Like the cover image? So do I. I've an eye for how professionals do things, and many other furry game developers like to make use of title cards like these to give something of a professional look. Let's talk shop.
Project Scope & Deadline
As you know I'm aiming to make a choose your own adventure game set in the Korps Universe. Supervillain vs Superheroes to put it bluntly. I am scrambling to find the right tools to realize my vision for how I want the game to be, having jumped from Twine's Harlowe format to Sugarcube and now I'm looking for something even more robust and am keen to experiment with what I can find. So far that looks to be Gamemaker Studio 2.
Commitment-wise, I want to spend two years on this. Marking 2025.March.15 has the penultimate deadline, at that point I'll give a grim assessment if its something that needs a few more weeks worth of work before I release it in a steady state, or if its going to be abandonware completely.
Methodology
A little background on myself. Prior to the pandemic, I was an art student at a vocational college, studying at the level you'd expect of first year university (Here we strike a different between higher and further education, with me in the latter). Each class would have us do a project that'd last twelve weeks, often involving us developing a completely new skillset from scratch. Game development is not too dissimilar a field, only it requires multiple skillsets (hence two years) yet still has that obaqueness from lack of familiarity. If there is one thing I've learnt is the need of a solid methodology on how to approach learning.
The basic cycle, I was taught that I will elaborate on (in a later post) and give comment on where the project currently is.
- Research
- Development.
- Results.
- Evaluation.
We are still at the very early stages of Research. There has been work done but its scattered and haphazardly documented, and this journal post is an approach of remedying that with what is called experential learning or self-reflective learning. I have collaborators on this project (Izome & Kolvencia) whom I talk infrequently to, partly due to the fault I have little means of bringing them up to speed as there is no accessible game design document that can act as a project bible with the storyline outline, characters, mechanics, and all the rest.
There's little to no concept art of anything to provide visual references, and I currently have nothing else to point out to draw comparisions as I do not often play Choose Your Own Adventure games and haven't since the days of my youth were I was into the Steve Jackson games (eg. Citadel of Chaos, Warlock of Firetop Mountain) and the Lone Wolf series. Within the Korps I have taken note of a handful of authors who's work I've kept notes on to better inform myself of the setting.
Version Control
In Software development, a common scheme is the three-part versioning system. The first zero denoting Major releases, the second minor updates, and third patches. I'm making use of a fourth to denote the pre-alpha, each integer added incrementally, represents a concrete step towards having a product I can iteratate further from. Think of it like setting up the gameboard for chess, only you need to make the board and whittle the pieces and design the rules ofr how they move and stay on the squares. Our goal is to reach 1.0.0 or an approximate before the 15th of March in 2025. Should the release date get hit and the game published, I'll decide on how much support the game needs to fix bugs and implement requested quality-of-life updates.
Motivation
The million drone question: Why do this at all? Because I want to, is the simplest answer I can provide. I've been in this fandom for over ten years and as of yet don't have a large passion project to call my own or put my name on the map. I grew up in the age where harsh, vitrolic-laden reviews was slung to pretty much every webcomic. It was just the popualr form of entertainment then. I want to remedy for lost time by engaging in a preculiar mini-fandom, that hit me at just the right cross-section in my life. One of the korpscon happened just as I was getting into Arma 3 and Invisible Inc, which was back in 2018.
The cross of tactical aesthetics and espionage is what won me over, especially after seeing these two pieces by Uniform Vixen.
As I began to make introductions, I was exposed to a number of writers, in particular Syn and Runa who respectively wrote Induction and Crystallization. Not the first to write within the Korps but the ones that left a sizeable impression on what the whole thing was about:
- Induction Available here
- Crystallization Available here
It was somewhere around all this I decided I'd want to make a meaningful contribution, and have been building up my own story set-within. The issue is now just threading all the loose story ideas and character concepts together in a comphrensible narrative.
Follow-Up Plans
My main worry is a lack of skill consolidation towards programming, and atrophy of my drawing ability. I've had 'art block' for several months if not a year at this point. I'll discuss these two points in full in a later post. Right now, I feel on the agenda, I need to:
- Consolidate my notes into a centralized document (a GDD.)
- Feel out the edges for primary research; get a working definition of the genres I'm operating in, find the big name defining titles to play through and make notes on what was so revolutionary about them, and begin some preliminary concept art of characters. 2.1 Read more Korps fic on the KEU.
- Allocate myself time to experiment with art software and different engines to find tools that feel 'right' for the project. eg. Rebelle 5, GMS2, Aesprite.
These don't all need to be said and done by a given date, but will be part of a larger ongoing process. Especially as the GDD will need to be updated as I work and come up with new ideas, or need to revise implementations. Already the main menu has been redrafted into something significantly better.