Welcome to my first Work-log!
I have been making some games for the past 5 years or so on my own. And what I have found out is that it can get hard to keep up the motivation when you are looking at the same screen repeatedly, coding endlessly, seemingly without making much progress. You won’t have that problem at the start of a new project, but it’s the middle where things become dry. What has helped me is to leave the coding aspect of the game and shift to designing the visuals. Seeing the game with the pretty graphics makes it easier and fun to keep working on it. That’s when the game looks like a “game.”
Therefore I have devised a “Plan”! Here it is.
Week 1 and 2 — Work on coding the game mechanics
Week 3 — Polish the visuals. It may require some asset creation as well as working with effects in unity.
Week 4 — Work on adding the SFX and releasing the build for closed beta testing.
Then repeat.
This way, I’ll always have a game to show to people with pretty graphics and sounds so that testers and players can appreciate it better and get a somewhat accurate feel of what it intends to be. Also, it helps me to plan and manage the visual assets, sound files, and other moving parts of the game from the very beginning instead of struggling towards the end.
A side-effect of this would be that I’ll stay consistent with the game’s development as I am accountable for publishing a new build every month. Of course, some time will be spent developing concept art, world-building, story, and some dialogues writing, but by following this pattern, things will keep moving in the right direction.
So… That’s the plan!
Originally published at https://www.theearlyowl.com on August 21, 2021.
