When I started this project I was 29, single, and about to graduate with two MBA degrees that I no longer had plans to do anything with. Now this game is finally getting somewhere great but my kids already ride full bicycles. Yay, but... geez.
Here's the breakdown of the timeline:
Year 1 - June 2016 - May 2017: Started with just a vague idea and a desire to innovate something in the RTS space, because game dev had always been my dream and I couldn't remember the last RTS I played that didn't use the Command & Conquer formula. Averaged ~40 hours per week. Also my back started giving out. Also got married.
Year 2 - June 2017 - May 2018: Refined the initial mechanics to make the game actually fun:
- demons generate chaos > chaos spawns new portals, instead of portals found by exploration
- information about your invasion flows to the keep and to external levels 1 witness at a time
- escaping witnesses can bring additional reinforcements into the map
Averaged ~40 hours/wk. Also my spouse started working and we bought a car and house and also my back got worse too.
Year 3 - June 2018 - May 2019: I started streaming on Twitch! I also ran out of money, got a job in software, reduced dev hours by 2/3s, started releasing demos and got feedback from my first fans to further improve everything. The difference these fans made cannot possibly be overstated, not just in terms of gameplay improvement through great ideas and pointers, but also and especially so in terms of my own mental wellbeing. If it weren't for them I am sure I would not have had the strength to keep moving forward with this project. Averaged 39 hours/wk until March 2019, 18 /wk after that. Also my back got worse.
Year 4 - June 2019 - May 2020: I showed the demo at PAX West 2019 and learned several key lessons:
- the game was fun! just needed to add more levels, plus more story, plus more everything else too
- navmesh issues ruined the fun every time they showed up, which was often
- navmesh and physics also cost so much performance to run that the game could not be easily scaled
Thus began the long refactor. Also my son Ian was born and I had to help with that. Also my back got worse. Averaged 16 hours per week.
Year 5 - June 2020 - May 2021: Had to stop using Unity's navmesh system completely and switch to A*pathfinding project because every new navmesh would come with small tears in it that felt like invisible walls in game and also navmesh was limiting our max units per level to a very small number. This was a lot of work. Also my back got worse. Averaged 12 hours per week.
Year 6 - June 2021 - May 2022: Had to stop using Unity's physics system for all unit collisions, pathfinding constraints, attack impacts, and clickable level interactions, because Unity's physics calls were also limiting our max number of units that could be active at one time. Also my son Owen was born, and my back had gotten so bad that I was needing those electric ride-on scooters every single time I went to a grocery store, so I did spinal disc replacement surgery which was brutal. Averaged 7 hours/wk at first, then 3 hours/wk with two babies in the house, then basically 0 after surgery until November the next year.
Year 7 - June 2022 - May 2023: Slowly got back into it, mostly debugging from the long refactor and figuring out the game's new limits from a performance point of view. Was able to make a level way bigger than is fun, with 200+ units pathfinding across the entire thing at once without major lag. Averaged just 90 minutes of game dev per week.
Year 8 - June 2023 - May 2024: Added level-up mechanics to grow demons larger than buildings, plus enemy cavalry that could bring oversized demons down through battle charges and tested battles with 100+ units fighting at once without major lag. Averaged 7 hours per week.
Year 9 - June 2024 - May 2025: Built the new opening tutorial level (starting player in a fenced pen instead of inside of a building they cannot interact with), plus found and fixed lots more issues coming from the long refactor. Averaged 7 hours per week.
Year 10 - June 2025 - today: Added second tutorial level:
first pass at Peasants capitol level:
backwards portals as a way to earn word upgrades / item unlocks
"wild" demons you can find inside those portals that become yours only if they wipe all your current demons out:
plus pseudo-random house shuffling when replaying levels to change gameplay each time along with an a* prebaking system so the first play of each level skips the extra load time associated with that house shuffling.
Current goal is to release all of the above into a new demo which will be the first I've put out since 2020. Will keep you posted on that. Averaged 8 hours per week.
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