Aeges Road, Outside the Box

It is amazing how different a person functions in and out of pressure. I handled the pressure of the contest deadlines poorly and made a lot of simple mistakes. All in all, I am glad I finished what I finished, and thanks to the timelines, I now have a stable base to continue development on.

Now, on to the heart of this post. As soon as I turned in the final deliverable I stepped back to try and figure out exactly what went wrong, and why I failed to finish what I felt was reasonable.

Mistake number one. I made too many platform switches. I spent the first month trying to get the community supported TGB working properly on linux with little success. After failing that, I finally made the upgrade from Windows 98 to XP (no more Fallout 2) and worked on it from there. It had been over 6 years since I worked with windows on a regular basis, and it took a while to break back in and find a productive workflow. Unfortunately, as the game got bigger, errors were harder to recover from, and I spent most of my time trying to reclaim the OS from runaways. I was finally able to afford one of my two platforms of choice (Mac, Linux) that was actually supported by TGB, and I was finally able to find myself truly productive on the project as the game went into alpha testing.

Mistake number two. I spent far too much time learning new technologies. I had never heard of torque until I saw this contest, and thought it was worth a go. Torque script wasn't too difficult to learn, it was just difficult to debug. I bought Torsion about halfway through the competition, and it greatly simplified things. Ruby on Rails is a web application frame work that I have wanted to use for a long time. It is an excellent framework, easy to learn, and surprised me by taking less time to learn than I expected. There are far too many graphics applications, and not enough art talent on my part to deliver a good judgement on viability. I reviewed too many, and got too little done. Finally, I am not an artist, and I am still learning art. This has chewed up a lot of time, and continues to chew through it.

Mistake number three. I allowed too many axis of influence to enter in to decision making. The more I read on RPG theory and expectations, the further I strayed from original design and story. This mistake compounded all my frustrations and made it very difficult to focus.

Getting Focussed (Again)

Ha ha, OK. Now that I am no longer trying to gauge time with task, I have begun to find my center on this project again. One of my big focuses on this project was story, something I failed to truly deliver in the demo. I only provided myself a rough outline, and worked up the first act. The first act was not complete because I did not have enough art content done to deliver properly, so I made the demo too basic in my opinion.

Another focus was on the style of the game. The style I wanted is difficult for me to describe, so here is my best attempt. I wanted to mix a jRPG with a western RPG. It is something I have wanted since I played Wizardry 7 and Realms of Arcania prior to Final Fantasy 3 (6) on the SNES. In my opinion, western RPGs offer better game play while jRPG's tend to deliver the superior story and character graphics that are more to my liking.

There were a few things that I wanted to see in the game, but I am taking a step back from them and getting a bit more traditional. Locks will no longer have a mini-game, just options based on stats. I want to get this game done soon, and my current game needs too much work to try and squeeze it in.

I am currently filling a graph pad with the first Chapter of the game which should be coming soon. It is taking a slightly different direction than I wanted, but it fits the story better than anything else I have come up with. I am basically making a game guide, just with a full story line.

I am spending this weekend reading the last of my favorite blogs for a while. I am going to isolate myself from other influences until I get the story and other core elements finished. I found that many times after reading these were the times I truly got way out in let field trying to please everyone. I just hope I can hold myself to it. :-)

I had made mention in my previous post about possibly doing a side project. I might eventually start this, but in review I determined that finishing Aeges Road would be the best route from this point on. So for the next few weeks, I am going to try and get the story line to a completed state, then go back to work on code and level design. It may be about a month, but I plan on continuing with public alpha releases as I add the remaining elements of gameplay.