Planning 2019

Posted On: 2019-01-07

By Mark

As mentioned previously, this first post of the new year is a list of plans, both short and long term. The short term plan will be more concrete, while long term plan will be more vague or maleable, as the future is necessarily uncertain.

Near-term goals

Similar to how I approached planning last time I will break down each of these goals into the discipline they apply to. I find this helps me better organize my thoughts, as it can be easy to inadvertently focus on one discipline rather than view the whole spectrum of work that I will need to do. I will also be trying to keep the quantity of goals limited, as several of these are much larger endeavors than the single phrase I am giving them.

• Writing/Narrative Design
  • Design a narrative architecture that supports a larger game (both how to organize the files and how to account for world-state information like time, place, and prior knowledge)
• Art
  • Prototype animation
  • Build out art pipeline (automating importing textures/sprites with the correct settings, creating materials from diffuse and normal maps, etc)
  • Create a generic sprite sheet for the poses each character can support (not sure if there's a term for this - it should be used as a starting point whenever a new character is being made so that animation data can be shared.)
• Programming
  • Find a UI framework to make UI work less arduous (and hopefully get certain UI standards like mouse-over tool-tips out of the box)
• Gameplay
  • Prototype combat mechanics (this one might be a while before it's done, both because it is hard and because it depends on the animation to be clear enough that players can read "tells")

Longer-term goals

Longer term goals are presented less concretely. The goal of a long-term plan is to have guidelines to use for creating future short-term plans, while also defining what bridges to be careful not to burn while working on the current short-term plans (hopefully that analogy makes sense.)

• Writing/Narrative Design
  • Players should be able to express narrative intent (ie. what beliefs guide their actions and what they want to do.) I expect to make further narrative prototypes to explore various options for facilitating this.
• Art
  • Although I have a long way to go improving my skills in all artistic disciplines, I am weakest in visual effects and environmental art. Spending time honing these skills will be required.
• Programming/Game Design
  • All the disparate prototypes (combat, animation, narrative, traversal, etc) will need to come together into one cohesive whole. This should be approached carefully and thoughtfully, as this will become the foundation upon which the larger project will be built.
• Marketing/Business
  • I will need to connect with people who would be interested in my work (blogging, prototypes, and/or the one larger project I am working towards.)
• Mystery
  • Not all my long-term plans can be documented visibly, as some of them deal with aspects that I wish players to discover through playing the game (therefore documenting them on the blog post might constitute a spoiler.) Suffice to say I have taken the time to be very clear (for my own benefit) about which aspect of knowing truth I want to be the focus of my larger project.

Conclusion

Now that the plans are all laid out, it is time to start executing on them! (Though, in truth, I've actually already started on the narrative architecture.) Hopefully this glimpse into my plans has been useful or at least interesting.