START HERE - User's Manual

Hello there! 

I should have penned this post earlier, but better late than never! Consider this your User’s Guide to my blog updates on The Great V Project. Here I will explain the game goals, my development philosophy and what’s in there for you.

Spoiler: This means you can look forward to a new build featuring a fresh level roughly once a month.

Commitment 

I will call myself a game developer. And the only way to do that is to actually release a game. 

This is not a side project. It's my escape plan from any employed job out there. I don't want to live my whole live trying to fulfil other people's vision. I've done it for a while, it's been fun. Now I want to out!

It's a bet. To create something that will allow me to pay the bills by making something that I am proud of.

So it's not a matter of how hard it is going to be or how many poor choices I will still have to make to get there. I will get there and this game will be released.

Clichés and untapped potential

I am not the kind of guy that knows how to keep things simple. If I let my creative brain get too involved I risk ending up with a concept that I can not make even in a thousand years.

So, as a first release, I want something that I can use as a solid base. A good old PSX-style survival horror is going to do the trick. I enjoy the idea of making one and, even if it's not my grand dream, it's something that I think I can manage.

What you say? There are millions of indie games that try to do the same? True. Although I feel that most of them are just either poorly made, with a lack of care and love or they just have some hints to the atmospheres and mechanics of the classics, while being something very different. 

Not many fully embrace their cliché essence, with respectful love. And that, to me, is opportunity.

The Master Plan

I don't know exactly how my game is going to be. I have a concept and I am developing the mechanics. I want to know that these are fun on their own: if I can get to the point where the core of the game is fun, then I can only do so much damage layering a context on top of it.

The idea is to develop a framework to help me make fun levels. Some sort of a Design Engine based on the core mechanics of a first person survival horror game. A set of tools if you will. Stuff like a puzzle system, the combat system, a scripted event system, an interaction system etc.

I can then use this framework as it's being developed iteratively, to design actual levels.

Fun things will stay, boring/too complex things will be thrown out.

Ideally development will revolve around good old sprints. Each sprint culminates in a new, playable build. The iterative process ensures that every release offers something new.

So, roughly what will drive updates to this blog is a working schedule that looks like this:

• Level design sprint (2 weeks - I might change this as I will see fit but with guaranteed deadline)
• Framework development and polish (2 weeks but more relaxed, to make room for planned life events)
• Writing updates when traveling or I am away from my desk.

This should amount to, roughly, a build a month.

Traveling together

You can sit tight and join me for the journey. I am going to share it publicly for your entertainment and for my record.

Whether you enjoy the failures or the successes, there's going to be a good deal of both.

As said, I am going to deliver various builds over time. They will showcase how I refine and evolve my core gameplay towards a polished product, so you'll always have something to look into.

Last week I mentioned I would release a new level as an excuse to showcase the progress with the Combat System. That was the start of a sprint and it means that we are roughly one week away from the next build...

Come back on Monday 9 and check out the result!