Quick update

It's been a while, so I decided to fill you in.  I've been dealing with some things in my personal life.  Not going into details but it's keeping me away from game making for now.

Update 12/22

Update: 12/22

In between work is about 90% done for a play through.  Need to finish up a few paths and make sure there's no dead ends.  Also I want to make some more images.

As for production, I think I need a mix of design and coding.  My plan is this:

• First is Brainstorming.  I need a clear vision of the section.  How it should play out and what the player should expect from it.
• Second is Design.  Design lasts until I figure out the basic architecture of the section.  That is what the player needs to do, what are the obstacles, what are the player's choices/options (roughly).
• Finally, Coding.  Dialog is done here too.  Ideally, it should be done from beginning to end since coding and dialog doesn't always mesh well with the design.  If coding starts deviating from design, keep coding until a stop point and then I return to Design or Brainstorming.

It's not time based but more objective based.  The nice thing about this is I can break it out to larger or smaller parts of whatever I'm working on.  For example: Finish coding in-between work for complete playthrough, brainstorm picture ideas for in-between work, design semi-success on in-between work, etc.

Anyways, Happy Holidays, everybody!  Eat, drink, be merry with your friends and family!

Update 11/25

Happy Thanksgiving!

"Last week's goals" turned out harder than expected.  I should have known given how much trouble I had with it before.  I ran into a few problems.  First, picture hunting still proves to be time consuming.  Second, picture editing takes even longer.  Third, I couldn't get the right look and had to do a few different approaches.  This section has some visual elements that needs to convey the information clearly (and subtly for some parts).  It took me a while to make sure the player has a fighting chance.

Lastly, I had a clear idea on what to do, but I didn't have a clear design.  I literally sat down to do some work, but couldn't get anything except some high level stuff.  I ended up going back to design work before I could continue.  The "weekly" goal seems to work out well, but now I think I only found half of the solution.  I think I need to find a way to balance some design goals while focusing and making sure I do some coding as well.

Tentatively, I thought it would be balanced by hours, like 1 hour working on design and 3 hours on code.  But it's really just design needs to reach a certain point where it's more productive to code than doing more design.  I plan to give this more thought.

Goal 1: Production planning- find a method to balance design work and code work.
Goal 2: Finish up in between work.

Update: 11/5

Starting with Goal 1: I finally managed to get 4 hours worked on it.  When I was setting up the goals, I completely forgot about halloween and world series.  I got to the 2 hour mark a couple days, but then stalled for a while after that.

Goal 2: Alternate route is about 90% done.  I had to make some changes since it felt a bit too straight forward and repetitive as I was coding it.  I was having a tough time with the last 10% until I realized it depended heavily on what pictures I can find.  So that will remain at 90% done until I get to that part.  I think I'll need another hour to finish up the last 10%.


Lastly, I thought I was going to fail Goal 3 too.  But I came up with an idea that I like right now.  Hopefully, I'll still like it when I start coding it.  It will require some photoshopping and some picture hunting.  This is something I really want done and over so for my next set of goals...

Goal 1: Work 3 hours.
Goal 2: Complete the in-between work, including picture hunting, photoshopping, everything.  Should be completely ready for play testing.

Update 10/25

A bit late, but done... sort of.

Action-complete turned out to be less useful than I originally thought.  Dialog plays a lot bigger part in what happens and subsequent actions than I realized.  I found it easier to just work on the dialog than write down what the dialog would be about in notes and guess at appropriate responses for branching.  So I decided to change Goal 2 from action complete to saying first part is playable.  Pictures and descriptions still need to be done

Linking the chapters should be done.  I do need to complete the rework for the in-between mission work (e.g. using the computer to find out who's Smirnov).  This part went through a couple reworks already and as I was coding in the latest re-design, it wasn't fleshing out the way I'd like.  I'm tempted to just do it anyways so I don't have to bother with it any more.

All in all though, setting the goals like this worked out nicely.  I'm actually surprised at how accurate 7 hours was for the goals I set.

New Goals:
Goal 1: Work 4 hours.  Things happening in personal life this week.  So I won't have as much free time as last week.
Goal 2: Complete alternate path in second part
Goal 3: Decide on what to do for in-between work.

Weekly Targets

Here's my plan.  I've decided to set weekly targets for myself and see how far I can get.  The idea is to focus my development instead of working on whatever I feel like at the time.

After each week, I'll mark how well I did in the progress section.  Something like "3/3 Goals Completed".  If this thing works out well, I'll keep track of the last 5 weeks or so.  Just something to see how well I'm keeping up.

Anyways, here are my goals for SJ for next week.

Goal 1: Average 1 hour of work per day, totaling 7 hours.  This needs to be active coding.  Design work and picture/model hunting does not count.

Goal 2: "Action-complete" (no description or story) for the next mission.  Placeholder text as required.

Goal 3: Make sure the last chapter connects up properly to the next chapter.

Update 10/8

Update: 10/8

Worked some more on Dr. Ford.  Did some more design work on the next chapter.  I felt it lacked some excitement and areas for the player to explore and discover.  Hopefully, that should be fixed now.