Game Update
Still working hard on some of the problems we’re having with troops that are supposed to be deleted re-appearing. I wasn’t able to do a lot of work on this week but I still got some other items completed. This issue has been a real tangle and we cannot release like this.
A major milestone completed this week when I finished building all of the particle effects for humanoid troops. The monster enemies will probably need some but often the enemies will be humanoid as well. It can’t be to much more to do, and I feel comfortable releasing in early access this way.
I have some other business type things to start swapping around. I haven’t been on the steam page in a while to check on requirements and still need to get the capsule image art done. Hoping to get that finished soon, but it may take some extra time. Also I think making a solid video would go a long way so I’ll probably start work on that.
I did a lot of driving this past weekend and while I was on the road I started to think about how I could do some additional customization without having to build an entirely new system. I feel that making a consumable screen might be the easiest thing to do here. On top of that I’m thinking about a drawback that will go along with buffing stats. The idea I like the most is allowing some dead troops to be removed from army due to passing on so they can’t heal. This would be a random chance, but that random chance would be increased with some of these consumable item buffs. I love this risk reward idea and it shouldn’t be tough to implement with systems we already have available. Additionally, we could tie it to the end of stage actions as some actions would have negative rep results but give better consumable rewards.
Personal Update
Picked up my boys this weekend. It’s a lot of driving to do all at one time. I’m just glad we’re all home safe again now. It gave me some time to think about things. I’m also very worried and praying for someone I know that’s in the hospital. If that weren’t enough I’m also concerned about a local church that needs a new place to meet as their rent just got raised on them. It feels like things are really crashing down on a lot of the people I care about lately. I wish I had more power to help.
Game Development Insight
Doing a short entry this week as I’m very tired. Next week I’ll continue with more Dark Patterns insight.
Feature creep is a real problem with everything in game development. It’s easy to get so excited about an idea and want to implement it without really counting the cost. I figure that’s why understanding the core game loop and what your development pillars are is so very important.
First the core game loop tells you where the fun is. It’s important to strip everything else away that’s not that to see it in its purest form. As an example for my arcade board game I have a mechanic where the player rolls dice for 30 seconds over and over while discarding any rolls of 1. The player keeps track each time they don’t roll a 1 and that is their money for the round. This mechanic that makes the game fun could easily be used for a lot of different games, and of course there’s buying things with the money and then rolling again. I’d say the mechanic, plus the purchasing of things is the core game loop here. Everything else comes second to that and must serve that loop. If it takes away focus, or takes over as the dominate loop it can’t be a part of the game.
I mentioned earlier about the consumable items, and it’s one of those things that had to fit with everything else without making it take longer, or taking over to become to dominant. It also needed to be easy to implement at this stage and I think it does that extremely well.
I suppose you could even apply this to other parts of life. Understanding the core of something and then removing parts that really don’t serve it. I feel like that’s a Biblical thing too. Mathew 6:24 “No man can serve to masters for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” This seems to fit nicely with the concept of focus. Often I will tell student’s “You can’t do everything you have to make your choices. You may be good enough to be a professional soccer player and an astronaut but not both you have to choose.” This is even true of where our time goes. We choose to watch TV or be leisurely instead of working on things we’re passionate about. Nothing wrong with leisure but it’s important to recognize the choice made.