hey y'all! the goal of this series is to document some projects I'm working on while also practicing converting my writing into something folks can read!
pls bear in mind, that this is my first piece I'm attempting to write for other folks to read... It's going to be a rough journey but I hope I can improve over time. I expect this series to last around 5 weeks(until the end of buildspace) and will revaluate at that time.
well, let's just get into it!
why buildspace
Just some background about me to help set the scene - I'm a software dev in the AAA game industry, I like to be outside, and I love to learn new things. I've been diving in n out of millions (okay tens) of projects in my free time as a way to learn, but have never finished any of those. So when I heard about buildspace, I thought it's the perfect community to try and rally myself to the finish line on a pet project.
So here I am writing(i'm trying!) about the process behind creating my first ever solo web game during nights & weekends!
idea
I'm a big fan of games, I work in games, I play videogames with my friends across the country, & I fantasize about making videogames - but I've never actually finished making a game solo. So the core of my idea is simple, complete making a web game and publish it on crazygames at the end of 6 weeks.
The inspiration behind this game is krew.io, which is a simplistic version of sea of thieves that runs on the web built in three.js. I'm going to make a even more simplistic version of that where players can sail around in a multiplayer world, attack each other and have a room leaderboard w/ ships conquered.
Your probably wondering, why multiplayer? Well, I love building things I can share with people live during the building process, which is why I'm targeting a multiplayer web-game instead of a short single player experience. This raises the complexity of the project making it hard to fit within 6 weeks, but I'll give it my best shot!
On the visual side, I'm aiming for simplistic visuals(lowpoly) that I can craft within hours or pull from an artist that generously releases their assets for free use.
The prototype/toy will just be the base game mechanics with players being able to join the same room and sail the high seas (w/ some rogue cannons & cannonballs :D)!
scope stay creepin
I always find working on solo project hard for me as I struggle to keep the scope limited. I'll come up with an idea, like a simple single player game that I plan to build within a game-jam then add 100s of new features to a trello board to the point where I take one look at the board and just quit on the spot. My goal for this project is to limit the scope to 80% of my true work capacity and only aim for a vertical slice of gameplay by the end of these 6 weeks. How will I do that?
I'm hoping that writing about my process and making it public will make me think twice about the features that I'm adding into the game.
I'm doing this project part-time outside of my fulltime day job & my family life, so getting the planning part of this project right is paramount to it's success...
I'm setting the vertical slice goals early on in trello, but they are malleable enough to allow for rapid changes to the feature sets (it's always important to stay on your toes in gamedev, iterating will always help you design better). I'll have a system in place to reevaluate the amount of time building systems will take when I swap features out.
I feel somewhat confident that these will help me keep on track, even though I'm going to be on vacation for the second week of buildspace.
next steps
build a toy!
I'm planning to build a super simple multiplayer toy where players can go around destroying other folks boats before respawning.
I will be using Reactor a multiplayer networking solution for Unity. I've got quite a bit to learn so I'll be sure to capture the learning process behind the framework.
I'm trying to cram as much of this before I head back up to Seattle by car this weekend - I'm currently at a stage where folks can walk around with some form of input prediction.
Gather feedback on initial blocking bugs(multiplayer, latency related) & begin planning the vertical slice of fun. The goal is to have a game that is fun for 1 minutes.
Continue building! By this phase we should have a game people can join and truly have something to battle for and enjoy for at least a minute(the very core loop is done here).
Build plans around this core loop and implement them to build out to 5 minutes of fun.
figure the rest out while we go :)
Reach out to me on twitter or substack if you've got advice, ideas, or just want to chat! Thanks a lot for sticking w/ me, hope y'all have a great week!
> I've been diving in n out of millions (okay tens) of projects in my free time as a way to learn, but have never finished any of those.
this is so true lmao
congrats on the first post! looking forward to the rest of it :)