The 7drl try then fail.
I decided to enter the 7drl this year, going into the design I kept one thing in mind "keep it simple, stupid", never having attempted a roguelike or turn based game for that matter.
I finally decided on a survival type roguelike where you have to keep an eye not only on your 5 health but also on your decreasing food and water supply.
What went wrong:
1. I had gimp open - I like pritty games as do other poeple but my first mistake was keeping gimp open in the background and every time the programming frustrated me I jumped to gimp and tried to pritty up my game instead of working through the bug or frustrating piece of code.
2. Where are all my bugs at - I only made a list of bugs to smash at the very end of the project this hurt my time allot because I did not have focus on what needs fixing.
3. ToDo make a todo list - Yip you guessed it I never made a propper to do list or set mile stones for myself until the very end when I started keeping track of my bugs, that caused me to jump from character movement to my implementation of the inventory system to the enemy tracking code making everything jumbled up and half as*ed.
What went right:
1. I have no sound skills to talk of so I borrowed free sounds to help out with the feel of the game making life easier.
2. Using Unity allowed me to prototype allot faster than I could have using manual "write my own game engine and they will play it" tactic.
Lessons learnes:
1. Create at least a half as*ed plan with a few mile stones so you know where you want to be.
2. Set up clear win\lose conditions early so you can build around that, this actually goes with the above point but I felt this was a big mistake for me.
3. Borrow art and sound if you are a one man team and at least leave that until your last day of deving.
4. If you are a beginner at unity or other game making software try to plan and work with the knowledge you already have and keep learning new things during this time to a minimum.
Results:
I did not complete a working prototype in the allowed time but it was fun making that type of game, it was fun developing my art skills further and I always thought I wouldn't like making turn based games but they are great fun to make and I'm planning on completing it and putting it up here for play.
Thanks for reading and hope you got some useful info.
I finally decided on a survival type roguelike where you have to keep an eye not only on your 5 health but also on your decreasing food and water supply.
What went wrong:
1. I had gimp open - I like pritty games as do other poeple but my first mistake was keeping gimp open in the background and every time the programming frustrated me I jumped to gimp and tried to pritty up my game instead of working through the bug or frustrating piece of code.
2. Where are all my bugs at - I only made a list of bugs to smash at the very end of the project this hurt my time allot because I did not have focus on what needs fixing.
3. ToDo make a todo list - Yip you guessed it I never made a propper to do list or set mile stones for myself until the very end when I started keeping track of my bugs, that caused me to jump from character movement to my implementation of the inventory system to the enemy tracking code making everything jumbled up and half as*ed.
What went right:
1. I have no sound skills to talk of so I borrowed free sounds to help out with the feel of the game making life easier.
2. Using Unity allowed me to prototype allot faster than I could have using manual "write my own game engine and they will play it" tactic.
Lessons learnes:
1. Create at least a half as*ed plan with a few mile stones so you know where you want to be.
2. Set up clear win\lose conditions early so you can build around that, this actually goes with the above point but I felt this was a big mistake for me.
3. Borrow art and sound if you are a one man team and at least leave that until your last day of deving.
4. If you are a beginner at unity or other game making software try to plan and work with the knowledge you already have and keep learning new things during this time to a minimum.
Results:
I did not complete a working prototype in the allowed time but it was fun making that type of game, it was fun developing my art skills further and I always thought I wouldn't like making turn based games but they are great fun to make and I'm planning on completing it and putting it up here for play.
Thanks for reading and hope you got some useful info.
Thanked by 1Gazza_N
Comments
http://tinygdtool.urustar.net/
Very useful though for planning projects.