Plan for Jeremy Tilton

I began the idea of a full-scale game 3 months ago. Since then, I have gathered a team, researched the available technology, made an initial design, and many decisions. And though it looked bleak for the planned development phase to begin in January, Ace Corban Productions has begun on schedule...

The idea was to have the game designed by December 31, 2002, then take the next 3.5 years to make the game. The actual approach is not far from that. I decided against full design before implementation though, as I felt the ideas would stagnate before too long. I devised a software lifecycle that is probably the same as iterative prototyping or spiral, but I never paid too much attention to that stuff in my Software Engineering course to know for sure.

Basically, the game will be divided into 13 Builds. The first build will be the prototype, and the 12th and 13th will be the alpha and beta respectively. Every build in between will add on another large chunk of functionality (Control Mechanism, Driving Mechanics, AI, Skills, etc.) Each build will have a phase associated to it. The phase will have a design portion and a development portion. The designers will get together, design a more specific chunk, or collection of modules, then we will implement it. The beauty of such a system is 5 fold:

1). Less demoralizing on the team (they see development quicker)

2). Easier to track progress. (Assuming the builds are equally difficult and time consuming, the game's progress can be itemized more specifically by dividing the build number by 13).

3). Forces modular programming. (Puts developers in the mindset to program in such a manner to allow for future additions).

4). We have something playable throughout development. (We don't move on to another phase until we have something that is playable and has all the features described in the Req/Specs).

5). Focuses the team more, no "Feature Creep". (The team will be working on more specific things which doesn't allow for them to skew off to tangents).

As of now, my team has begun development of the prototype which will concentrate on 3D basics(Model/Texture loading, Animation, Collsion Detection), control mechanism, and engine familiarity. The prototype is slated to be complete by 31 January 2003.

http://www.acecorban.com

My website is under maintenance at the moment, but it currently has something playable to see what I've got. Keep in mind that the current playable build is nothing more than me demonstrating that I can load and move stuff in the engine. Once the Builds start getting some significant version numbers (i.e. 1.0.0 and up) there will be much cooler stuff on them.