Dev Journal: The Long Grind

This is another journal I found myself putting off hoping I'd have better news tomorrow, but it's stretched on too long and I at least feel a little better today.

Project Wild One has undoubtedly been the single most complicated thing I've tried to create over the span of a few months. I'm not sure if it's already more complex than the entirety of logic behind MVOL, but it's not only been much more intense to figure out day to day, but a real marathon of a job, and it's been grinding me down lately, if I'm being honest. I still enjoy the work of turning concepts into systems, but even this "bare minimum build" is getting to be too much for me to tackle all at once, I think.

I'm still coming back to it every day, trying to push forward, but it's easy to start second-guessing myself and losing what little inertia I can build up. There's always a sense that there's a better way I could be doing it, or even that I have no idea which method would be better, but I'll only be able to find out long after I've implemented all of it. I think I've been riding that edge of burning out on this kind of work.

And, well, that brought me to realize, part of the point of this new development cycle is to reduce burnout by adding more variety, right? It was originally so I don't have to "try desperately to write more, all the time, and nothing else," but it should also be a good way to avoid "code and only code, continuously, forever." I don't want to delay this build a day more than I have to, but the more I reflected on it, the more sure I was that you guys would rather see, for example, more writing going into MVOL or Matchmaker when I need a break from coding rather than most of a day being a wash-- especially if it helps "balance things out" to maybe get me back on coding a little faster.

So I've been trying to get back into writing on the side, to use different parts of my brain again. So far that's been pretty rough too, though. I'm not sure if that means that I'm just rusty after going this long purely coding, or if maybe I'm not as "excited" about writing for the subject I chose (took a stab at more jello Lith content) as I expected, or just that I'm in a worse state than I'd like to believe. I'll keep trying there, though.

Well, progress has been slow, but I've still gotten a good chunk done. You guys were very positive about getting the AI running, and once that was clear I pretty much put the rest of the project on pause and dove in on that. And that's mostly done! I still need to get the game to a semi-playable state so I can see how it actually "works" and do some tuning and balancing, but I feel like there's a strong foundation for characters to track how they're feeling, their impression of you, and what you've been doing to them to make choices on what to do next that mostly make sense.

Well, that's the internal logic done, anyway. I still need to finish up a lot of connected systems for it to be fully up and running. Today I worked on adding a basic system for letting each character "remember" and interpret not only what effect (stat-wise) other characters have had on them, per encounter, but also dividing that info to specifically remember what came from each type of engagement between them (so they can remember, for example, "he damaged me very little in combat, but I've taken damage from his dick being too big for me!") and even with some basic histogram tracking to understand what's happened recently and maybe try to predict future changes if the engagement continues. I finished setting up all the tracking for that stuff, but I still need to go through the actions and such to add all the calls to that system to notify it of changes happening.

Basically, there's been a lot of figuring out how the core of each system will work, and once I know that, it'll be time to start hooking them all together so they can actually work.

It's been a little overwhelming just trying to keep track of everything, and I put together a list of notes today to try and straighten it all out and keep track of all the little side tasks I need to make sure to finish to get things working, as well as all the big tasks standing between me and what I'm hoping to make of v0.01. I tried to get pretty granular with it, so it's still a little intimidating after everything I've gotten done, but it's better than the nebulous mass that's been hanging over me.

Basically, I still need to finish the system for tracking exactly what's happened, and the system for translating that into the text you'd actually see. Then I can finally compile all the changes I've made lately, fix a couple boatloads of bugs, and run some basic tests for the actual gameplay, with AI, finally.

Thinking it over, it's possible I could actually slap a v0.01 on that and kick it out the door right there. It wouldn't even be a game, but it would be playable. I don't like the idea, but if this funk keeps grinding me down, that might be a better option than trying to headbutt down a brick wall.

The next steps after that, the stuff I'd like to add for v0.01, would be...

-Add basic customization for what characters can do and be and have
-Put together a system for generating characters from templates with some variation to them
-Build a list of templates
-Set up a few basic locations to move between including a "base" and some encounter tables
-Finish setting up a system for the player to choose what they do and don't want happening and building it into the UI
-Set up some basic player character creation, and progression, and a tutorial
-Set up saves, cheats, and some basic graphics

Like I said, it's a lot to still have ahead of me. This is all stuff I feel like would be important to making a decent first impression of Wild One, to actually give you enough variety and challenge in the experience to be engaging and keep you going and exploring a while. Without all this, it'll still be extremely... flat. But I could see all of that being the full chunk of work between a v0.01 and v0.02 as well.

So I'm still debating a lot on that, and I imagine it'll probably come down to how I'm feeling when I reach that juncture. I don't want to keep you guys waiting too much longer, and I don't want to fall into that ugly fallacy of "I've taken so long this needs to be really good" that spirals into just taking forever.

Feedback is welcome, but I feel like this is a decision I'll need to make myself in the end, on where to draw that line. Keep an eye out for more news on that. Until then, thanks for reading!