It’s hard to believe that it’s been 6 months since we started production on this project. Even though we’ve only been working on it part-time, and most us us moved during that time, or switched jobs, etc. we have come quite a long way!
According to my original timetable, we’d be a lot further along than this by now, but I’ve come to realize the truth of the rule of thumb to “take your proposed schedule, and add half again”. That said, here’s some of the things we’ve gotten done over the past 6 months.
– Set up a blog, and website!
– Fleshed out the lore for the game world.
– Modeled three full characters, rigged and animated.
– Took the first game level from concept to almost complete (Wow… look so simple in one sentence).
– Ironed out most of the core gameplay loop.
– Learned shader coding to get the grass material working (That was a big unexpected delay in the schedule)
– Learned how to use User Reporting and Analytics to monitor players’ experiences.
– Got a flight system implemented which is intuitive, and at the same time very robust and flexible.
– Put a demo out to get player feedback on the gameplay loop.
Not half bad, I’d say!
Now if I were to not learn from the rule of thumb I mentioned before, I’d tell you what we hope to get done in the next six months, but it’s really hard to predict! Here’s some of the next things we’ll be working on though.
– Rewrite the save system to be more secure, and allow for multiple save files.
– Finish creating Commander Vileth’s airship (which will play a very important role for the player throughout the course of the game).
– Create the menu system in the Airship for the player to access/unlock different “zones”.
– Start creating the next zones.
– Smash bugs.
And there you have it!
We’ll be putting out an updated demo once we have the last core pieces of the game in place, so players can see the whole gameplay loop as intended. That might be a few weeks out yet though.