Project Minotaur Progress Report: Put a Pin in It

Legend:
(-) Goal incomplete
(~) Goal partially complete (buggy/hacked)
(+) Goal complete

Goals for this week:
1. (+) Create all status effects
2. (-) Spell casting creates finished DamageModel

Goals for next week:
None

Other work done:
None

This last week has been a slow and steady progression, and finally all the status effects are done.  There were a lot more than I realized and a lot of minor details required to make them behave how I wanted.  However, they ended up taking my entire week.  I looked at creating the damage model, but didn't have the endurance to find some clean way of packing all the data up.

Also this week, I've been struggling with thoughts of shelving Minotaur for now and focusing on Ouya development.  I'm super excited for the console, and I've got a game that I need to make - a game that matters.  On the other hand, I've got Minotaur,  about halfway done as currently planned, but that's the problem.

Minotaur is a game that was meant to take three months to make.  It's meant to be a simple dungeon crawler. It wasn't meant to be meaningful in any way other than being the first game I created on my own since DigiPen.  I'm very proud of the combat system, but the framing around that is just not of the same caliber.  Exploration would be dull and tedious without tricks, traps, locked doors, and treasure.  Combat would suffer from simplistic enemies with lacking AI.  I don't want to release a game that's going to be a pile of mediocre with one cool thing as my first indie game.  However that leaves two options.

The first is to carry on and extend development of Minotaur.  I feel like this game has potential, but the current incarnation is just not there.  To make it a proper game, I'd want to build a really smart procedural map builder, capable of placing locked doors, keys, traps, puzzles, and all the stuffs that really make a dungeon crawler fun to explore.  I'd want to make a fair number of enemy types with scalable AI.  I'd want to add a full equipment and item system, so gold isn't just a number, but a key to the experience.  There's so much that could go into this game, but it all takes time.

The second option is to shelve Minotaur.  I use the term "shelve" instead of "can" because, like I said before, I think there's some strong potential in Minotaur, and I would love to see it done right.  I can let Minotaur wait until both it and I are ready to make it really shine.  It will still be there.

Of course, this is not entirely a binary decision - there's a myriad of in-betweens here, such as wrapping up what I've got so far in a demo.  However, I'm not going to decide quite yet.  I'm going to take this week to game jam and think.  I'm going to play with new tools and see what happens.

See you next week.

Project Minotaur Progress Report: We're Pressing

Legend:
(-) Goal incomplete
(~) Goal partially complete (buggy/hacked)
(+) Goal complete

Goals for this week:
1. (~) Status effect model and sub-classes

Goals for next week:
1. Create all status effects
2. Spell casting creates finished DamageModel

Other work done:
NA

Ugh.  That's really sums up a lot going into this game right now.  Just ugh...

I'm at the point where I find all the code I've put into this thing just to get it ip and running is disgusting and gross and I just want to rewrite it all.  I know that if I even seriously consider doing that, I'll doom this game entirely. So I'll keep pressing onward in self disgust.

As for motivation, it's still low - the status effect work is backend stuff, but now that the core of that system is done, I get to do the content part, which isn't nearly as offputting.  Still, I look forward to getting back to front-end work.  It tends to be more enticing.

Concerning that "partially complete" mark next to the work done this week. I don't recall if I had intended to complete just the core work or all of the status effect work.

See you next week.

Project Minotaur Progress Report: Soul Searching

Legend:
(-) Goal incomplete
(~) Goal partially complete (buggy/hacked)
(+) Goal complete

Goals for this week:
1. (-) Spell casting creates damage model
2. (~) Create a new development plan for the month

Goals for next week:
1. Status effect model and sub-classes

Other work done:
1. Recharged and refocused
2. Discovered my next game

As expected, this was not a productive week.  Morale was low, so instead of doing poor work, I took most of this week to recover and soul searching.  The current plan is to get Minotaur wrapped up - though it might not reach it's original vision.  I've got a task list in place to get combat finished up, so we'll see where it goes from there.

However, what I'm really excited about is the game I'll be working on next.  I'm not going to get into details yet, but I will say it's an ambitious and deeply personal project.  The ideas and design are going to have time to boil down and filter while I get Minotaur wrapped up, so once it moves into production I'll have a very clear idea of what I'm building.  This will be an advantage Minotaur didn't have.

See you next week.

Project Minotaur Progress Report: A Surge Without Direction

Legend:
(-) Goal incomplete
(~) Goal partially complete (buggy/hacked)
(+) Goal complete

Goals for this week:
1. (+) Map out overall architecture
2. (+) Damage model object
3. (+) Polish Spell Casting state
4. (~) Combat architecture

Goals for next week:
1. Spell casting creates damage model
2. Create a new development plan for the month

Other work done:
None.

This last week was thoroughly productive, but why didn't this update go out on Friday? Well, mostly that's due to not knowing where I'm going next. I have a lot of stuff left to do, but next Saturday is March 9th, the date I had hoped to launch. Problem is, when I originally set that date, I had much higher hopes for my work velocity, and I had somehow mathed it up as three months between January 10th and March 9th. I realized later that night that in reality, that's only two months.

So will I be able to complete the game as originally planned within just one more month? No. It's not going to happen - not unless I suddenly find myself without a day job for the next month.  Even, I'd need to win the lottery first or have some equally unlikely event happen that would allow me to spend the month focusing on my game instead of searching for a new job.

Where does that leave me?  Well, I'm very excited about the Ouya, and it will begin shipping at the end of the month, so I'd really like to wrap Project Minotaur up and play with my new toy.  However, I also want to really finish Minotaur up, polished and released properly, which will likely require more than a month.  In short, I'm torn.

Aside from this turmoil, this next week seems like it will be full of life getting in the way of this "indie development at night" thing.  I'm expecting lower velocity, lower morale, and just a hard time convincing myself to work on a project that will be past due. All this progress from this week basically ran me off a cliff.  This project has been built on the run so far, and I can either build the plane in the air or wait until I hit ground with a renewed plan.  Right now, I choose planning.

See you next week (perhaps on the regulaly scheduled Friday) - here's some screenshots of the improved spell casting state.