My timeline is much more aggressive than the 12 weeks, I hope to be done in less than 4 weeks, but the 12 weeks will be a hard date.
The Game
An endless jumper with guns, LeapDay meets BroForce. Target is mobile although it should be playable on PC too.
Approach
I’ll be leveraging as much existing stuff as I can, PlatformerPro, any graphics I already have, any sound aI already have, etc. I don’t specifically have a budget but I might ocassionally buy stuff. I’ll track how much I have spent.
Awesome project. Good luck with it! You are already off to a tremendous start considered you seem to have just started and already have that much done.
Well Platformer PRO has a sample using the same main character, and already has some leapday like runner movements and a menu system. So its mainly been tweaking some settings and drawing levels.
Some of it is time spent on asset store (particualrly a few years ago when Platformer PRO was done).
Some of it is the starting games but not finishing. A few promising demos were ‘almost’ funded, so I put a lot of effort in to demos which I subsequently lost motivation for (too big to finish without funding).
Some of it is just being busy periods at day job.
Recently my wife has also been very sick, so between hospital, work and managing the kids/household I’ve had no free time.
Yeah! Characters are cool.
I was expecting the gameplay to be faster, though I didn’t consider the auto run that is needed. Have you tested faster speeds - for quicker flow, more challenge?
It’s already looking fun, even with the minimum gameplay.
Auto run required for one button game play which seems to be mandatory for non-serious platformers on mobile.
Speed may need tweaking but its already quite difficult (in fact historically all of my games have been too hard, so I need to make it easier not harder). Still I might up speed and balance with easier levels and more power-ups. Too early to say at the moment.
If you stopped for a week or two and did nothing on the game because you had/wanted to do paying work instead… I see no reason to count that time in your 12 weeks. I’d look at the 12 weeks as meaning 12 weeks actually spent to some degree on your game. Doesn’t make sense to count a week where you did nothing or almost nothing due to having no time.
Well, I can’t speak for Johnny, but now I feel marginally better about my own project stalling out due to Real Life getting in there and making me waste all my time Adulting.
Ha ha. I understand. Life always has things going on. Things that have to be done.
The way I interpret it is the 12 Week Challenge has to be molded to a person’s life. Some people might be able to truly work on a game for 12 consecutive weeks. Others might be able to only do 1 week per month. And maybe the idea is in such a case is to only go after a 3 week scope in such a case but I wouldn’t agree with that unless it is a person’s very first game. Then absolutely would agree with it.
And the original idea IIRC was to spend 1/6 of the time making the game (the core gameplay should all be finished in this time) and the other 5/6 of the time is spent polishing & play-testing (with a purpose!) to otherwise improve the game.
Basically it’s more about… scope small, get the core gameplay done quickly (and small scope) then spend the majority of the dev time on polishing it.
Ironically… I’ve been focusing on tiny games for the past 3 years. So this time I am taking a different path. Focusing on a bigger game and although I want to get it done as quickly as I can (while working no more than 5 hours per week on it)… I don’t have any deadline for it. Haven’t approached it this way in a long time.
Basic Enemy, patrol back and forth, ocassionally shoot when he sees player.
Psycho, charges at player when player gets near, explodes on touch. Also shoots.
Big Dude. Stand still and shoots heavy fire, with a gap between for ‘reload’). Can take a lot of damage.
Big Helmet Dude. Like above but a bit more gung-ho. He charges player, but has less bullets. Shooting doesn’t cause him to stop his charge.
Some terminator variations. Immune to basic weapon, can still shoot while being hit (other enemies all stop shooting when hit).