Hey these things are for making mistakes right.
Going to start early and make my first big one 10 days before we start by trying to do this by myself.
Partly because its my first time, ok mainly because its my first time. Lets see how this goes.
Shout out to everyone else who plans to solo this, good luck also!
5:30am - Day 7 of GameJam.
A wise person once said, don't make big decisions when you are tired, angry, sick or hungry.
I'm not angry, sick, or hungry but I am tired.
Yesterday was the first day I fell behind on the project and its triggered thoughts about a change in plan.
Days 1-5
Been following the straight and narrow, started the RPG course and have been ploughing through it.
The plan was: 188 lessons - 60 per week for 3 weeks.
That leaves me with one week to customise my game.
Been doing all the right things, using sourcetree, smashing out those 10-12 lessons per day. learning heaps, but there is that nagging doubt that one week of customisation is not enough.
Day 6
What happened?
I did the first few lessons then learnt about cinemachine and creating cutscenes.
Fell down a rabbit hole making my first cutscene and all of a sudden it was 4:00pm.
I watched lectures 6 - 10 for the day, but now it was 5:30pm, I hadn't coded the lessons and it was my turn to cook for my family.
I'm half a day behind on what is already a schedule with no contingency.
Day 7 - so here we are, been awake since 4am thinking, is it too early to go rogue??
Definition of "go rogue": stop following the course material and use everything I've learnt in the last 6 months to actually create the game that's bubbling away in my head.
The plan was always 3 weeks of course material, 1 week customise.
But is swapping to 6 days of course material and 14 days of customising and content really the way to go?
Decision time.
Decision factors - I'm hearing Rick's voice saying to me - what is your MVP?
You've done your draft GDD but it didn't actually list the parts of the MVP.
So what is my MVP?
- (1 day ) - Opening scene, closing scene, the 4 play scenes - I currently have just 1 playable scene.
- (1 day) - Movement - done although I hate not having a right mouse button camera rotate - allow a day to get it done if its not in the course material.
- Combat - unarmed - done.
- (2 hours ) - Scene transitions - have watched the videos, should be easy to implement.
- (2 days ) - The UI - have big plans for this, nothing started so far - is mentioned later on in the course but I want to do it now.
- (2 days ) - The game content - a huge rabbit hole - could spend 2 days, could spend 2 weeks, I want to start on this asap.
- (0.5 day) - Cut scene - done (version 1,0) - I just need to do the disable player input lesson
- (2 days ) - My health pot / trophy system - a few days required
- (0.5 day ) - Singletons - didn't one of the course headings say something about not using them
- ( 1 day ) - Music / sounds /FX - source and implement and have fun with it
- ( 1 day ) - Splashscreens (MVP?)
- ( 1 day ) - the rest of the scene management course material
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(Total - 14 days)
My MVP is ok but not particularly exciting or different, but I'm a noob and time flys by.....
So what is in the RPG course material that I have not done yet and what parts of it are MVP?
Not mvp... ?
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- ( 1 day ) - saving asset pack course content - do I need this for mvp??
- ( 2 - 3 days ) - saving system - not MVP
- ( 2 days ) - simple weapons - 2 days (after saving system) - nice to have
- ( 3 days ) - character stats - after saves and weapons - nice to have
- ( 3 days) - final polish content - looks like there are so many good bits in there - revisit??
Other stuff I'd like to do but not going to happen for the gamejam build
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- ( 1 day) Real water instead of blue texture?
- ( 2 weeks) - Inventory system - RPG - part 2
Summary
========
- I have 14 days left, I have 14 days of MVP work to do
- Still have my contingency - (weekends, nights)
- Do I dump saving asset pack course content - No
- Do I dump saving system - Yes for now :(
- Do I dump weapons for gameJam - Yes :(
- Do I dump character stats for gameJam - Yes :(
- Final polish - I'm going to regret not getting this done but a lot of it would be contingent on earlier course material. - revisit if time
Conclusion
=========
- Finish scene management and saving asset pack course material ( 2 days)
- Go rogue and do the MVP work
- If I get time come back and add some of the final polish stuff
- Weapons, saving system and character stats will have to be after the gamejam build.
Now what was I saying about not making decisions when I am tired. :)
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[I needed to brain dump and I figure it might help others if I did it here rather than elsewhere]
Still thinking its useful to log what I've been doing so here goes.
Day 8 and 9 - I didn't do any of the RPG course lessons.
I did the following:
- Created an opening and closing scene, and created 3 other playable scenes, so 6 scenes in total.
- Tied the scenes together
- Created some game assets - a lighthouse, some trophies - very basic but the first time I've done it
- Had a play with cinemachine to try and get the right mouse button working with rotate - not happy with the result yet
- Started on my UI and learn about using tags - had a really big breakthrough on using tags so when I collide with an object ingame it registers on the UI as having found this object. This would have been a showstopper for me so really happy to have it working
- Had a play with sound effects but reverted what I did when I accidentally committed some things to a base prefab. (Doh)
- Did a test build (0.1.0) and deployed to sharemygame just to make sure that worked ok.
Kinda undecided whether to focus on learning new things from the course material, or just broadening things with what I have already studied.
Using the time spent writing this to think about what to tackle next. Procrastination at its finest :)
Sunday morning - end of 2 weeks.
I was going to have the weekend off but did work on portals and saving state between levels yesterday and want to finish it off today and do build 0.2.0
My wife seems happy to watch Grey's anatomy so I think I'll keep working. :)
Revised plan:
Spend week 3 doing the following
- RPG Course
- Section 10 weapons (21 lessons),
- Section 11 Character Stats (26 lessons),
- Section 12 Final Polish (34 lessons).
This is a huge amount of learning spread over 7 days. At a minimum I want to finish at least the first 2 Sections and then pick and choose from the final polish if I run out of time. Then build version 0.3.0
Week 4
- fix all the bugs, add my specific content and layouts, add music, sounds and SFX (overlap with polish content?), do my unit testing
- 4 days, build version 0.4.0
- then for the last 3 days remove the Synty assets (buildings and player and enemies) and replace with free assets. Build 1.0.0 and submit.
Why do it this way? Well if I have huge issues with removing the Synty assets I'll submit version 0.4.0 as my gameJam entry (knowing it will be ineligible because of the Synty assets) but I can at least revert back to the 0.4.0 code and finish the RPG course and then do the RPG Part 2 - Inventory course without wasting too much time.
Going to be a big 2 weeks but looking forward to it!
I'm really happy with how much I've learnt in the last 2 weeks while being pushed hard by wanting to make something decent for the Jam.
Outstanding showstoppers:
- removing the synty assets
- using the save assets code to persist my trophies between scenes
Continuing to document my learning through this gameJam, may be useful, maybe not.
Lesson numbers refer to the RPG course lessons.
Have 2 - 3 days of course material left to complete then can do the bugfix, customisation and replace Synty assets - i.e the actual gameJam work vs the study work lol.
Still a chance I'll fail miserably with finishing anything decent but its been great motivation to push hard through the RPG course.
You know its near the end when you can do a final Do List.
Post GameJam work is a separate list :)
MVP
ToDo
Showstoppers
Must do
Want to do
Thank you :)
Now for the next set of planning.
Do I:
Think I'll have the weekend off to think about it :)
The ultimate goal of course is to collaborate with some people to create a game.
yeah, that's a tough call, but at least they are all good options. I'm in a similar boat. I was slowly working on a different, more ambitious game idea but doing this jam accelerated my progress enough and gave me enough of a sense of accomplishment that I might just stick with this one and see if I can really polish it. Whatever you do, sounds like you've got good options!
