POST-MORTEM
80% of the success of your project is determined by the system you have in place to work with. The other 20% is perseverance, grit, and determination.
It's been a while since I've been able to do a Speedgame Challenge, having missed out on them since 2021, when I did Hardmode only. I've enjoyed the challenges since 2014 when I did my first one developing Warrior, and Classic really provides a good amount of time to flesh things out. One of the problems I've always run into however is overscoping my projects.
There's been a handful of submissions throughout the years that I've been able to complete on time. And I've been getting better at it, making better choices and design decisions. My skill in scoping has been growing just as my development skills have been growing. However, I'm still fine-tuning some things, figuring things out, establishing a system that I can depend on and repeat time and again. Persevering in that system has been difficult though. I tend to be too all over the place when making a game.
With this game jam, I knew I wanted to do a RPG. But instead of trying to write a bunch of systems from scratch - which I've attempted at least twice in the past, once in 2015 with SEED, and another in 2019 with Project Starsoul, with varying results - I figured I'd roll with RPG Maker this time around to speed up a lot of the back-end of things and focus on the front-end - story, world, and characters. That was a good decision, except I blew my time doing a bunch of concept art and little actual game making. Not only that, but I didn't account for how much time I would realistically have.
I had planned for maybe having about 3-4 hours a day. But that wasn't realistic, it ended up being more like 1-2 hours most days, and then the odd day I'd get 4 hours or so. What I should have done at the beginning of the jam is sitting down and establishing a battle plan for the development cycle, which I'm notoriously bad at. Then timeblock different aspects of the cycle to establish how much time I realistically have, and work with that.
When I start a game jam, what usually happens is: 1) Brainstorm ideas based on the theme, 2) Open my engine of choice and start working.
Number one usually includes reference finding, research, and maybe looking up some kind of tutorial or walkthrough for something more difficult to accomplish. I also usually establish some kind of beginning of world building here, name ideas maybe, and potential characters. Then when I start working in my chosen engine, I either look up how to do something, or just get things done as I can - sometimes smooth sailing, sometimes trudging through. During the development process, I have my art tool of choice, either Aseprite or Photoshop, or Gimp back in the day, and I create my art assets. Sound effects are either made in BFXR or found online, likewise with music.
Sometimes I'd open Open Office, start a new document, and pool my ideas into some kind of crystalline document that has the game idea, goal, and scope. And even less times than that, I'd establish an asset list, and a timeline. I'm not the most organized. I lack the discipline. I blame not having worked for a game studio for a long period of time, or having a mentor to help iron out the bad habits. Only in recent years have I gotten better at organizing my ideas and workflow into something usable and robust. But still I fail at times.
One workflow I've adopted recently involves one developed by Christer Kaitila (@McFunkypants on Twitter). The process is:
- Brainstorm!
- Needs and Wants List, Review items using the guiding questions on a scale of 1-5
- How excited am I about this?
- How viable is this?
- How fun does it sound to play?
- How fun does it sound to code?
- Elevator Pitch/Back of Box blurb
- Sketch the game in action – Storyboard/Playboard (should be at least one page long)
- Prototype MVP (1st save point)
- Polish MVP (2nd save point) – Beyond this point you could reasonably ship
- Implement features one at a time (MVP each feature basically) (Each feature is a save point)
Christer uses this process not just for game jams, but also for games that he wants to ship in some form. I used this process somewhat this jam, but not entirely. But it has been my go-to for the recent games I've been doing. I won't go into detail on each part, but I'll link you to where you can go for the deets. Either way, I think it's rather self-explanatory for the most part. With that said, do yourself a favor and read his article, the man has lots of great ideas that are well explained in there! #1GAM: How to Succeed at Making One Game a Month | Envato Tuts+ (tutsplus.com)
What I like about this process is how it involves sketching the game in action. Games are visual (for the most part), so it makes sense that the design process should include visuals in some way. And I would add, also include audio. Play some music that makes you think of the game in action. Anything and everything you can use to better formulate the game idea, the better. In the past some of my game ideas would come rather quickly through an image or a sound or a music track. Other times I had to really think through what I wanted. Sometimes I could plan the design of the game rather quickly and efficiently, other times it took me a while to really hit my stride. I think honing in on what excites me about an idea, or doesn't excite me, should be an indicator of the path to pursue.
I also have a "toolkit" so to speak that I depend on. These are things that I usually go for in my games and care about, my design philosophy basically. And also includes the tools I work with. My development tools include Photoshop, Inkscape, Aseprite, Blender, Audacity, BFXR, Git, C#, C++, GML, Unity, RPG Maker, and Game Maker Studio 2. For reference making, moodboards, vision boards, etc, I use PureRef. For time tracking I use Toggl. My design philosophy involves story, characters, and world at a macro level, and at a micro level involves aesthetics, mechanics, and systems. Having atmosphere and mood is important to me as well.
- Story - What is taking place here in this world, why do we care, and what are we going to do about it?
- Characters - Who am I and what can I do? Who am I up against? Who am I with?
- World - Where do I live? What can I see? Where can I go?
- Aesthetics - Look and feel
- Mechanics - Gameplay and ability, or what can the player do
- Systems - the foundation or rules
- Atmosphere - Sunny, rainy, cloudy, overcast, misty, foggy, etc. How are the lights, shadows, and colors interacting with the world, characters and story?
- Mood - the feeling, texture, ambience, tension, etc that the game gives off at a given moment.
Despite having a robust toolkit, I rarely access it during a jam. And I don't always establish it outright or in a focused way for my non-jam games. I usually piecemeal together different aspects important to me, but often have a disparate collection of things rather than a unified whole. By this I mean that my game doesn't have a proper shell usually.
If you were to think of a game in terms of an animal, like say, a crab, a lion, or a dinosaur, in your head you can envision that animal rather easily. But were you to draw that animal, or maybe even model it, how would you go about it? Do you make a rough silhouette first? And then fill in the shape with the proper forms, and then the proper details? Or do you define a part of the animal first, and then build out from there? Making a game is similar.
Sometimes you can make quite a neat body, or a head, or a arm/paw/pincer with cool little details, but where's the rest of the animal? The whole of the game suffers because it's missing important components that it should have based on its genre. If the animal is the game, the genre is its features.
If you were to have a rough silhouette first, you've got the basics of basics covered. Then you start working and detailing. But your foundation is there. So even if you've defined one part of the body to its maximum, the whole won't lack as much because you've got the rough shape in place. Compare that to missing the rough shape, and only having a super defined upper body with no legs or pelvis (or tail, or pincers, etc) to carry the rest. Or conversely, you've got the legs, but no torso and head to guide the body. Gruesome, I know. But making a game is just like that. You've got to define the essentials of the kind of game you want to make, and then define the bare minimum of those essentials. That's how you make a great game during a game jam. Or at least finish a game that's actually fun to play.
So, what could I have done better to get the game done on time and with enough content to carry the theme and fun through? Define a darn shell that's what! But wait, there's more! Let's put it down on a list so next time I don't get tripped up. I'm gonna make sure I don't make the same mistake again and actually do what I'm preaching here.
- Define a shell.
- Follow my workflow. It's established, use it. Fine-tune it, sure! But it's meant to make my life easier, so I shouldn't skip it.
- Follow my pipeline. This one is trickier because it involves which tools to use and how and when to use them. I tend to be flexible on how I work, but I need to define a proper development pipeline. So this needs planning. A pain point needing a solution.
- Be mindful of my pain points and establish a plan to solve them. These are the things that always trip you up. Write them down, and then figure out how to get past them. How to work with the theme? What genre should I go for? Etc.
- Organize a timeline with the needs and wants list. Be flexible but also be ruthless on cutting out the fat. Trim the excess, keep the most important stuff. Simplify.
I think with these points, my scope would have been appropriate, and my focus laser sharp. Next time, I'll stick with this, and see if I can't come up with an awesome game for the jam!
Well, I think I've reached the end of my post-mortem, Much thanks for reading. I'm looking forward to the journey we're on and what the future holds. Adios!