Status Update: Gameplay Prototype

Posted On: 2019-02-18

By Mark

Today's post is a small update, focused on why I am running a bit behind where I wanted to be at this point in time. Earlier this year, I wrote about my short and long-term plans regarding what I wanted to achieve. Since then, I have made substantial progress on all my art-related short-term goals, as documented in my three-part blog series about automating the art pipeline. As the art pipeline came together, I started working on the mechanical prototype, to get a feel for how the moment-to-moment gameplay would move and flow. Unfortunately, this prototype is still not yet complete, partly due to delays caused by trying to include the narrative architecture and UI work into that same prototype.

In hindsight, it is clear that delays of this kind are quite likely, as the gameplay prototype has become a bit overloaded, serving multiple unrelated goals:

• Gathering player feedback regarding whether the gameplay I intend to use "feels good" at a moment-to-moment level. For elements that are undesirable, I will need to identify whether they are a result of issues with polish, a mismatch in player expectation, or whether they are fundamental to the mechanics that I have chosen.
• Verify that the minimalistic animation style reads clearly while still providing adequate engagement for the player. The approach I am using involves a very significant amount of work for each frame of animation, so I am trying to identify whether this approach will be sustainable, or if the need for more frames per animation will push me towards an art style that will be faster to produce.
• Determine the fitness of the narrative architecture that I have been designing: it's always easier to theorize software architecture than it is to implement it, since implementation always has unexpected bumps along the way.
• Identify whether the key non-combat verbs are appropriately emotionally engaging for the player. This is something that wasn't originally planned, but rather a response to content that emerged as a result of the intersection of the animation and the gameplay. I don't want to talk about this too much, as I expect it requires a bit of surprise to work, but suffice to say I have high hopes that the extra time I put into implementing this will be rewarding both for the player and also for myself as a creator.

Depending on the results of the prototype, I may be in a good place to start work on the larger project I have been planning, though there are several significant factors that still need further work (for example, the environment art is still just placeholder images, so there will likely be more work figuring out the right workflow and pipeline for implementing the environments.) If the core behaviors in the prototype (movement, combat, and non-combat) all turn out to work well, then I think I should still be able to move forward with those and start building something. Of course, as I get feedback about ways to improve the mechanics, I will focus on getting those right in the context of the prototype: getting that all sorted out ahead of time is key to starting the larger project on the right foot. After all, every project invariably has change, but getting the known changes taken care of ahead of time often helps to keep the project's foundational code much cleaner than it would otherwise be.