The goal for this past week was to complete the foundation of the game’s inner workings so nothing would fall apart when moving forward. As usual, I didn’t get as much done as I would have liked, but I have still had a successful week.

One of the major items I wanted to accomplish was to complete the foundation for the artificial intelligence of the townspeople. I’ve been putting a lot of focus on making the world feel alive, and so the last thing I want to do is fill the world with characters that simply stand around like statues. So I’ll be giving each character a schedule for where they’ll be and what they’ll be doing throughout the day (which will change depending on what you do).

As I’ve been building and adding on to this system I’ve been thinking up more and more complex ways of handling the hurdles I’ve been facing - but this week, I’ve seen how building simpler systems can not only be easier to implement and easier to understand, but can also work better. I spent at least 2 hours trying to solve a problem that I ended up solving in a couple dozen lines of code. I felt like a genius for finally fixing the problem, but I also felt dumb for spending so much time on it.

I know not every problem has an easy answer, but after what I’ve learned this week, I’ll make sure to look for the simple answer before going crazy coming up with convoluted concoctions.

So to sum up:
The foundation for the game is looking good, but I almost made a huge mistake trying to over-complicate a simple solution.

Thanks for reading,
God bless