For Devtober, I set my heart on a playable version of the wild motorcycle fight scenes from Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children.

Let's talk about how things went.

My Goals for the Month

- Get more comfortable with Unreal Engine 4

- Form a habit of consistent, incremental game development

- Make a bonkers game about high-speed motorcycle chases and giant swords

What Went Right

1. Taking brainstorming seriously

I spent the first two days of Devtober brainstorming game ideas based on the 2019 Inktober prompts. Brainstorming gave me a huge list of ideas to pull from and helped me find the one I was most excited for. The full two days gave me time to inspect each idea and throw out the weaker ones. Now as a bonus, I have a ton of leftover ideas for future game jams!

2. Making a toy, not a game

Confession time: I didn't actually make a game for Devtober. It's more of a toy or a tech demo then a complete game. This might not be the intention for Devtober, but I'm extremely happy with it. Now that I have a character that's fun to control, I can start layering systems and goals on top of it.

3. Learn from the masters

I spent a lot of time this month watching tutorials. I'm beyond grateful to all of the UE4 experts out there sharing their knowledge. General, conceptual guides (like "how to set up vehicle physics") gave me a framework to follow, and feature-specific guides (like "how to use UE4 skeletal controls") helped me out once I was neck-deep in blueprints.

4. Daily Effort

This month was the most consistent I've ever been with game development. I've participated in short game jams before, but any of my projects longer than a couple of weeks have tended to fizzle out. I broke through a mental wall this month and learned how to work on a project for the long term. Even on days where I didn't feel up to it, the Devtober challenge pushed me to do something on my game.

What Went Wrong / What I Would Do Differently

1. The Mid-Month Slump

My excitement crashed around day 15. I started working with collision, damage, and AI for the first time in UE4 and completely underestimated the learning curve. I painted myself into a corner on a few things and my plans for this week took up the rest of the month. Around day 20, I got my energy back and finished strong.

If I were to do it again, I would have a little more humility moving into new features and expect to redo them a few times before they pass the quality bar.

2. Daily Tweets

While it wasn't officially a part of the challenge, I documented my progress by posting daily updates on Twitter. It was really exciting at first, and fun to show off my work, but I caught myself neglecting gameplay in favor of features that photographed well.

Moving forward, I'll be moving to a weekly update schedule. The UE4 Twitter account's Screenshot Saturday thread should be a good way for me to stay connected and motivated, but still allow breathing room to work on the non-flashy stuff.

Results and Conclusion

The final product!

There's still so much more to do on this project! But this is the end for Devtober.

Overall,  this month was a really eye-opening experience for me. It showed me how much I can achieve with a little work each day while still maintaining a normal life. Thanks to Ellian for hosting Devtober!

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If you want to see the whole devtober process or see future updates, you can follow me on Twitter @MorganWalkup. I'll be posting updates every Saturday!