Summary
The past month, while working mostly on my artsy things and my new passion, the comic, I managed to begin the real efforts toward SCaN. That’s right, the thing all indies seem to avoid like the plague, the death of creativity, the Game Design Document is finally in the works!
But before all that, I’d like to take a moment to gush over the brilliance of my darling husband, if you don’t mind. He is, after all, the resident wizard here!
Beyond my peanut of a brain
This month, I have once more faced the enormous gap, the ravine that lives between me and my husband. His autodidact nature, decades of experience, and just the pure raw will power to sit through a month of development from dawn to dusk is just… If I had half the prowess of him, I swear.
I got the honor of doing some research for him this month. For a software that already has a mountain of moving parts, and the sheer complexity of the thing terrifies me. What looks like hundreds of files working perfectly together. And the craziest thing? His clients rarely find any bugs in the systems he makes. Meanwhile, I can’t make a switch flip without breaking the whole thing.
Just to give you an idea about the kinds of things he works with on a daily basis, that I had no idea existed before this research, here’s a few things I read about: The Knapsack problem in programming and computation, constraint based programming, heuristics, computation abstraction, genetic algorithms, and my personal favorite which I still don’t know what on earth it is about, NP-hardness.
The value of being a dumb bunny
Turns out, while I didn’t get even a third of the things I just mentioned, my husband understands it all very well. These words are not just random alien scripts for him, but rather, they are breadcrumbs and clues to find what he needs.
As you may have guessed, I couldn’t in a million years speak with him about these things in any sort of professionally meaningful way… But then again, my research seems to have led me to a treasure trove of things and by the end of it I had procured my husband a library of useful things. My noobie eye went into such a deep rabbit hole that something was bound to come up.
On the other hand, I learned some things myself, such as heuristics. For someone who flunked the logic course on math in high school, this kind of intuitive big picture thinking comes easier. Or maybe it’s just my feminine being, who knows at this point.
Game Project: SCaN
In other news, SCaN, my glorious first project, is finally moving. Slowly, for now, but once the comic project is done, it is full speed ahead with this little game.
I began by working on the one thing all these popular indie devs in the YouTubes of the Internet frown upon: The GDD. Apparently, this thing is the death of creativity, as you want to really be ‘finding the game’ and don’t want to be ‘boxed in’ by a rigid document. I couldn’t disagree more with all of those doomsayers!
Everybody benefits from a plan. Of course, don’t be a dumbo and make it so stiff that you feel like you are in a straight-jacket, but do make it solid enough that you will always have a frame. Remember, friends, limitation feeds creativity. As humans, we tend to be shocked into immobility when given too many options. Things will drag on when there is no clear direction. That’s why I am making the GDD, to have a very clear direction, a very solid frame.
Small games, small teams, try it out anyway
Find a way that works for you. Don’t be a herd animal when it comes to your life, listen to many sides, try all things, and settle on the combination that YOU find works best for YOU. This problem is so prominent in all creative spaces that it is sickening. People tell you to do this, do that, definitely don’t do this! Or better yet, ‘this is the latest and greatest’. Let me tell you, having watched my husband work for five years now, I can promise you that all of these latest and greatest snake oil salesmen are conmen of the highest degree.
Confusion is imminent when flooding one’s head with the cacophony. I recall having worshipped the ground Stephen King walked on, and because he apparently hates to plot ahead when writing his books, I figured that’s what I should do too. For years, I went with the winds. It wasn’t for me, as I found out when I started making skeletons and plot journals that span the whole story.
The Design Document is like that skeleton. It will make it very easy for you to implement your plan. Like any other thing in life, if you don’t have a plan, you are in trouble. In this document, you will have your path marked from A to Z, and as you grow, the twists you take may change. Anyway, don’t be intimidated by other people to the point that you toss away a perfectly valid tool to get to where you need to go.
Current status
Currently, my GDD is creeping on the 7th page. The funny thing is, that is only the briefing section. You know, things like Concept statements, target audience information, competition research, and other general tidbits. The real work started when I began putting down the development portion of the document. After all, it includes everything from detailed story/player progression to UI/systems and potential expansions and other ideas. I’m in for a wild ride!
Thankfully, thinking about all of this ahead of time will help me figure out where I should even begin when the true development begins. I will have listed out all the systems and elements I need, all the assets. And most of all, I will be keeping track of the whole process, all my bugs and problems. As I found out from my comic project, just doing it is the best possible way to learn all the skills I need.
The next steps
I am still learning as well, all the while writing the GDD and working on the comic. I’m somewhere around hour 5 in the CS50 course, which is slow, yes. But what can I say, it is bloody heavy stuff! Just the other day I sat through a section on what it actually means when we are ‘compiling’ stuff. Four phases the computer does based on the… I wanna say libraries?
I’m also doing my best not to spread myself too thin with these things. It seems to be one of my worst vices. So for now, when I am not working the marriage or busy translating, I will put my time first on the DA! comic, and then on SCaN. After DA! is done, SCaN will become my main project, and I will work on it more.
All and all, the ball is rolling. Eventually, it will pick up speed, and I will have made something amazing!
Psst! Don’t forget to check out the News and the ArtLog for more projects!