100RTBD is going well! I've made a bunch of progress today, playing through a big part of the game and even resuming the creation of new rooms - you better believe that I'm going to backup that save file now! I'm also about 3 hours in PoutineTime, my #duplicade submission...
But this DevLog entry isn't about that, it's about how I'm terrible at game jams. I'm terrible at prototyping. I really ca't put myself in the right mindset to do so. I start with the big picture already in my mind and I feel that I can't progress on anything if that polished idea of what the final product should look and feel like.
Here's a picture I've taken from the AdVenture Capitalist blog where the guy who made that game talks about his earliest prototype.
See? It's using only UI elements and not much else. The core gameplay mechanics of AC are all in there - click on things, get money, get more money by clicking on more things - and from there, he figured out that the game was cool, and moved on to add pictures, music, change the content, refine, polish, focus.
What do I do, on the opposite side? I wanted to quickly prototype a Diablo 2-based idle game. You would walk through the locales of diablo 2, fight diablo 2 enemies, get items and level skills to kill enemies faster, stuff like that. Did I go the "basic ui" route? I could've. Even with idle fighting, the core ideas are pretty simple to represent in a text-only fashion. But no, after a few hours of messing around, here's what I have on that project.
And mind you, there is no gameplay yet. You start the 'game', pick the amazon class - it's the only available right now - then you walk in the Rogue's Encampment and talk to people. Why? Because in the final product, that's how the game would start. I've coded dialogue systems for a freaking idle game before any actual "game" was put in.
Here's a Digital Devil Saga-themed card game I started a while back. Notice how the cards are in 3d and all that stuff? Took me a long-ish time to get there. Making it so the cards are generated from a list and the pictures/text appear properly, having them be shuffled and your decks actually being on the field and all that. No gameplay yet, haven't gotten around to doing it.
And that's why I still don't have an agile gamedev philosophy, I guess. In the long run it's not such a big problem, because if I was working full time on my games, after a while I would get to a point where gameplay was functional and the fluff around it helped the cohesive image of the game. But these are 'quick' 'prototypes' to see if I like the ideas. It's a bit unfortunate for myself because spending hours amounting to no clue if the game would be fun means I'll probably just abandon it.
Time spent on the project so far: 573 hours
Currently working on: Replaying through the whole thing and making new rooms!