" (Tools -> Web Developer in firefox), and select the blank lines. It will tell you exactly why the space is being put there.

Often it's a misunderstanding over how Wordpress will autogenerate paragraphs. I strongly advise *never* using the visual editor (it is OK but never worked 100% in any WP version - I usually disable it on new sites), as it often puts blank P tags in that shouldn't be there. Even switchign to it and back again can be enough to trigger this :(.

In this case, I suspect it's a CSS issue.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Christian Schladetsch]

Hi Tino,

After scanning through new draft, all I will add is that the phrase "should not be taking as industry facts" should read "should not be taken as industry facts".

I am not sorry for being pedantic here. Since it is the second sentence, such a jarring mistake, if noticed, will set a negative tone in the reader's mind before even approaching the rest of the article.

I hope you do not construe my criticisms as being negative. I am supporting your game and your writing to introduce it to the community.

Regards,

Christian

[Tino van der Kraan]

Hi Christian,

I feel silly for not noticing that mistake. After many iterations and before submitting I let others proof read it although it seems that mistakes still occur.

You are right that a bad start of an article could skew the reader's perception of the rest of the content. I embrace criticism and hope to learn from it. Thank you for franticly pointing out areas for improvement.

I'm aware that your critique is with the best intentions in mind. We hope to not disappoint you with the game when it is done.

Cordially,

~Tino

[Tino van der Kraan]

Hi Adam,

Thank you for the suggestion. I've looked into the page's formatting rules and it seems that for each indentation it places margin space at the bottom. By adjusting the following lines in the style sheet 'altdevblogaday-baked.css' I was able to display the page as I think it would look ok.

140: comment entire line

141: comment entire line

145: remove ul and ol

163 - 165: remove rule

Who should I approach for getting this corrected? It may impact how other articles look of course.

Cordially,

~Tino