Company Man-- A Man, A Plan and a Game

Big news on Company Man! I'm pleased to announce that we have a dev-- meet Admiral Thrawn!:

"Hi, I'm Admiral Thrawn! I'm currently a Senior Software Engineer at a tech startup by day, while by night I've been involved in the world of online kink for some time. I was the author of the "Raceplay Stories" blog on Tumblr before it was taken down, and I am a longtime fan of Selectacorp.

Me and Selectacorp expect to put together a great game for you and we would love to hear your thoughts, ideas, and feedback on the forums! Moreover, when the time comes I will need all the help I can get testing the beta version so I can fix any bugs that come up.

I'll be available to respond to questions on a semi-regular basis. I look forward to hearing from you!

-Thrawn"

We also have put together a tentative Development timeline. While this will no doubt change, we both feel this is a realistic period of time in which to bring Company Man to life:

Phase 1 (~30 hours):

Setup Git Repository and boiler plate

Build underlying Game Model

Create classes for all object types

Create GameManager to control them

Build basic (code-managed) prototype of game model interactions for testing

Build XML parser to manage content

Write up development plan

Phase 2 (~30 hours)

Build some basic UI screens in Unity

Make UI responsive to the Game Model (have it show the parsed xml data and refer back to the game model for interactions)

Have basic dialog/department interactions working (no images/visuals yet)

Connect those interactions to main game screen

(Phase 1 and 2 happen simultaneously)

Phase 3 (~20 hours)

Build save-game system

Probably some kind of XML-based system that duplicates the data from Phase 1?

Expand Game Model and UI to accomodate all desired features

Build start-screen for starting/loading a game

Phase 4 (~20 hours)

Work on system for loading image/video content and associating it with UI/Game Model (awwww yeah)

Build out content for ~3 departments and their associated NPCs

Work on testing to get this content to a releasable state

Phase 5 (~20 hours) - First Beta-Release!

Polish UI/visuals until it feels "releasable"

Release first playable BETA of the game!

Fix any bugs turned up in said version

Phase 6 (~20 hours)

Flesh out content for 5 more departments

Teach Selecta how to add content himself?

Work on win-conditions and overall game objectives

NOTE: Doing this now will make previous saves icompitable with new version. Up to you if we wanna delay releasing beta until after this step.

Phase 7+

Continue adding content as desired

We are thinking that realistically we are looking at between 9 - 12 mos to achieve the above, based on budget and dev availability.

While the official kick-off is in October, Thrawn has already jumped in and begun work (per the above schedule).

The philosophy underscoring all the efforts above will be to develop deliverables-- initially screenshots, then a prototype, then adding content so the game is available to play, with more of the map unlocked with each update.

I'll cross-post on the forum as well!

If you have any questions, suggestions, etc, please feel free to share here!

And.... we're off to the races, gang!