With the official announcement (and Twitter post, of course :-) the latest version of Skin Ink has been submitted for approval and testing… and it’s about time too!

Everyone here has been working tirelessly on this latest version.  I’m sure anyone who has worked on any project will have felt the way that everyone here has felt: When will it end!?
Sure, we love the title – wouldn’t work on it, if we didn’t feel that way!
And, of course we wouldn’t rather be doing something else.
BUT…
When tiny, niggly problems, errors or strange scoring mechanics go awry it can get a little… frustrating.

I blame the last second crunch-rush to get the game into testing, so that it can be released on time.  Sleep deprived, caffeine fueled brains make such mountainous mistakes out of tiny molehill sized updates that it takes twice as long to resolve than any other time.
Let me recount the tale of 20 minutes before submission…

“What!?  Since when is 9’820 bigger than 1’207’460!?”  I scream.
Yes, it’s a scoring conundrum and in our case, the high score table has decided not to follow basic maths.
Ugh.
This is the sort of thing that was working before and now isn’t.  What have we changed.  What have we updated/fixed and subsequently broken… just… what?

Anyone who has used XML to store numerical values will already know the answer, and is probably chuckling at your desk.  I can laugh now.
But to everyone else, someone (and I won’t name any names ;-) forgot to ensure that the values – when read from the XML file – are always interpreted as integers.  Yes, a simple fix.  And, as I say, something to laugh about now, but when you’re at the home stretch, every major aspect is in and working and *pop*.

At this point, I’m recalling a most poignant quote:
“No beer and no TV make Homer something something… ”

Still… we made it.  Well, that is until we get the bug report.  But until then, I bid you adieu!

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