Solace Crafting

Solace Crafting
Redefining the Crafting RPG

Sunday, October 16, 2016

The importance of good planning

This week, once again, I got a lot done: rare resources are spawning; crafting professions are leveling up; the reworked enchanting system works well; harvesting tool strength; reworked stat system with equip/unequip controls; stone and metal building materials; combat armor and damage calculation; dimension crystal crafting, placement, resource storage, and teleportation; encounter monster and loot spawning; as well as combat experience and levels.

That's not to say that all of those features are finished, but that they are all in and working.

Currently I'm finishing up the reworked skill system which is already working fine, I just have to finish the skill point management and "purchasing" of skills.

The past few weeks I've been talking about my minimalist approach to development, I thought I'd explain that quickly.
Imagine you have:

50 sections or feature genres in your game, and each one has
100 stages of completion. If each stage of each section takes
1 day to finish (that's 5,000 days)

you can spend 30 or 60 days on just one subject no problem, but then all the other 49 sections of your game, all important to it's playability and overall fun, go completely neglected. That was more or less how I was handling development before making a clear todo list and sticking to it. Now I'm making sure everything is level one before moving on to level two. A couple items might get an extra level or two here and there, but overall everything is evolving in an even fashion.

Sometimes it's hard to to settle for less than what you know you're capable of, but sometimes that's a smart decision when time and resources are extremely limited.

Next Saturday I will go on vacation (from my day job) for a week, and hope to get a decent amount of development time in. I will be out of the country for the entire 9 days, so there will definitely be lot's to do, but I'm counting on a fair share of downtime as well as two ridiculously long flights.

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