Project Contain

A devlog for a game tentatively called "Project Contain". Based on games like XCOM, Mario + Rabbids, and Invisible Inc, utilizing ideas and concepts from the SCP Foundation. Expected completion of a demo is expected by the end of 2023. Contact the dev at [email protected]

[projectcontain]

And so it begins...

Hello there! My name is Mike, and I am a software developer by day, and a table top gaming enthusiast by night. I was recently struck with the idea of marrying the gameplay of turn-based strategy games such as XCOM with the rich lore that is the collaborative fiction of The SCP Foundation. And so, this idea was born. I have decided that this is going to be my project for the year of 2023.

The goal is to have a playable, not necessarily pretty, version of the game done by December 31st, 2023. As this is my first proper foray into game development, I am not expecting to actually charge money for this, that just doesn’t seem fair to me. I’m hoping to have it hosted in itch.io for anyone to play it.

To help keep me on track, I’m going to try and set monthly goals for myself. These goals may seem very generous for some of you, but remember that I am working a full-time job during the day, and still need to find time for strict leisure at other points.

Goal #1; Have a design document done by the end of January.

From my time in college for a Computer Information Systems diploma (yes, I have a CIS diploma), I know that the time spent planning at the start is less time spent planning later. At the guidance of one of my friends who has an education in video game design, I am putting together a design document to assemble all my ideas. It will include the overall design vision, as well as some details on entities that can be found in the game. From that written document, I hope to put together some object design diagrams to really flesh out the way that the game needs to be coded together. All of that together is my goal for the end of January.

From there, I will need to evaluate what I have in front of me to determine my goal for the next few months.

In the meantime, I am hoping to be able to make a post on this blog at least once a week chronicling the difficulties I’ve had, advancements I’ve made, etc. I’ll probably make a couple more posts before the end of the day today to document what I already know about my approach to the project. If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me an ask here on tumblr, or send an email to the email in the description of this blog.

Thank-you in advance for joining me on this journey, and I hope some good things come of it!

Cheers,

Mike.

[projectcontain]

Oof

Well, that’s not a great start after all.

Sadly, since I set out to finish my design doc by the end of the month, I haven’t opened the document at all. I’m just tired of staring at a computer monitor all day, ya know?

Maybe I need to go outside more.

[projectcontain]

Unity

Welp, thought I should at least have a poke at Unity so that I can take it into account for my object designs. Hoooooooooboy, I need to re do a beginners tutorial for Unity

[projectcontain]

Tools in use

There are a couple tools that will be needed to make the game what I want it to be. I will update this list as I change what tools I use and why I use them.

Design Doc; Google Doc

literally the first thing I thought of when I needed to start writing things down, and so the written design doc as it currently hosted in a private google doc.

Game Engine; Unity

I already have a liiiiitle bit of experience using Unity, in that I did one tutorial a couple years ago. I also happen to know that Unity works in either Java or C#. Java has been my go to language for hobby projects for over ten years now, so I’m already pretty familiar with it. C# is what I use in my day job, so I also happen to know a lot of people who are also familiar with C#. Altogether, I hope that this will allow me to pick and choose what language I can most easily accomplish something in.

Class Design Document; Visual Paradigm Community Edition

What I was taught to use in college. Very powerful for both forward- and reverse-engineering object-oriented design patterns.

Sound effects; FL Studio and what I can find online

I have extensive experience creating sounds in FL studio, as I wanted to be an audio engineer all through high school. Of course that never came to fruition, but I still dabble every now and then. Whatever I can’t make satisfactory in FL Studio I’ll probably just end up using royalty-free online or buying a few sound effects. I’ll probably be looking at Incompetech.com a lot once I get to that stage.