Time for another update! Last month was the last one on University Semester so I had to focus more on studying, doing essays, those kind of things… Now I want to use the recess to learn some new things and keep working on my games.
What I’ve Done
Fortunately, an essay I had was to do something on Unity using 3D, so I decided to tackle an old project and see how it would be like to do a 2D Platformer with 3D Graphics (something like Limbo and Inside), try some Inverse Kinematics and mess a little bit with shaders.
My mind before trying it: I just have to model a very simple character, use Mixamo for Rigging and Animation and things will work out, right?
My mind after trying it: Yeah, right…
The character could perform just 4 simple actions: running, pushing an object, pulling an object and climbing
Working with 3D wasn’t my favourite thing in the world, now I know it will never be. I simply couldn’t time the animations and actions, I think I would need a lot more time to get everything correctly, so I had to get away with a workaround on pretty much all of the actions. For the climbing action, I got away with just teleporting the character when the animation finished, so this is what looks the weirdest.
On the positive side, Inverse Kinematics is way easier than I thought it would be on Unity, I just used it to point the character hands on something that was interactable or making it look where I wanted.
As for the shaders, I still don’t have much idea on how it works, but I made a strange looking one using a tutorial. All in all, it was a good learning experience, if you want to see it, watch the video below.
About my projects:
I haven’t touched them actually, just had some thoughts.
Ghost Game: This was the game I talked about on the last update, now I decided the Human Body will be able to push/pull objects and interact with buttons/levers, the Ghost Body will be able to interact with buttons (not levers as they are heavier), won’t be affected by gravity and it will be able to posess the enemies NPCs.
Midnight Journey: Seriously thinking on studying Game Maker to do this one, I think it will be better, anyway, I want to use the extra time I will have to work on this one, but for the time my focus is on the Ghost Game.
Also, I started messing up with Phaser, it looks like a good framework for developing games for HTML5.
For the next Month:
Well, for the next month I will try to set a simple goal: I want to work everyday on my Ghost Game.
I want to have the first level finished (a tutorial level) and two more levels so the player can use that they learned on the tutorial, this is actually almost half of the whole game.
If I have an extra time besides that, I shall work on learning or practicing something (pixel art, music, Phaser, Game Maker, …) or writing stories/scripts/documents for my projects.
Well, that’s it! I tried to keep it short! See you next month!
At my last update I said I was going to start writing a Game Design Document for Midnight Journey and I would also work on simple mobile games. I changed my mind a little bit on that. I change my mind all the time actually.
I did write on Midnight Journey and got some good insights on what to do next, but instead of thinking on mobile games to develop, I decided to prototype two old ideas and a new one. I didn’t have enough time for prototyping both old ideas so for this month I just have one of them.
Time spent on Game Development
I said I wouldn’t have a lot of time for doing this on my free time this month, so I started to log on a pomodoro app how much time I worked on game development.
That’s 33 Pomodoro Intervals, so it is something around 14 to 16 hours of work, it’s not much but I will try to improve and work more on it.
Ace Programmer
Background: So… I decided that I had to play more games, come on, a game developer/game designer should play games, right? Playing Games wasn’t something that I would do regularly in my daily life, so I’m trying to fit it in.
I decided to give a shot on Ace Attorney, I have been looking at this game for more than a year since I played Ghost Trick, both written by Shu Takumi. So I played the first one already and while I was playing it I came up with the idea of doing this Visual Novel/Adventure Puzzle Game related to programming.
The Game: Well, I already said it. It is a mix of a Visual Novel and a Puzzle Game, I spent a whole day doing a simple prototype, and you can play it here:
I’m actually satisfied with this prototype and what the game could be, I’m just not sure if it would be fun for those who are not interested in programming. But that is something to think later on, my focus on the moment is on the next idea.
Ghost Game
Background: This idea is in my mind since 2015, actually both ideas. I merged the mechanics from a game into de story/purpose of other game. It is a game where near-death experience is the main topic, so I will try to show it on the mechanics and on the levels.
The Game: It is a puzzle game where you have 2 bodies, a human body and a ghost body. The human body can do some things and can’t do other things, the ghost body can do some things and can’t do other things. The idea is that you will need both of them to solve the puzzles while avoiding the enemies on the level!
On the screenshots above, you can see the main character and an enemy. The second screenshot shows the ghost body and the human body on the floor.
What to do: I want to focus on this game for the next month and maybe even finish it on August or September. I want to have just an introductory level (a tutorial) and 5 levels to play, that will be the game. For the next month: First of all, I want to have a real name for this game.I also want to figure out what exactly each body can and can’t do, so I can code it and start designing levels. Then I have to put together the art and simple background music to finish it.
Midnight Journey
… And finally! Midnight Journey, the reason why I created this blog afterall and the game I almost gave up for having a big scope.
It happens that all those things I was adding to the game, multiple enemies, level up system, npc’s, backstory, etc… They didn’t add anything to the game.
Going back to some old pieces of writing I found out my original intended experience for this game, and they were: 1. Creating a game that is hard, punish you for your mistakes and reward you for learning with them. 2. A game with a dark mood/ambient 3. I wanted the player the think that there is a story behind everything (maybe there is, maybe there isn’t). On top of these, I added a fourth one: 4. Have a minimalist feeling, the feeling that everything is meaningful.
With this is consideration, I removed every random enemy because they were going to be just something to keep the player busy for 5 more minutes, I removed every weapon variety, the starter weapon should be meaningful, it should be your one and only weapon, so I don’t have to program a weapon/armor change system and I don’t have to draw sprites for them. Every death is important, death will be the way to level up and it will be done automatically, so no stats, no level up interface for the player, maybe he won’t even know death works like a level up mechanism.
What do I have then? That’s still something to think, I have the main character and bosses, maybe the game will be just it, I actually think it would be interesting.
For the next month: Just think more and write more on it, I’m getting into something and I want to have a really good game design document for Midnight Journey, while I’m doing it my focus will be on the Ghost Game.
That’s it for this update! The next one is going to be somewhere between August 5 and August 12.
Well, I said I was going to do it around June 15th, but I wanted to write it now so I can talk about some important decisions I made today and what will happen from now on.
First of all: I’m really really busy for the rest of this month (that’s the reason of “Life!” at the tittle), I couldn’t work on games in my free time as much as I wanted to. I will try to work on it at least 25 minutes everyday and from 2 to 4 hours on weekends. Doing that I can also show that developing games is possible in a tight schedule, it will be a cool experience.
Midnight Journey
I was thinking on it, art, aesthetic, design document and those things. One thing led to another and I ended up calculating how many frames I would have to draw for each character and how much time it would take, the picture below is my results.
I think that 10 minutes by frame is a fair ammount of time
As you can see, if I have my main character (Ethan) and only one boss, I would take around 60 hours just to do the art. Being able to work not even 10 hours weekly would make it a long long long road to finish this game.
Sounds like you are quitting Midnight Journey! No, I am not. It happened that once again I started a game out of my scope (that’s why “Oh No! Not Again!” on the tittle).
I had 2 objectives for Midnight Journey:
Fully develop a game all by myself: design, programming, art, sound, marketing, etc…
Develop a game that I would love to play and that would reflect who I am.
But it seems that they are two conflicting objectives, in fact, developing games I would love to play (by that I mean games that fits in my favourite styles and genres) would demand a lot of time and a big team. Not realizing it until now was my biggest mistake and the reason why I have 1 or 2 complete games on more than 3 years of game development.
What will I do now? Pretty Simple. I will write a Game Design Document for Midnight Journey, A BIG AND DETAILED GAME DESIGN DOCUMENT. The perfect blueprint of what I want it to be. With the GDD in hands I will have two options:
Simplify it so it can fit my schedules. This way Midnight Journey wouldn’t fully accomplish the second objective anymore.
Buy Assets/Hire Freelances. This way Midnight Journey wouldn’t accomplish the first objective anymore (and it would cost money, that sucks!)
What is more valuable? For me, Designing and Developing a game that I would love to play and that would reflect who I am is way more important. But anyway, I will finish the Game Design Document so I can make this decision.
BUT!
I won’t be only writing Game Design Documents! I will revisit old ideas and start developing them, specially really really simple mobile games that can be developed under 4 or 5 hours of work. Maybe one of them can be a game where I do everything and then I accomplish that first objective. I will also revisit some not so simple ideas (but more simple than Midnight Journey) and build some demos with cheap or free assets.
EXTRA: I’m actually thinking on developing a simple mobile game each month. I would choose a theme and maybe some restrictions and just try to play with the ideas and try to come up with a game. (Suggestions are welcome!)
P.S.: Probably you are thinking: “But you did nothing the whole month!” – And that’s not true! I did this cool snake game in javascript, which I do not guarantee to be free of bugs.
Next Update: Hmm… It will be sometime around 6th and 15th of July.
After the last monthly udpate I did some more posts talking about Midnight Journey (Zelda Souls) and some decisions I made. On May 11th there was a “Software Showcase” at University and I decided that I wanted to show Midnight Journey there and did a small prototype that could show what I wanted for the game.
Unfornately, what I could do was about 50% of what I actually wanted to do. Anyway, it is easier to record a video showing the first playable version of Midnight Journey. So this is what I’ve done, the work of the whole month is in this video:
Basically it’s the programming for all the video, user interface, combat system with healing, cutscenes, character movement, drawing the main character and his animations, drawing an enemy and his animations, drawing a tileset for the background and composing a simple 8 bit music for the Title Screen (It can’t be heard on the video).
What to do next?
While programming/drawing this I decided to change some things…
Character: I’ve noticed that modern games similar to Midnight Journey usually uses 8 directions for movement and attack, and this is really a great idea. So I want to use 8 directions instead of 4. I had this idea when reading this post on medium that talks about animating top down 2D games on Unity, it is a really good resource.
Music: I don’t want it to be 8 bit anymore, I will try to go for a sound similar to the Playstation era (the first) using some synths from the 80s or 90s
Aesthetic: I want to think again the aesthetic that I want for Midnight Journey, while I liked the Ethan for this first view of the game it does not reflect exactly what I want for it.
What does it mean? I will do everything all over again. yay. But I think that how bigger games go.
Now, Really, What to do Next?
I want to do this exact first view of the game again but with those changes, as I won’t have a “deadline” this time, I want to get it 100% right this time. I talk about exactly what I want at this other post
Practice Pixel Art. A LOT. I want really smooth animations and some effects similar to particle effects. I have to improve on it so I can get the aesthetic I want.
Search some VSTs that replicate the sounds of old synths. And try to mess with them.
Program a Tile System for Unity. It was really hard to put those tiles together as they are in the video, even if it just a bunch of grass tiles, so I want to program my own tool so I can do it. There are some paid alternatives in Asset Store, but I want to avoid buying anything for this game.
Some thoughts I had while developing this
A thing that I’ve been thinking a lot lately is that I really want to work in the game industry, I don’t have a lot of opportunities where I live (kind of a small city in Brazil) but I’m trying to find one.
So I’m thinking if I really should be working in a game like Midnight Journey that would take like a year to turn into something (but it would be a game that I would be happier with the result) or if I should work on smaller games so I can publish them and have a bigger experience in fully developing games.
Or maybe both?? Midnight Journey is more of a game that I’m developing for myself (probably it isn’t a good idea the same person do programming/art/sound in a regular job) so I’m thinking if it really is a good experience and if it really is worth the time.
What I’m going towards at the moment is doing some casual games, try for a job or some ocasional freelancing and also keep working in Midnight Journey on my free time, as it is something that I do entirely for myself. Kinda confusing to be honest but I wanted to write it down here so I can think about it better.
Next Update: I will try to do it around June 15th.
I’ve been working on it on my free time and things are starting to go forward, I have some time until May 5th, I did this gif and it gets a little bit of the essence of how this “Demo” will be:
Wish me Luck. I will post a monthly update on May 5th or 6th.
As I said before, I have to hurry to do some things for my game Midnight Journey (the one I was calling zelda souls). I’m just going to post here what I have to do in programming, art and sound.
Programming:
Mechanics to Implement:
Dodging in Combat
Charge Attack
Getting experience when diyng
Save Points
User Interface that can show information on the tutorial
Boss Fight
Transition from not fighting to in battle (When not in battle the character will not yield the sword, when in battle he will get it)
Dream Music – As the game starts inside a dream, I want to have a very calm and dreamy music for the game to start progressing. This one will play even on the first combats
Battle/Boss Music – This one will play on the tutorial’s boss, and has to be fast and give the sensation that you are going through something hard.
Pixel Art
This is will be the biggest list…
Main Character lying down and getting up
A Main Menu Screen, a MIDNIGHT JOURNEY write, with some styling, New Game and Options also in Pixel Art.
Main Character without sword (idle, run, attack, dodging, healing, getting the sword)
Main Character with sword (idle, run, fast attack, charge attack, dodging, healing, guarding and putting away the sword)
Grass and path (gray stones) tiles
A Statue with a removable sword
Enemy (idle, run, attack) – I want to be some kind of werewolf
The Boss (idle, run, attack, charge attack) – I want to be a person but with some werewolf resemblance.
Temple tiles
Main Character laying Down in his beedroom and opening his eyes.
I think that’s all I need to do… Let’s see how things goes!
Where I study there will be a “Software Presentation” where students can showcase anything that they are developing or developed, I’m really thinking on taking Zelda Souls to it.
But for me to do it I have to at least have 5 playable minutes, a name and a small story.
I will really dedicate so I can do it, of course, the playable 5 minutes will be entirely with pixel art made by me and 2 or 3 musics also composed by me, I really think I can do it.
So… Zelda Souls, at least for the next month, is now called Midnight Journey! I’ve been thinking on having a story related to the night and/or dreams and I think that this is a suitable name, it can still change, but I hope I don’t need to.
PS: Some points that I don’t remember saying in any Zelda Souls posts, I want to try something called “unreliable narrator”, so maybe you will see me doing it in the posts when talking about the characters or the story. Also I want to present hidden information on the game, so the ones who pay more atention and look closely will be rewarded with more information about the world.
Main Character: The main character is called Ethan Wolstenholme, he has green eyes and light brown hair. He trained a little bit in sword combat but he is not very good at it, anyway he always carry a small dagger with him. I think he is not so smart but has a great mind, always helps the ones who need and is really strong, although he doesn’t look like a strong person.
The Playable 5 Minutes
Mechanics to Implement:
Dodging in Combat
Charge Attack
Getting experience when diyng
Save Points
User Interface that can show information on the tutorial
Boss Fight
Ideas:
Cutscenes maybe can be described as Finite State Machines, each state will render some kind of animation and do some things.
Maybe the User Interface can also be described as a Finite State Machine, the state will tell if you are on battle, off battle or in a boss fight, the game render the interface according to this.
WTF I LOVE FINITE STATE MACHINES NOW
Main Menu: It will be a regular Main Menu with a beautiful art with the name “MIDNIGHT JOURNEY” and the options “New Game” and “Options”, maybe a “Credits” option. All HUD elements will be in Pixel Art and the music will be just a note progression on a scale that I will choose according to what sounds better to me, maybe I will add a melody on top of it.
New Game:
Part 1 – Waking Up: After clicking New Game the screen goes black, and slowly you start seeing a scene, there is a random person laying down in the middle of the screen, in the grass. It’s really dark, it must be late at night, and yet, there is a strange feeling, it feels like this is not real, maybe this is just a Dream? (Note: This is the “tutorial” and it happens in Ethan’s dream). You can see something being written in the screen, dot by dot, really slowly you can just see a “…”, the person gets up and look around, he takes a step forward and look at the sky, Again, something in the screen “It is that day again? Oh…”.
Part 2 – Getting your Weapon: Finally you can control the character, as you walk forward the camera transitions and you can see a statue with a sword, you approach and a (?) mark appears on your character, it is a sign that you can interact with the statue, on the screen appears: “Looks like a sword…” (note: everything written in the screen will appear letter by letter really slowly) “Should I take it? > YES > No” – If the player choses YES you get the sword, if the player choses NO he will die when he finds the first monster lol, when he die the screen will show: “I should have gotten the sword…”
Part 2.5 – You Died: The first time you die you will se a message explaining that you get experience when you die, because we all learn with our mistakes and learning is the most valuable experience we can have.
Part 3 – Engaging in Combat: As you walk through the grass field you will find some really weak enemies that you can easily beat, it will teach you how to do a regular attack, a charge attack, heal yourself and dodge
Part 4 – Tutorial’s Boss: A really easy boss just so you can see how you a boss fight really is. It is guy with a strange weapon that seems to do some kind of trick, he is surrounded by death enemies and he himself doesn’t feel really great. You look closely to him and talk to him, he looks a little bit like a werewolf?
Ethan: “So… It’s happening again… Isn’t it?”
??????: “Do you still have dreams?”
Ethan: “No.”
??????: “Good.”
Ethan: “What about you?”
??????: “It’s been a long time…”
Ethan: “…”
?????? faces Ethan and wield his two swords: “… Sorry, it’s for your own good.”
And then the battle start and you should defeat him.
Part 5 – Wake me Up! – After beating the tutorial, the character will wake up in his bed, blink his eyes twice and the demo will be over.
I think this is everything that I will focus on for the next month starting tomorrow! I should hurry!
I’m quite disappointed with how much I worked on my projects until today. I barely touched any one of them, my classes are back, I have to figure out my schedules and plan what is the best time to work on my game projects and on my university related stuff.
Decisions on Zelda Souls
I said that I had to make decisions on art direction, name, user interface, sound/music, story and characters and some features. What I want is to create a similar feeling and experience to old NES or SNES games such as Zelda and Final Fantasy. Here we go:
Art Direction: 32×32 tiles with “chibi” characters, their heads will be about half of their size, so I can really capture identity for each character. I won’t use any color restrictions, although SNES already had a really broad color pallete.
Sound/Music: I think music is a big part of the experience those antique games created. I will go for an 8 bit or an 16 bit sound if 8 bit seems too limited for me (wich probably will be)
User Interface: Minimalist. As simple as possible, life bar and stamina bar on top left and equipments on bottom left
Experience to Create: I said that I wanted to recreate a nostalgic experience, but there’s more than that, I had the idea of using my fight against procrastination as my inspiration, my biggest goal with all these projects is to be self disciplined and achieve my goals, to get things done. As I go out of my comfort zone and fight with procrastination I thought that I should try to recreate this experience in the game.
Level Up Mechanic: You try to reach your goals and you will fail, with failure you learn, at some point you have knowledge enough to succeed, success is a sign that you have enough knowledge to accomplish what you want but it by itself won’t teach you anything. I really don’t know where it came from, it just came to my mind, that being said I thought of doing a different level up system, you gain experience by diying in the game, the lower you level when you finish the game, the best player you are! But players are just going to keep killing themselves! Sure… Sure… Let me introduce you to…
The Big Brother AI: Using Fuzzy Logic this AI will keep an eye on you through the whole game calculating the probability of you trying to cheat and level up by just killing yourself without making any effort to succeed. If it thinks you are trying to cheat it, your save game will be deleted and a beautiful message with a pixel art ancient guy will be showed!
Names: I’m starting to experiment with some names, I like “Midnight Journey”, “Journey to Midnight” and something related to the word “Moonlight”, I don’t have any part of the story yet but those names suggests something related to the night, that would be cool.
Battle System: I have a working battle system and I said I would tweak it, I changed my mind, the 80/20 rule makes sense here, I have 80% of my battle system with 20% of my time/effort, so those tweaks would be really slow and would demand a lot of effort. I don’t need a polished battle system right now. I need game design decisions, pixel art animations and tile maps so the game can turn into something.
I just have to go through story and characters now, but I promise I will continue to work on it and have a small playable demonstration by the start of May (until May 5th I hope).
This month probably was my busiest so far, and yet, the one that I worked the most on my free time, which is funny because my free time was way shorter than for the last couple months and I was a really good procrastinator, I’m glad that I’m able to work things out and make some progress!
I recorded two videos for this update just to try it, you don’t need to watch them to fully understand my progress since I write about it anyway, it is just a plus. If you watch please leave brutal and honest feedback!
Projects
Zelda Souls:
I have developed a simple battle system, I show it and talk a little bit about it in the video below, if you don’t want to watch, don’t worry, I will write the same thing I said in the video
What I have:
I did a simple battle system with the features:
Move up, down, to the left or right
Attack using a Stamina based System
Attack “feedback”
Kill the Enemy
Die to the Enemy
When you get closer to the enemy it starts following you
When you hit the enemy its life bar appears
If you run from the enemy it will stop following you and his life bar will disappear from the screen
For some technical details you can watch the video (there is no programming in the video).
When I have a more polished battle system I think I will record something explaining each component better and maybe even show some code to really explain how I did it.
Thoughts:
Text Game: I did a blog post about it, the thing is, I’ve coded the “core” to make any text game I want and I just need some time and planning to have a finished text game.
The purpose of this was to write a post on how to do it, and I’m having a bit of trouble thinking in a way to write it, I would have to explain some theory and code stuff. I just have to figure it out.
Rock Paper Scissors: … and a Wild New Project appears, one of these days I was doing some thinking and I was having some thoughts on Hearthstone Ranked being similar to a rock paper scissors game, if you face X and Y decks you will probably lose, if you face W and Z decks, you will win unless you make some huge misplays. So I came up with this idea of doing a Hearthstone themed Rock Paper Scissors Game, it is “Jade Reno Pirates”.
I recorded a video talking about it and showing it, feel free to watch it or to just read below:
I did the logic in 1 day, on the other day I did the Artificial “Intelligence” to play it and on the other I did the art for “Jade”, “Reno” and the “Pirate” (see them at the Pixel Art Section)
I want to finish it on the next few days and try to release it before April 6, that is when new Hearthstone Expansion comes out and the “Rock Paper Scissors” experience can change (hopefully).
Pixel Art
What I Learned: Pixel Art needs time, but it is not as difficult as I thought it would be, and it is really easy to correct your mistakes. The best way to study it (for me) is to take at least from 30 minutes to 1 hour everyday to watch and replicate a lesson or to draw something.
Here is what I’ve done:
This is the character “Green Hood” and this is his Idle Animation!
And these are the sprites for Jade Reno Pirates:
In order: SMOrc Face (not included in the game actually), Pirate Face, Jade Face and Reno Jackson, the other drawing is me trying to draw myself.
Game Music Composition
What I Learned: Music Composition is something that you really have to take your time and not rush it, the best way (at least for me) to do it, is to take 1 or 2 days of the week to work on it from 3 to 4 hours straight, working a bit everyday won’t be as effective.
This month I got back to learning a bit of Game Music Composition and I finished the 8 bit section on the Udemy Course I’m following!
I did this small piece of 14 seconds, it’s based on a kpop music, Dumb Dumb by Red Velvet, and it’s the intro of this music in 8 bit
I made this other piece, I composed some of it and used the same music as an inspiration for the main part.
I feel like the ending is a little bit “off”, but the FL Studio Demo Version does not allow opening saved projects, so I can’t fix it…
Goal Setting
This month I also learned about setting S.M.A.R.T goals, S.M.A.R.T stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound. I would always tell myself “today I will work 1 hour in Pixel Art”, but didn’t quite have any motivation or purpose to do it, but following the rule, I would tell myself something like “Today I will watch these two online classes on Pixel Art and try to replicate what he do” or “Today I will get this character reference and try to draw his face”. And I think it works better for me, because I know exactly what I’m going to do when I start working in the subject. Cool.
Also, I’ve been with these courses on Udemy for quite some time already, Now I want to start applying what I learned, that means doing real art for my games and composing music for them.
Goals for Zelda Souls:
I’ve been with this project for 2 months now and I still haven’t decided everything so I can finish a Game Design Document, this can’t go on like that, I have to take the following decisions until the end of April:
Art Direction
Name
User Interface
Sound/Music
Story and Characters
Features/Mechanics (this one I have 80%)
Then I want to finish tweaking the battle system. I hope I can do it in the first week of April, and then I want to work on a Tile Map Creator, so I can easily create the maps for the game.
Goals for Other Projects: I want to finish “Jade Reno Pirates” until April 5th, I have to draw a background and UI elements and compose a simple music to play while you play, I should be able to do it. For the text game, I want to come with a good way for writing the post about it, giving that it is almost finished.
Goals for Pixel Art: As I said before, do a background and UI elements for the “Jade Reno Pirates” game. Finish the sections “TopDownTiles” and “Creating HUD Elements” for the course I bought on Udemy. Lastly, I want to have a spritesheet for the main character of Zelda Souls, not a definitive one, but one with the art direction I want, it should have idle, walking, attacking and rolling animation.
Goals for Game Music Composition: Complete the section “Character Music” or “Rpg Battle Theme”, compose a music for “Jade Reno Pirates” and compose a city theme for the initial city of Zelda Souls
Today I was reading this article (from a Brazilian gamedev website) and I was faced with the #2 tool that talked about an Inverted Pyramid.
I did some 5-minute-research on google about “Inverted Pyramid” and I didn’t find anything that could relate to this concept in game development, just for business decision making and news writing, and the purpose is a bit different to each one of them.
So what is the “Inverted Pyramid” for Game Development?
It is basically breaking your game into pieces, where the smaller piece is a finished game by itself, but not the actual game that you wanted to make. This smaller piece also can be called Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
After you have the Minimum Viable Product you start “iterating” over it, you add a feature that will result in another finished game, but maybe not quite the one you wanted to develop.
And you repeat the iterating process, you keep adding features and each feature will result in a game. This way, if you don’t like a feature or have to quit your project for some reason, you will have something finished and playable.
How do I do it? Just think in your game, now cut it to the essentials. Think of features that you can add that do not depend on other features. The MVP is your smaller triangle, each feature will make the triangle bigger and larger (and probably better! ).
Applying it to Zelda Souls
So, the point of writing all of this is to think how I can apply it to my biggest project at the moment, the Souls game with old Zelda aesthetics and top down view, which I’m currently naming “Zelda Souls”.
So I divided the game in some steps so I can develop my MVP and then start iterating and adding features.
And the steps are:
Core Game:
Minimum Viable Product (MVP): The Minimum Viable Product should be the Battle System, it’s also important being able to transition in and out of it.
Feature 0.5: Boss Battle System. Fighting Enemies is good, but fighting bosses is way cooler!!!
Feature 1: The first feature that I should add to my game is a “Tile map Maker”. To help me create the maps for the character to run and battle!
Feature 2:NPC’s and Dialog System. The character can run through the world and fight enemies, but a world without friendly people isn’t a world, the next step is to add NPC’s and a Dialog System so the player can chat with them.
Getting into Souls Games:
Feature 3: Consumable Items. With the MVP + F1 + F2 I have the game I want. So then I can start thinking on extras and features that could make it more interesting. Consumable Items to boost your strength, recover health and stamina, etc… Maybe I should even consider this in the battle system.
Feature 4: Equip-able Items. Making the character able to change his sword, shield and armor would be a nice plus!
Completely Optional:
Feature 5: Quests. Make NPC’s give some tasks to the player and reward him and he achieves it.
Last Words: I’ve never taken this approach of thinking my game as something simple (the MVP) with features and features on top of it, I’m feeling that with this in mind I will be able to take better decisions on what to add in the game for the future and what steps should I take to do it.
gueepo 