Over the past few months I have not been making a lot of forward progress on my game. I have, however, been doing a lot of thinking and a little bit of research. I still want to help my daughter, but there is actually more that goes into a game for toddlers than I thought. So, I have decided to switch gears. I am going to shelve Bubbles and publish a different game first.
Meet Jack
He a lumberjack, or at least he wants to be. In the beginning he is going to just wonder the woods and look for items while avoiding static and dynamic objects. See the “requirements” page here. Below is some of the concept art that I have worked on.
The above “Sprite Map” was done using Gimp (I just pasted some assets into a green background… I may use a real sprite map later). I used the NES color palette as published on Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_game_console_palettes
Creating a different game first will still allow me to build up the game architecture. For example,
- Title Screen
- Settings Screen
- Game Screen
- Credits Screen
- Publish to Android
Once that is done, I can continue to add gameplay. Will he chop down the trees? Will he have to carry the logs? Will he be more than a 16×16 pixel sprite? I have a few ideas, but what I have learned thus far is make is as simple as possible before jumping too deep into the details.
Why?
There are a number of reasons. On this project I have learned everything takes much more time than anticipated and there are always roadblocks. Learning on a basic app will allow me to know what I am getting into when it is time to publish an app via Kickstarter.
- I still want to do the puzzle game that I wanted to do originally, but the play testers (now ages 3 and 4) still do not give me enough verbal feedback. By switching to a new theme, I can still practice most of the relevant skills, but I will be able to involve more vocal testers.
- The game’s framework can still be in developed. Meaning, I could still use the game screens (Title, play area, settings, etc.) across games.
- By switching to a secondary project, I can gain experience with the administration side of publishing an app to Google Play without messing up on an App that I really care about.
- I need more practice with Pixel Art and building game assets. While I am getting better, I still do not have enough assets to complete an app.
- Doing a secondary project will also force me to restructure this webpage, and my code base, such that I can support more than one project.