Gridiron Solitaire #52: Anniversary
It was a year ago that I revealed the game for the first time.Like everything else about this process, I was naive. I thought I was much further along than I actually was, and kept thinking that until the first beta test, which quickly dispelled my illusions. I was overwhelmed with what people wanted in terms of features, surprised by the bugs they found, and poorly equipped to deal with either.
Because of that, the first beta must have lasted three months. I fixed and fixed and fixed, and added and added and added, and at some point, the Boethian dunking wheel relented. I still had a list, but it was manageable.
Before the first beta, I was so overconfident that I didn't think anything could go wrong. Before the second beta, though, I was so lacking in confidence that I didn't think anything could go right. I was delaying starting because I had a small list of very minor issues.
At some point last week, I got over it. And the second beta started on Saturday.
There are fifteen people in the second beta, plus about five that are holdovers from the first. I braced myself for a flood of e-mail, but this time, much to my surprise, there was no flood. There's been one issue reported--which I've seen before, but could never hunt down--and I found it and fixed it this morning, I think.
The headline code still isn't accurate enough. And there have been some very minor issues. Other than that, though, its been surprisingly smooth.
I had an idea for the original stadium late last week. With the three new stadiums having so much personality, the original, big design suddenly seems lacking. The idea is that the stadium will be a horseshoe shape, with the right corners and sides taken out. In their place will be a sloping hillside as a framing device, and on the hillside will be the team name, using a stone font that hasn't been decided on yet.
There are several colleges and universities with horseshoe-shaped stadiums (Ohio State, Missouri, SMU, and Harvard), so it's an accepted design, and I know Fredrik will make it look distinct.
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