Day 65: Today I got some cats. They’re named Daisy and Maya and I’m keeping them for one week. It’s great I have cats home and I’m getting paid for that. On a more dev related note, I’m in a productivity drop right now. Since I returned from IndieCade I had trouble to work. The cumulative effects of crunch and milestone end really took a toll on my motivation. Add to that the fact that I have to work on parts that I don’t particularly like, and you got a nice cocktail of inefficiency. But by forcing myself to work and using coke as a reward, I’m beginning to climb out of that pit. And today I:

• Read articles online. The is the #1 thing I do when I procrastinate. It’s just enough work related so that I don’t feel guilty. I also used this to try to rebuild motivation. I read a great article on the state of the indie games market. I liked the fact that the author gave a n objective look to the market. It was not a “Indiepocalypse is here! We’re all gonna die!” article. Then I read stuff on “Game A week”. It’s a game dev exercise where you make one game each week. I already knew about it, and I planned to do that while working on my C++ after Rogue Cadet. But re-reading that really made me want to do it. Finally I re-read an article from Derek Yu “Finishing a game”. It’s quite a long article so I didn’t read all of it this time. I stopped when I got enough motivation to fuel the day.

• Started to think in term of story. Before all the feature were just “hey this might be an interesting gameplay feature”. Now I try to put it in the context. Like how do I select a ship? Well I imagine scientists would hand me a tablet with a list of the different ships and their characteristics. I coupled that to the fact that all ideas are confronted to the core concept to see if they fit. If an idea doesn’t reinforce the SHMUP, roguelite, progression or strategy. It simply isn’t kept. Now I have a more efficient decision process, and it felt like a huge relief. I had no idea what to do with the upgrades, weapons and such. This helped a lot to take decisions I feel are “right”.

• Did a brainstorm by myself. I needed to take important design decisions concerning the ships (upgrades/power/weapons/types). As I wrote yesterday, I wasn’t sure about having upgrades like raising life. It might make the game feel like perpetual grinding. I thought of having a maximal weight that would limit the upgrades you can take. This reintroduce a strategy component. That and each ship is affected differently by the upgrades. Then I found a way to “force” the player to choose different ships. Each ship has a “stock” it means that you can take it at every run until the stock is depleted. So I can have “grinding” upgrades. The other decision I took was that the ships types would be declined in “layouts” like in FTL. each layout has small stats changes, and its special power. I did this because I had multiple ideas for special powers that were adapted to the same ship type. Layouts are unlockable through achievement, which add a long term goal.

• Watched a talk by Adriel Wallick on Game a Week. I found this video in the morning and kept it for my lunch. It was really good. I’m definitely doing this after Rogue Cadet.

• Started implementing the new ship selection menu. UI work is really boring. The thing is I normally like it. But I like it when I have a mock up done by a graphist. Without one, it feels like doing placeholder content. And that kills my motivation. Because what motivates me is result. I have no problem changing things and ditching code. But I need to think while making it that it’s final. Otherwise it feels like I’m wasting time, even when I know it’s clearly not the case. I then try to convince me that it’s the final version for now. To make the new design I used Rogue Legacy as inspiration. As well as the new “story focused” method. I decided that the possible ships would scroll horizontally and that pression “A” pops a detail window. It looks ok, but it’s not over yet.