Game Updates and GDC
Intro
So it's been a little while since I posted one of these but over the last month I've done a lot of redesigning of the game and put a lot of thought into what I want the initial MVP of the game to end up as. This just so happens to coincide with the fact that I'm planning on attending GDC this year and I want to have a playable prototype by then that I can show off. More recently I've been debating about what to put into the final build for GDC.
MVP Direction
Initially I wanted the MVP to be ready with all of the systems in play and having a very vertical slice of everything. However after discussing the my goals with a few of my friends and given that GDC is only about a month away I am deciding to pivot and focus solely on the crafting and research aspects of the potions for my initial build. I think that this shift is much more reasonable and will allow me to focus on some of the core systems and what makes my game unique.
My current plans for GDC build are:
- Expand and flesh out the Player's house
- This includes designing where important objects, like the cauldron and research station, go and decorations if possible
- Include very basic farm plots where the player can harvest 1 herb of each type (likely infinitely)
- Add in UI for the herbs added into the cauldron displaying how much of each element is currently in the cauldron
- Add in two more herbs to have 1 herb for each element
- Add in a research mini-game for each of the 6 herbs
- Create and add in assets for the Herb Journal
- Create a UI for the player to keep track of Potions made
- Add in an instructional/tutorial for the research mini-game as well as the rest of the game
While this is a decently large list I am pretty confident in my ability to finish it all.
Changes Since Last Post
So while a lot of the last five weeks has been design focused I have gotten a decent amount of work done on the development side of the game. The first major update is that I ended up completely switching the UI from the UI Toolkit back to the Canvas system. I feel like because the limitations and extra steps I needed to take in order to get the same functionality that is native to the Canvas system I became increasingly focused on the UI and it ended up taking a lot of development time. Now after switching over to the Canvas system I am hoping for it to be a more streamlined process when it comes to developing more UI elements.
Speaking of which I have developed a lot of assets for the UI including actual inventory assets, research mini-game assets, and environmental props however these environmental assets won't be used in the GDC build.
House
Community Center
Research Mini-Game
Inventory UI
Next Sprint: Work on Polishing Mechanics and Keep up with Blog Posts
I'm planning on working on getting a couple features in the next two weeks such as a UI element for displaying the current herb elements that the player has put into the Cauldron and a system for holding potions that the player has made and what elements went into it. Also I want to be more consistent with my blog posts since most of these are supposed to be two weeks long.