Plugging away

I had intended to fill this month's .plan with lots of snazzy screenshots, but thought better of it at the last minute.

It's not that I don't have anything to "show off", rather that I know within the next two weeks, what I do have to show will be that much better.

As I had hoped, production ramped up this month and, now that Josh has been settled in his new home a bit and gotten on track with Iron Lore, we're resuming progress.

I *just this week* finalized the first vehicle concept and Josh should begin translating it into 3D shortly. By his own estimates, I should have a production ready model by the time I post my new .plan in January.

In the meantime, I have been wearing many, many different hats and pushing myself toward the goal of passing from my first major milestone into the second.

As a footnote here, I'd like to say a few things about planning, milestones and development in general.

First, as I've said previously, failing to plan is planning to fail.

If you truly believe you have a good game idea, it warrants the time and attention to propely plan your course of action.

I'm not talking about drawing concept art and the like. While that IS useful as things move along, I'm really referring to a plan of action.

Sit down and draft out - in whatever way suits your organizational style - what you want the game to be, what features you desire and provide at least a rough draft of what the desired game-play should be like.

From there, simply start thinking incrementally. What would need to be your first step in building that game, your second step, etc.

Also, and I'm finding this to be important, always remember that your design document should be a living document. It is and always should be subject to a certain amount of change.

Why? Because what you see in your mind's eye and what winds up on the screen are seldom identical. As you move forward you'll find that certain compromises must be made, or that certain features you thought would be definitive to your game just aren't working the way you envisioned they would. Sometimes you'll find your project screaming for a feature you'd not even though of previously.

Don't be afraid to cut, splice, and edit as you go - how do you think *blockbuster* films get made? If you knew how much film hit the cutting room floor for the average movie, you might be surprised.

I say this because it's somethig I'm currently experiencing in my own design.

Originally, I had planned to support both first and third person perspectives in my game-play. Recently however, it began to become clear that the play styles of first and third person perspectives differed to a degree that became, well... annoying.

After much testing and deliberating, I ultimately decided to drop first person perspective alltogether. The fact was that the third person play-style was (and is) much stronger and ultimately more in keeping with the overall vision for the game.

This of course relieved the need for many art assets that the first person view required, as well as improving the game's overall appearance on-screen. Let's face it, those terrain textures look a helluva lot better a meter or so above the terrain than they do when you're right down on top of them. Well... mine do anyway. (C;

Now, I don't want to give the wrong impression here, the aesthetic issue was FAR from the only reason I made this decision, but in truth, the moment I let go of my stranglehold over my design, a great many issue seemed to almost resolve themselves.

The point? BE FLEXIBLE. Especially when dealing with an engine like Torque. Sometimes the answer might not be what you want to hear, but when you work WITH the software instead of "against" it, amazing things start to happen.

That might not sound like much in the way of advice, but if you've ever tried to "arm wrestle" with Torque, you know what I'm talking about. (C;

Additionally, I was forced to revisit what I call my "Development Timeline". It's really just a road map for what gets developed, how, and in what order.

As I move forward, I'm finding the need to reorganize my approach.

This is where discipline kicks in... it's very easy, particularly when you're working alone, to just reorganize it all in your head and call it good. I strongly advise against this.

What happens if life takes a left turn and you wind up shelving your project for three or four months? Hey - it happens. Do you really expect to come back with a sense of every minute detail you have in your head at this moment? Not likely.

WRITE IT DOWN. Give yourself a tool to go back to when you return, a tool to know what direction you're going, or just something to remind you what the point is.

Well that's enough preaching about documentation. I said I'd been wearing many hats and "Design Document Guru" is only one of them.

In the meantime I have begun emassing a decent texture library, creating and editing textures to tile nicely and look sharp in the engine. So far, I don't have many textures, but I'm very pleased with the quality of what I do have so far.

I have also finally, at long last, made a sort of peace with Quark to the ends of getting some d@mn scenery into my prototype... looking at endless expanses of terrain gets old - and fast.

Sure, Quark is quirky and I could imagine about a million better ways of working when it comes to interiors, but that's really just the modeller in me longing for the freedom of editing afforded in a modelling app.

When you get right down to it, Quark CAN do the job, it just takes a little more elbow grease - but it's proven to be worth the time in the end.

Don't get me wrong, when constructor ships, I'll be the first in line, but for now, Quark will do the trick.

I have the week off between Christmas and New Years and I plan to devote the bulk of that time to getting past this milestone and on to the next. You can bet tha when I do, I'll post my progress.

... Oh, one more thing. I promise my next .plan will have pics. =)

~ Thanks for reading!