About a week ago I asked Steemit if they wanted to see me write about my adventures in game development. The answer was a fairly positive "yes" so here we go! So what's happened in the last week of my adventure?

So Much Planning

I've had the same game in mind for well over a year now, but as with anything there are a million ways to do it. The result is that I've often planned for a much more intricate and complex game than I can produce with my meager coding abilities. I may have been able to compete twenty years ago, but not so much any more. I went back to the drawing board, trying to use reductionary methods to get my game down to the simplest, most basic form while keeping it open for expansion.

^{Pour all game ingredients in a pan and simmer until a thin glaze results}

I spent several days just watching videos on good design methodologies, indie development, tutorials, data structures, and general code. I decided to continue using GameMaker Studio by YoYo games, since it's a pretty powerful engine that's been the foundation of quite a few games you've likely seen on steam, and has a pretty low learning curve. I don't need any fancy 3D graphics or elements, so let's keep it simple.

The result is a turn-based strategy, economy, and sandbox....thing. I'm not sure what to call it yet, since it's not quite made it to that point. The result of my reduction was basically what core concepts I wanted in the game, and how I could implement them with the least complex code. However, before you can run, you have to be able to walk, or crawl, or just keep the existential dread from sinking in. That said, here's where my game stands right now:

Progress Report

No, it doesn't look like much. In fact, it ISN'T much. However what you don't see is in fact where most of the work has gone in: the code. Art style is the LAST thing on my mind right now, since it can be as pretty as you want but if it doesn't do anything, it's not a game, it's a picture. I'm not drawing a picture, I'm coding a game, so that's where the focus is.

Right now I've started handling the structure of the turn, and set up a couple of basic tables to add and remove tasks that the player can do. At the end of the day, the code checks through what tasks are there and runs them, then resets everything for the next day. Now that the basic tables are set up, I hope to actually start implementing bits of the game in a small chunk at a time until sometime way down the road from now, I'll have a finished game.

This update may not be the most adventurous, but I did admittedly spend a good percent of the last week just trying to hype myself up and work through ideas, doing the reduction. Now I hope to take that reduction and start to run with it.

Image Sources (All images are labeled for reuse)
[1], [2]

All other images by me