The Greenlight Game - Part 3
Added 2016-10-08 01:19:34 +0000 UTCYou know when you decide something is a good idea and once you've started you realised that it was literally the worst time ever to do it.
WELCOME TO THE GREENLIGHT GAME UPDATES.
GOOD THING HOUSE BUYING AND WEDDINGS ARE SUPER NOT TIME CONSUMING EDITION.
Systems Nominal is going well. All quiet on that front. It's just being built and bits of it are working nice! Yay!
The other game? Well, today I'm going to talk about the constant battle I have in my head when it comes to building games. Letting an idea breath vs feature creep.
Sometimes an idea just needs more space to work. Maybe it needs a higher budget, more time or just more planning. Sticking to deadlines and plans can suffocate a once great idea.
But. Feature creep can ruin an idea just as much. If you don't keep an eye on things you'll eventually be making a game that's too big for your idea. It'll bounce around the walls and the air will get too thin for it.
I'm currently lost in a gap between these two with Motel Room Six. Part of me wants to build it small and keep it lean. The other part of me thinks it needs to be a bit bigger to make the idea pace well. I have literally no idea which way to go with it so I took the last few days off working on it to design stuff for other games.
Actually I broke the back of the biggest problem I had with out biggest game. It's now what I would call "do-able." Also I'm writing down everything I have in my head about it. (I am terrible at doing this normally.) Filled 12 pages in an hour. Will probably fill a notebook by the end of the month. Feels good. I WISH I COULD PLAY IT NOW.
Get some sleep.
- Dan
xxx
Comments
hey dan. thanks for all the great content. I own a few ships in star citizen and would very much be willing to let you trash them. I don't have any of the really big ones, so what i could offer are; AEGIS VANGUARD, and AEGIS REDEEMER. Those are sadly the only multi-crew ships i have. Either way, keep the great content coming and thanks again :)
2016-10-13 15:15:55 +0000 UTCif you've followed his past posts, he makes a mockup concept version of a game in some program which I forgot it's name and then he makes the real thing in Unity or something.
SirMangler
2016-10-08 10:02:31 +0000 UTCWhy not mock up both ideas as quick and dirty as you like -- text i/f, VB/Python,etc. and see which one works.
Soronlin
2016-10-08 08:37:40 +0000 UTCI sort of agree with Aidan- he doesn't need us to let him and the team have a couple of weeks off; They deserve as long as it takes to sort all this out.
Your kids don’t like falafel
2016-10-08 06:30:16 +0000 UTCI think it would be a great thing to expand your game (a little) if you had the time. Since you don't have the time, I think you should just work on creating a game that you would like to play, and that you enjoy. If YOU like it, I imagine other will too, and if they don't, well, fuck them.
Zachary Orion Lloyd
2016-10-08 05:57:34 +0000 UTCI think the procrastinator community should all agree to let Dan and the team have a week or two off from videos, game design, etc. And catch up on "real life stuff" and sleep.
Aidan Kenny
2016-10-08 04:44:29 +0000 UTCAlso, you should remember that this is still one of your first games, so the scope shouldn't be *too* high, but from the main subject of this post you seem to get that.
Chris Graden (DinoDoesStuff)
2016-10-08 02:56:30 +0000 UTCDo you have a general aim for when you want to release these? From the way it sounds, Systems Nominal will come out earlier, and when you're dealing with greenlight it's probably not the best idea to release two games at once.
Chris Graden (DinoDoesStuff)
2016-10-08 02:55:22 +0000 UTCI want to be able to throw a table at one point in any of the games.
2016-10-08 01:39:32 +0000 UTCPossibly one of the hardest thing to do while making a game is establishing and sticking to the scope of a game. Im sure Dan and company know this already, but it has to be said. Set the scope of your game and stick to it. It doesn't need to be as revolutionary as bastion. Especially if its your small game that your making just to test the waters of greenlight. Dont let the idea of what the game could be, overide what the game is and will be. If you dont get a tight handle on the scope of your game you may end up with a big sloppy mess instead of a small intricate masterpiece.
Tyler Rand
2016-10-08 01:28:47 +0000 UTC
