This one day held more work than any other: 156 commits. I will tell it in the order I lived it.
Morning: a world you can touch
I asked for build and release scripts, so that one command packs the server and another the client. I asked for collision, so walls would stop me, and a jump of about a metre that climbs over anything lower than two. I asked for an action key, E: pet an animal, open a door, wave at a person. I asked that houses have things inside them, because a tester will walk into any house, and in the dusk world some should have a lantern or a fire. At one point I wrote, almost to myself: "when a house has a chimney it should have a fireplace, right?" And I renamed the project to Quiet Doors, for good, and put the first versions online.
I also wrote a request I want to quote. The key screen needed an introduction for the testers.
Explain what this project is. Explain how I build it and why I need the testers to check it. I need the feelings, not the tech. Thank them.
That is why this blog exists.
Afternoon: seeds and a spell
Worlds stopped being hand-made. A seed, a six digit number, picks a map from a continent and builds the rest while you play. I tried one and no animals were there. The river looked like transparent blue tiles and should look like the sea. Bridges were inside the water, not over it. I asked why I thought I would bump my head on every door. I fixed the doors.
Then the portal spell. My first reaction to the cast was that it was like sending snow. I wanted awe. Both hands rise, runes gather round the door, it opens when the next world is ready, and if I let go of the key the spell stops. I also wanted to sit on chairs and benches and lie on beds.
Evening: a controller for the sofa
Sound, finally: footsteps for each kind of ground, a sound for each action, a calm music track for each world. And then, at 20:47: "add support for controller. I have an Xbox One here." Eight minutes later it worked: the left stick walks, the right looks, A jumps, X acts and holds the spell, the menus follow the stick. At 21:17 I asked whether this PC could see my controller at all. At 21:29 I asked how hard it would be to run the game on Android and cast it to the television, so that I could play from the sofa with a pad in my hands. I have not built that. But it tells you what I want: a game you play at the end of the day, relaxed, not leaning toward a screen.
Letting go of nine worlds
I also had to be hard on my own work. I looked at all the worlds and removed nine, the weaker ones, among them a flooded metro, a salt flat oasis and an airship harbour. Fifteen remained. Other players appeared as wizard figures, tall pointy hats, slightly bent. I made keys for nine friends and one for myself. I asked why the AppImage had no icon in GNOME. I found a bad bug: the default world showed floating things and doors that were not doors, because of stale cached data. And a funny one: I did the action on a candle that was already lit and it lit it, then the second press put it out.
At the very end, past eleven, I asked if a stronger PC would make all this build faster. The server tests take eleven minutes, the client ones twenty. I did not buy anything. I pushed, I released, I went to sleep.