Good Morning Gato #40 – Perplexed By Paper
Excuses, Excuses, EXCUSES!
Unfortunately, Zombies and Pterodactyls 20XX will not be releasing this week. Sad, right? While you wipe away your tears of frustration and disappointment, I shall explain:
The Xbox LIVE Indie Games channel is Microsoft provided, but ultimately fueled by the community. Games get life only with approval from the community who can also force a project to remain in dev limbo if the game doesn’t meet all the standards. When all goes well and a game gets community approval, it’s instantly thrust out to the gaming masses, which can be a bit of a problem when you’re planning for a release window that coincides with Indie Games Winter Uprising. So, while it was our goal to get ZP2KX out the first week of December, bugs were found late in the submission process and a few simple fixes needed to be made. The crappy bit is that each fix results in a minimum of a week delay due to a rule that forces a seven day waiting period before a re-submission can happen. Double bummer.
That’s where it stands. Random little bugs that weren’t caught earlier resulted in an extended delay. As of this very moment we’re planning on putting ZP2KX up for Peer Review next Wednesday, so there’s a chance that it’ll release late next week, but more realistically you’ll see pterodactyls flying the week after.
The half glass full perspective is that these annoying delays have made ZP2KX 24% more enjoyable, 5% more stable and 16% more entertaining. (It’s true, I crunched the numbers.) In the end, it’s a win-win for everyone … except those who desperately wanted to jump into the ZP2KX battlefield the first week of December.
Pterodactyl tears.
A Fur Ball In The System
More bad news you demand? OKAY!
If you’re reading this, then that means ska-studios.com is alive and kicking, which is a huge victory for us seeing as the site has been suffering from what we’re told is “Clogged Pipes Syndrome X-4”. I’ve deduced that the clog was more than likely caused by a softball-sized Gato fur ball that was wedged in the server. We had our tech people remove the furry nuisance and move our site to a better, more stable server which we thought would solve all of our problems. And it did, for the most part, except for the whole part of the move resulting in the loss of the site’s entire database. Instant. Website. Death.
Since then, the ska-studios.com has risen from the ashes like a beautiful Phoenix thanks, in part, to some questionable recovery methods performed by yours truly. There has been some fallout, though, because the lost database means that all previously registered accounts were also lost. So, if you are unable to login, you’ll just have to re-register. Sorry. Chin up though, because the website is alive and Gato’s fur balls have been contained … for now.
An Optimistic Goodbye
That’s it for this week. Our fingers are collectively crossed, forming a massive finger-crossed ball of hope that with any luck we’ll see ZP2KX make its way to the Xbox LIVE Indie Games channel by Christmas.
Stay optimistic and stay warm.
