Introspection
I listed so many projects on the “New Years Resolutions” post. I’ve started a few, but decided on a large undertaking (the game) as well, which brings up some bad feelings. Last semester I had a grand idea for a game in golang and raylib for my game dev class. It didn’t pan out, and the core reason was because when I made a plan and commited to it, I realized that my idea wasn’t feasible and I sucked at golang. It spawned a much weaker and more rushed idea in the same vein, and I’m too embarrased to even look at it again.
I worked on assets for a while (in this case .png assets) and determined that I was too weak at that skill to make the version of the game that I wanted. I couldn’t even have gotten close, and I didn’t want to spend even more hard work on the project when it would have been crap. That’s a shitty way to be an engineer, and will make me into a non creative person.
I measured scope, thought deeply about many parts of the game and the assets, and chose assets first because I knew it was my biggest weakness.
Not going to do that again.
New Approach
Vertical Slices are the name of the game, and are an important tool in swe. If I’m going to build this on my own, then I need rock solid feasible scope for each piece.
- If I can’t scrape together the issues that define the sprint I’m in from scratch, then I need to refactor my approach.
- I need to define my core principles FOR THE CURRENT PROJECT. If there are things that I know in my heart belong in the project, and deserve the time and effort, then I refuse to comprimise on them (but they need to be defined at the beginning, or its just impulsivity).
Next Steps
For this game, the first vertical slice will be a demo staged across 3-4 sprints over 4 months.
Next I need to
- GDD
- Define the goals of the demo
- Create my principles and success criteria
- architect core systems and loop
- Define the atmosphere (maybe most important)