Weekly Progress Update #1
In an effort to maintain some sort of regularity of posts, from now on I will be posting weekly updates every Wednesday with the possibility of smaller content posts in between. So here you go:
Since last Wednesday I’ve spend 22.5 hours working on this project. To some, that may not seem like a lot. To me it’s a huge achievement, considering I have a full time job and spend a solid two hours a day commuting (not to mention the time family requires). 22.5 hours represents every spare moment I was able to scrape together from the time left over from that.
22.5 hours is actually 160% of my weekly goal. For those of you unwilling to run the math yourselves, that’s a goal of 2 hours a day working in some capacity towards the completion of my game. Mostly this is programming time (17 hours in the past week), but it also includes design, art, etc.
That’s right - business development, the unsexy side of game-dev. I have decided to form an LLC in the near future. I considered operating as a sole proprietor, but finally decided that the legal benefits an LLC affords me is worth the small amount of paperwork it will cost.
I’ve also been considered setting up a Patreon in the (distant) future to give patrons access to alpha versions of the game. Again distant future. There’s still a lot of work to do before anything close to resembling a playable game emerges.
As for actual updates to my engine, there have been quite a few since my last post. For one thing, I have learned quite a bit about C++ and my coding practices have changed dramatically. This has led to some serious refactoring of my engine, which is now much more streamlined and efficient. It’s now got some basic menus with buttons (you can even click them!).
I’ve also implemented JSON for tile data, which allows for much quicker addition of new tiles and tweaking of existing ones. (I place a lot of emphasis on the scalability of this engine.) Items and entities are next on the docket for JSON support.
To those of you who are interested in the worldbuilding I have been working on, you’ll have to wait a while longer. I have decided not to try to tackle a game of such massive scope just yet, and will instead be working on a much smaller version of the game for now (a First Playable, to you fellow game devs out there). This will allow me to begin building a repertoire of smaller games and build a community, rather than hoping for the miraculous success of a single mammoth game.
This leads to my final point - I will not stop until I have at least published my first game. My ultimate goal is to recoup enough from sales to fund my next project, but this isn’t completely necessary. Even if my first game (or five) are complete duds, I will continue making them. Not because I’m extraordinarily stubborn (I am), but because I love designing and programming them. Of course I would love for my hobby to pay for itself, and would be delighted if was able to do it full time, but at the end of the day it is still what I do for fun and that will never change.
