Milestone 1 came to an end on Friday, and I put together another milestone review. It’s not as long as the first one, and hopefully interesting. Enjoy.
December 1st 2008 – Milestone 1
Two major goals were set for this milestone:
- Primary goal: a decision on the core design.
- Secondary goal: support of textured objects (including in-game level and object editing support).
I reached the primary design goal, but fell short of the second goal. The design goal was broken down into a mix of tasks: brainstorming, designing, rapid prototyping of game play ideas, and iteration. I spent roughly 80% of my time on these design tasks.
The secondary goal was composed of three tasks:
- Support of textured objects (trivial).
- Initial implementation of an in-game object editor.
- An improved level editor.
I only accomplished the first of those three sub-tasks, running out of time for the later two. I also spent about 10% of my time working on rendering features not directly related to my stated goals.
Task Performance
Progress is a lot more difficult to measure for this milestone (compared to the previous one). From a technical standpoint, the core tech hasn’t advanced that much. Progress was made, but it doesn’t feel like 4 weeks’ worth of work. I had to implement some new features to support some of things I wanted to experiment with, but a lot of time was spent actually experimenting, both on paper and in code.
From a design point of view, the progress is more significant. This was a mentally draining month, and I spent more of my waking hours working on this project than ever before. I feel I have accomplished the overall goal, even though it is much harder to quantify it.
On the secondary task (support of textured objects), I didn’t get as far I should have. Textured objects are supported in the codebase (that in itself was trivial), but the only design work on the object editor, and revamping of the level editor was done. The implementation is still to be completed.
Areas that Suffered (and Why?)
Object Editor:
- It wasn’t the first priority, and constantly got bumped from my schedule. I could afford to delay this feature, but not the design.
- I over-engineered the task. I spent a lot of time looking at component based systems. I don’t regret doing this because I believe it will pay off in the long term.
- I didn’t anticipate the mental challenge of trying to design two major systems in parallel (the more creatively oriented gameplay design, and the technically oriented software architecture). It was exhausting to mentally switch back and forth.
Areas that were Successful (and Why?)
Design:
- Perseverance. I don’t want to pat myself on the back too hard. There were some tough moments of doubts. But I just kept pushing, and trying new things, and trusting that I was smart enough to do this if I put the work in.
- Swallowing my ego. I decided to show my tech demo and start discussing my ideas with a few people beyond the extremely small circle so far. I’ve said this before, it’s difficult to get non-biased feedback from friends, but the feedback I did get helped guide me.
Breakdown of Areas of Focus from the last 4 weeks
Week 1: Designing, minor bugs fixed.
Week 2: Designing, experimenting, architecture
Week 3: Designing, experimenting, some core tech improvements.
Week 4: Tech Designing, rendering, designing.
Work Done Last Week
Productivity was again mixed last week. My work schedule is all over the place, and because of that, I end up working every odd hour. The week started well enough, but came to a crushing halt on Friday, where I just could not seem to get anything done. I don’t know what it was but I’m chalking it up to post-thanksgiving blues (a Thanksgiving I didn’t even celebrate since they have no knowledge of this beautiful American holiday over here — Hurray Germany!).
I did some good progress on the rendering side of things, allowing me to dabble a little bit in component based object systems (which are worth their own post). I also made some progress on the design of all places (I’ll go into that a bit later this week). Good progress.
The editor work fell by the wayside unfortunately.
Work Planned This Week
I’m going to produce a short design document this week, finish my planning for milestone 2 and plow straight ahead into a long list of tasks to get me to that milestone. There will be more work on the core tech, on the physics, on the editor (picking up what didn’t get finished last week), and the serialization. And probably some more design iterations.
I’ll be going snowboarding on Friday (Hurray Germany!), so I will be working evenings this week to make up the missed time.
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