With our initial adventures into Linux chronicled, it’s now time to embark on the actual journey of game development. I could continue to spend days or weeks tweaking settings, ensuring that the system is running optimally, and all sorts of other superfluous activities, but it doesn’t get the game made now does it?
But before I dive straight into writing the code and making the models, it’s always a good idea to look and see where we’re actually going.
Laying Out The Path Forward
Prototypes
Prototyping is the first step, looking at what will make up the actual meat and bones of Red Wastes. Here is where I’m going to start throwing things at the proverbial wall and see where they land. But what is my target? Three things.
Gunplay. Task Complexity. Unpredictability.
As I mentioned in the first post in my series on Red Wastes’ development, Bungie is undoubtedly the largest influence on how I create the design and feel. Nothing feels better than to precisely time the bursts of the battle rifle in Halo 3 or to pop heads in the Cosmodrome with Dead Man’s Tale. The bar for gunplay in Red Wastes is that level of satisfaction. If I can’t walk away feeling like the enemies never stood a chance, the gunplay isn’t solid enough.
Task complexity and unpredictability are the two unknowns that I know I’ll face. Complexity is subjective, and if I want a large amount of people to actually beat the game, then it can’t be too complex. The same goes for unpredictability, what truly qualifies as “unpredictable?” If the enemy teleports behind the player, is that unpredictable? What if they interact with the environment to cause damage that players can’t see or expect? Both cases are very clearly unpredictable, but not in a good way. Complexity and unpredictability should be unaccounted for, but able to be overcome with applied effort.
Vertical Slice
The vertical slice is the first definitive goal. Get every individual component assembled before building out the whole game to see if everything works harmoniously. Easier said than done though.
A vertical slice is just like it seems, a true slice of what your game has to offer. For many it might be intertwined with a demo, but I’d like to separate the two for simplicity’s sake. For me, the vertical slice won’t be a playable demo since it’ll have a little bit of everything. A little bit of everything gives away the surprises for later on.
Instead, the vertical slice for Red Wastes will likely consist of:
A craft-able gun with a single perk for each area.
A small little area of the map with enemies that will spawn in.
A point to capture and hold.
Maybe a secondary objective to inject a little bit of chaos.
A “miniboss” like encounter that ends the play session.
Five key points to work towards, but not the only five things to consider or account for. The work that’ll need to be accomplished for these five objectives is surely much greater than what the simple sentences appear as.
Playable Demo
Finally, the last tentative goal that I want to put before myself is a playable demo.
The demo is where you introduce prospective players to what your game is about. You show them what they can experience, and from that what they can expect to experience. While a vertical slice can exist completely detached from the true experience, a demo is usually created from the introductory experience the player has with the game. This is why I want to keep the vertical slice separate from the demo. Both are accomplishing two separate goals.
Manageable Development Goals
But what’s the point of outlining these steps?
Clarity, motivation, and efficiency mostly.
When you approach a task, you can consider it as one large momentous effort to overcome, or you can invest the time to split it up into smaller, more manageable tasks. The former is great when you can visualize the entire task before you. Mowing the lawn is perfectly understandable for most people. Making a video game is not.
So we go with breaking the game down into smaller milestones to work towards. And then break those milestones down into further tasks that are finally easier to visualize than the larger goal. Make many small tasks, separated by a handful of larger milestones.
The benefit of breaking down goals into milestones into tasks is that you are able to carry out the tasks with more precision. If you’re able to outline what is needed for a particular task, then you can research and evaluate what you need to do to achieve that specific outcome. Is it using a particular tool? A model made in a certain way? A system that functions with a specific goal? All of the questions that you ask allow you to better understand the work you need to do before you get started. It’s like running a marathon with the latest and greatest Nike’s rather than the pair of flip-flops you happen to have lying around.
When we put the upfront task management and the targeted actions into effect, we’ll find that we save so, so much time. But on top of that, we’ll find that the process goes by quicker. As it turns out, planning and prepping does pay off dividends in the end.
Accelerated Development Speed
Now, what’s the timeline look like for all of this? Well I’ll take a shot at outlining it, but I can’t say with any certainty that these numbers will mean anything.
For now, I’ll say one month for prototyping. Three months to get to a vertical slice. Two months after that to get a demo. Half a year total. It’s ambitious, but when have I ever not been ambitious.
The reality is that since I’ve budgeted six months, it’s likely that it’ll instead take a full year. As they say, always double your initial timelines to allow for uncertainties and issues to arise and be dealt with. Plus, if I proceed in the most optimal direction, hopefully I’ll be able to find additional hands to work on Red Wastes once I have a vertical slice to show people. They might be convinced by a series of rambling articles, but a concrete game concept would probably be more convincing.
Which is why at the end of all of these articles, I am no where near achieving any of the milestones I outlined above. But I am in the best possible position to reach them as fast as possible.
Now all that’s left is the hard part.
Outro
This will be the last article on Red Wastes for a while. There’s only so much you can say about game dev without actually deving the game. Here’s hoping I can scrounge up a nugget or two of wisdom to share with you all.
As such, Red Wastes updates will move to a monthly schedule. The next article is scheduled for September 5th, so mark your calendars. In the meantime, I’ll be detailing some further adjustments to Linux for working with 3D and shining a light of the techniques I come across as I begin development. Stay tuned.
- Adam