Session #04Idle Pixel Hero
One strip of screen
Idle Pixel Hero's first three days: a widget that lets clicks through, a simulation with its own balance tools, and 42,327 repaired outlines.
The idea fits on a sticky note: an RPG that lives in a thin strip on your desktop and keeps fighting while you work. The strip lets clicks pass through to whatever is underneath, stays on top, hides when a fullscreen game or video opens, and uses almost no CPU. When you want to make decisions, the same window turns into the Headquarters.
Day one: three things in one commit
The first commit is titled the widget, the simulation and the balance tooling, and that ordering matters. The simulation was written so it could be run and measured without the strip — sim boss traces a single fight end to end, and on day two it disproved a claim I had written down about boss pacing. The claim was corrected, not the trace.
Art that holds together
The regions were generated — swamp, glacier, volcano, then sky, void and every cast — and generated art drifts. So there was a cleanup pass, and then an audit of the cleanup pass "instead of guessing at it". It ended at zero off-palette colours and 42,327 outlines repaired, with a palette rebuilt to cover the game the project had actually become.
Some of the work was making things visible: a boss trophy drop worth looking at, a trophy burst long enough to be seen, a banner that had been hiding the trophy shower. Each of those was filmed, along with the boss enrage, using tooling built for the purpose.
Shipping blockers, early
By the end of day two there was a list called shipping blockers: a way out, a way in, and no white flash. Then: nine languages, with a font that admits what it cannot draw. Sound for only the four things worth interrupting somebody for. Achievements — with Steam as something that is merely told about them — and one achievement taken back because it was awarded in error.
Tests went into the four assemblies that had none, and into the two layers whose failures cannot be recovered from: saving and loading. The second prestige tier was built and shipped closed.
On day three Steamworks.NET was installed and the Steam layer compiled for the first time.
See you, space cowboy…