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Planning Out Beta 1

Planning Out Beta 1

It’s a new year. People are coming up with (and perhaps already abandoning) new years resolutions, so what better time to talk about what Q1 of 2018 looks like for Village Monsters?

Earlier this week the last Alpha demo was released into the wild. In contrast to the Pre-Alpha demos before it, the Alpha series has been the first time the game has started to look, feel, and smell like an actual, real-life video game.

So what does Beta look like? Well, it’s a pretty big deal! There are just 2 more major releases between now and release, so it’s important to really nail both of them. By the time Beta releases, Village Monsters should undeniably be a video game that can be played for several hours.

Today I’m just going to be talking about the goals for the first 3 months of the year, all of which culminate into the first Beta release – Beta 1!

A Game Loop

There’s no beating around the bush here – Village Monsters lacks a traditional game loop. That’s a problem.

Some of this is by design. After all, my primary goal is to create a faff about simulator, and that means a game in which you have freedom to interact with the game as much or as little as you please.

But it lacks connective tissues between it’s many systems and activities. There’s really no “main thread”, and as a result things feel disjointed; the whole experience lacks cohesion.

Worse, there’s very little motivation to go and explore things on your own. You can catch critters, but why would you? You can head down to the lake, but why would you? You can talk with villagers, but why would you?

Village Monsters needs an economy. It needs routines. It needs motivations to engage with its systems. It needs to do better at explaining things to you, the player.

Economy

  • The economy should serve as the main driver for engaging with the game
  • The player should start with very little in way of currency or possessions
  • The player should start with a room in Overflow (the town’s pub / inn) and have to earn a home
  • Items – especially furniture – should have actual costs and sell rates
  • Rare items should be valuable and exciting to find
  • There should be interesting ways to spend money outside of items, furniture, and upgrades

Daily Routine / Activities

  • The natural cycle of the day should be a key part of game loop
  • There should be activities you naturally do in the morning, in the afternoon, etc.
  • Activities should change depending on the time of day you do them
  • Villagers should also have routines / do activities, and they should talk about them

Your Journal

  • The journal should do a better job at surfacing details about the the world
    • A list of critters should contain their habitats and when they spawn
    • A list of fish should contain where they can be caught and any tips to catch them
    • A proper mini-map and a proper world map would do wonders
  • The collection section should be completely overhauled and be designed to encourage its completion
  • The journal should contain hints / tips for what you can do in a given day
  • The journal should contain more help information that it currently does

Hobbies

  • Each hobby should have clearly defined ‘daily goals’ and ‘long-term goals’
  • The controls and objectives of each hobby should be better surfaced to the player
  • Hobbies should have skill levels with proper rewards / bonuses for becoming skilled with them
  • It should be easier to identify the rarity of an item you catch or create
  • You should be able to display the products of your hobbies in your home
  • You should be able to gift certain products of hobbies to villagers

Odd Jobs & Mysteries

  • Villagers should be able to assign basic, mostly procedural generated jobs
    • Fetch Item X from Villager Y
    • Find lost item
  • Odd jobs should reward the player with money, furniture, and rare items
  • The mystery system should be fleshed out and implemented

The Historical Society

  • The historical society should be nuked from orbit and rebuilt
  • A ‘flow’ of the donation process should be considered and implemented
  • The historical society must have strong in-game motivations to complete it
    • This includes ‘set bonuses’ for completing sub-sections of your collection
  • It’d be neat if the historical society played a more active role in your collection – perhaps by giving you jobs / requests for items?

A Livelier World

While the game is already chock full of things both big and small to make it feel alive, there one major issue: the big things are mostly disconnected from each other.

It’s a similar problem to the one I described above for the game loop. It lacks a basic cohesion, and when things are disconnected they run the risk of feeling tacked or meaningless.

A good example of what I’m talking about is the weather. It might be interesting to look at, but it doesn’t have any appreciable effects on the villagers, critters or fish, the village, or anything else.

That’s not good design. In order for the world to truly feel alive, the world’s systems must feel connected to one another. They must influence one another. They must be interesting to observe.

Villagers

  • Villagers should have complete schedulers
    • These should reflect their situation or personality
    • They should differ day-to-day or week-to-week
  • Villagers should react to the world around them, especially for obvious things (like weather or holidays)
  • They should try to perform the same hobbies as the player
  • They should have some autonomy in choosing what to do each day
  • Villagers should actually walk around and move between areas as they follow schedules
  • Visitors should stop by the village – and leave after a period of time
  • Villagers should become friends or rivals with the player. Their interactions should reflect this relationship

The Village

  • The village should be split into several districts
    • Each district should have its own look and feel
    • Districts should feel connected, with perhaps multiple ways to “get there from here”
    • A district should strive to have several purposes, and overall I should avoid having the player ‘pinball’ between them
  • The village’s overall feel should change throughout the day
    • Houses should be locked at night
    • Merchants shouldn’t be open every day
    • Windows should be lit orange / yellow at night
    • Smoke from chimneys
  • The village’s overall feel should also change with the weather
    • Fewer people should be outside if the weather is poor
    • Shops could put on special rainy day sales
  • Villagers should have homes that are more obviously theirs
    • Interiors – but also exteriors – should reflect their personalities
    • Homes should feel lived in, and contain furniture / decor initially unavailable to the player

Critters & Fish

  • Overall critter spawn rates should be greatly reduced
  • Each critter should have a specific window – time of day, weather, month, etc. – when it spawns
  • All critters should have proper movement behaviors and animations
  • Certain critters should have special spawning capabilities – eg., spawning in herds instead of individually
  • Creatures should interact with other entities more
    • Predator / Prey relationships would be interesting
    • Critters should interact with villagers in fun ways

Time & Weather

  • There should be different music to accompany specific weather patterns
  • Time transitions should be more gradual
  • Each season should have a specific look and feel that goes beyond a new tileset
  • Major holidays should completely change the village in terms of decor and function

Intelligent RNG

  • True randomness should be reduced and replaced by algorithms with logical, describable rules
  • The game needs to better tailor its RNG in response to the player
  • Whenever possible, the game should be able to identify ‘interesting’ results of RNG and surface those to the player

Content Milestones

The Beta release needs a lot more content. To ensure I stay on track and strike the right balance of content, I’ve created the below milestones for me to reach before release.

  • 32 villagers to meet in the village
  • 20 unique sets of dialogue for each villager
  • 50 critters to collect
  • 30 fish to catch
  • 12 crops to grow
  • 24 recipes to cook
  • 40 archaeological items to discover
  • 3 mysteries to solve
  • 80 pieces of furniture to decorate your house with
  • 60 items to buy at the general store

Anything Else?

Oh yes. There’s still a lot to do between now and October, and I haven’t even touched on entire parts of the game – house upgrades, player customization, exploration, holidays, etc.

There are also plenty of behind-the-scenes changes I plan on making – there’s technical debt to pay off, a bunch of cleaning up to do, and so on. I also will continue to iterate over the various art assets and other graphics to improve the look of the game.

Just because an item isn’t on the above list doesn’t mean it won’t be addressed in the Beta 1 release. If past releases are any indication my attention will wander, and things will no doubt changes in the 3 months between now and release.

I’m very existed for what 2018 means for Village Monsters. This’ll be the biggest year yet for me, and it all culminates in a release at the end of the year.

Sprint 13 – Pink Moon Rising – Planning

Sprint 13 – Pink Moon Rising – Planning

Click pic for image source

PINK MOON RISING

Week of April 9th, 2017

WARP DOGS’ CORP LOGS

  • The state of our WARP CORP continues to hold steady at ~pretty good~
  • The Extinction-Level-Event (ELE) is holding steady at ~44 weeks away. Neat!

Today’s a big week, y’all – it’s a new release! Of my game! Village Monsters!

It’ll be my first one in 2 months and only my 3rd overall, and unlike those other releases I’m actually not full of shame and regret. Well, to be fair, I am still filled with those things, but it’s for other reasons.

Anyway, things are going pretty pretty good again. I’m back on a good working schedule and have made a ton of progress. Taxes are done and about to be filed…things are looking up for the WARP CORP

SPRINT GOALS

Really just one main goal this week – release a dang game demo.

Beyond that, I’ve got a big ol’ backlog of analysis-related tasks that I’ve kept putting off.

Sprint 2 – Onward, to Glory! – Plan

Sprint 2 – Onward, to Glory! – Plan

ONWARD, TO GLORY!

Week of January 22nd, 2017

WARP DOGS’ CORP LOGS

  • The state of our WARP CORP is still ~insanely heckin’ good~
  • The Extinction-Level-Event (ELE) is at a new all-time record of 48 weeks away. Indescribable!

This week’s chart is a bit misleading! I didn’t spend a cent from the overall nest egg I’ve saved up, but this isn’t because I’m some sort of financial mastermind. Rather, I had some leftover money in the line items I did spend from, so I had no need to dip into the coffers.

This week, and the weeks thereafter, will likely be a great deal more spendy.

I had a great first week, and I can only hope this next one is just as productive. I really like this being my own boss thing. At this point the biggest risk to the whole operation is losing steam, so I’m plowing forward with reckless abandon.

SPRINT GOALS

Last sprint I laid down the foundation and began to implement various systems, such as critter catching, creature interaction, and notifications. This sprint will be more of the same, but with different systems. The current plan is something as follows:

  • Better conversation system and overall dialog management
  • Fishing and related systems
  • An actual village map
  • Historical Society and related systems

If last sprint was any indication these goals will spawn way more tasks that I can’t even think of yet, but the hope is, as always, to just get a boatload of things done.

Gonna do my best today!

Sprint 1 – Here We Go! – Plan

Sprint 1 – Here We Go! – Plan

HERE WE GO!

Week of January 15th, 2017

WARP DOGS’ CORP LOGS

  • The state of our WARP CORP is still ~insanely heckin’ good~
  • The Extinction-Level-Event (ELE) is at an all-time record of 42 weeks away. Indescribable!

The Pre-Sprints have been completed – we are now in the full sprint mode.

A last minute rearrangement of finances was able to get the cash reserves to record levels. I now have 42 weeks to, bluntly, “figure this shit out”

and figure it out I will!

I spent so much time on foundational work that it’s time to reap the benefits. This sprint won’t be bogged down by getting things up and running, and instead will pick up exactly where I left off.

One thing I am unsure of is exactly how much I can get done now that I have a full 40-60 hours worth of time to work. I, uh, presume it’ll be a great deal more than I was able to get done previously, but just how much more? We’ll have to do a real proper retrospective in 7 days time!

SPRINT GOALS

With the Were-Release paradigm firmly locked into place, this next week will be laser-focused on iterating over the Wolf build and turning into something that resembles an actual game.

I’m loathe to use the term ‘vertical slice’, and prefer instead to think of this as a ‘horizontal slice’. Things will be very rough still, but that’s ok, because between now and release we’re going to iterate a whole bunch of times.

In looking at my Kanban board, I want to get some core gameplay loops up and running ASAP. This includes bug hunting, fishing, dog commands, and basic movement around the game world. By the end of this sprint it should undeniably look like a game.

Ok, let’s do our best today.

PRE-SPRINT 14 – IT’S REAL AND IT’S SPECTACULAR – PLANNING

PRE-SPRINT 14 – IT’S REAL AND IT’S SPECTACULAR – PLANNING

IT’S REAL AND IT’S SPECTACULAR

Week of January 8th, 2017

WARP DOGS’ CORP LOGS

  • The state of our WARP CORP is still ~otherworldly~
  • The Extinction-Level-Event (ELE) has been pushed back to 34 weeks away. A new record!

Nearly 14 weeks ago (hey, that number looks familiar!) I made the decision to quit my job and pursue my lifelong dream to create, play, and become immersed in all things video game.

Didn’t seem real then, but it sure feels real now, and boy does it feel spectacular.

I’ve often wondered about what I’m suppose to feel – anxiety? Dread? Excitement? Some sort of mixture?

I have probably felt just about every emotion there is to feel these last few months, so what’s leftover is nothing but pure, unadulterated excitement. I’m so god damned ready for this to begin.

After this week…it does.

SPRINT GOALS

The biggest goal this week is to get through my last workweek successfully. Beyond that…

  • This week marks 2017’s first full moon, and thus begins my weird experiment to release a build of my game each lunar cycle. I’m calling it the Were-Release for now, but there is surely a better name
  • I’m also going to take the final steps to transfer my life to fulltime development
  • On the feature front, I want a hero that moves around and has basic actions, like dialog. I’m also planning out a basic UI, basic collision, basic room transition, and a whole lot of other basic things
  • By the end of this week, I’ll have something that actually & honestly looks like a game. For real!

That’s it for now. Let’s do our best today, ok?

PRE-SPRINT 13 – YEAR OF THE SWITCH – PLANNING

PRE-SPRINT 13 – YEAR OF THE SWITCH – PLANNING

YEAR OF THE SWITCH

Week of January 1st, 2017

WARP DOGS’ CORP LOGS

  • The state of our WARP CORP has increased to ~otherworldly~
  • The Extinction-Level-Event (ELE) has been pushed back to 34 weeks away. A new record!

New year, new life. This is the year I make the big switch.

Each year I try to make some semblance of resolutions – lose weight, read more books, that type of thing – but this year it all feels so much more intense. It’s like I really got to mean them this time, you know? There’s some magic to big decisions, and I’m hoping some of it rubs off on these resolutions.

Anyway. Enough of that wishy-washy stuff. Resolutions for me are as follows:

  • Have a Kickstartable by December 31st
  • Adopt the slogan, “Let’s do our best today”
  • Start a “gratitude journal” to remind me what matters in life
  • Practice mindfulness, whatever that means for me
  • Lose 80 pounds
  • Oh, and celebrate the insanely good vibes about video games

SPRINT GOALS

Last sprint I committed to GameMaker Studio for my game’s engine. This sprint, I’ll work on learning all the ins and outs of GMS while also porting over my Lua code. I’ve said this a few times already with little success, but I really and sincerely hope to have much more to share at the end of this sprint

On the non-coding front, I plan to continue iterating over the various mind maps and other analysis artifacts in prep for the big day. I want to be laser-focused and dialed in and all those other cliches the very day I quit, and to do that I need to have the full breadth of analysis completed and ready to go.

Beyond that, I hope to use these last 2 weeks of relative stability to help out the more foundational aspects of my move – budgets, getting health care sorted out, working on my writing, that kind of thing. These are aspects that will become harder to focus on as the anxiety of my move sinks in, so it’s important to figure it out now.

That’s it for now. Let’s do our best today, ok?