Game Development So Far
It’s been another two weeks since my last game development update. I’ve been really busy with trying to get Gym Empire ready for a demo release, new day job responsibilities, getting ready for Christmas and it’s only 5 weeks until my wife gives birth! Still, my target is to provide an update every week.
Despite being busy with other tasks, the past two weeks have been really productive for Gym Empire. In the last update the task priority was:
- Environment Features – I focused solely on adding in the entrance to the gym for this. I decided to drop off other environment items for now. The reasoning being that they don’t immediately add to the gameplay or define the core functionality. As the year quickly nears its end, I’m finding myself with a lot of work and not a lot of time. Therefore I’m now prioritising the essentials for the demo.
- Mechanics – This has taken a large amount of my focus. Specifically around clients working with staff. With the changes over the past few months, the client/staff interaction that was working didn’t work anymore. So a lot of redesigning of the staff was needed to get the behaviour working again.
Extra Development
Outside of the immediate stated tasks I also managed to cover off a lot of other areas. A week and a half ago I took a holiday from work to fully focus on development. It was a hugely productive and enjoyable day. It also totally reinforced how much I want to be able to do development full time. With the extra time I was also able to work on:
- Client Movement/Behaviour – To date the clients have always just appeared and disappeared in the gym. This worked for development but in a gameplay sense completely breaks the sense of realism. The clients have now been updated to spawn off screen and outside of the gym. They now make their way over to the gym. If they are members they go straight to training. If they are not members they wait to be greeted before training.
- Menus – Along with the staff behaviour, the menus also stopped working due to the changes in the design over the past few months. Last week I was able to spend some time getting these back into a place where they are functioning. There’s still a lot of aesthetic design and a few bugs to be fixed. But they are back to the level of functionality they were previously.
- Start Menu – I was originally going to leave this till last. However I found myself with a spare hour over the weekend and wanted a quick easy task to tick off. Gym Empire now has a functioning start menu before you go into gameplay. It still needs a lot of cleaning up but it’s in place and functions correctly.
- Level Progression – Following on from creating the start menu. I started thinking about how the player enters the game. To get some of the framework in place, I started setting up the first environment the player will be in. To explain a bit more; the standard game mode will have the player start small and build up money to enable them to buy bigger and more adaptable premises for building their gyms. The final game will have a vast number of environments to choose between with different pros and cons. However, the demo will have just two environments.
- Time Controls – The time buttons have existed in the UI for a while now. But up until recently they haven’t had any functionality. It was a quick fix to get them working and now that they are it really helps with testing. Being able to speed up the action really helps to get to bugs quicker!
Other Developments
Other than game development, there have been a number of other things on my plate the last couple of weeks. In my full time job, I moved to a new team just over a month ago. The new work is really interesting and overall I get a much better work life balance. However, with great job comes great responsibility. And that responsibility translates to more work! Also my wife is fast approaching the due date of our second son. It an amazing and exciting time. But also hectic. Supporting her at doctors’ appointments and having to do more around the house means the zero amount of spare time I already had is now, less than zero! Throw into the mix the festive period and sorting out Christmas presents, the copious amounts of birthday parties that seem to be popping up. Busy times.
Despite that I’m still trying to throw even more into the mix. I’m continuing to help my wife set up the blog and YouTube channel focused on content reviews etc, and also continuing to try and build up ChronikSpartan.com to more than just a dev blog. To support the Best New Tycoon Games in 2018 post, I uploaded an equivalent YouTube video. I always thought making a video would be a relatively straight forward thing. But editing them takes up so much time! I’m getting more efficient with them, but it still takes up valuable time.
I also wrote a new post about the PlayStation Classic. I feel like it’s been getting a lot of criticism which not all is justified. Sure it’s not perfect and maybe not up the NES, SNES Classics. But I still think it’s a really cool piece of equipment and has provoked a huge amount of nostalgia in me. Especially with the game selection. Therefore, I thought I’d throw in my two pence/cents and give it a little support.
Marketing Is Game Dev
You might wonder why I continue to write posts and create videos not directly related to Gym Empire. However, I believe that in the bigger picture they are all linked. The more popular chronikspartan.com becomes then the greater audience I can reach.
About a month ago I watched some videos about achieving good SEO rankings and I’ve since been trying to put that learning into play. So far it seems to be working, an in the long term hopefully it will pay off. The best tycoon games ranks on the first page of Google for a bunch of keywords. Even reaching as high a number 1 at one point for “best new tycoon games”. Also the PlayStation Classic post has managed to rank number 14 when I searched for “best PS1 games”. For the website that’s huge! A few months ago I couldn’t even find it on the first page of google when I searched for Chronik Spartan, Gym Empire or GLO! Priority is still on the development of Gym Empire, but with marketing as much a part of game dev as coding every little helps.
Time Management
As the end of the year closes in, there’s still a lot to finish before the demo is ready. Top priorities this week are:
- Menus – I keep putting off the menus and sorting out the visual side of the GUI, but it’s going to be crucial to gameplay. That’s why this week needs to make this the top priority.
- Level Progression/Start Menu – If I get some extra time I’ll move back onto cleaning up the level progression and start menu visuals.
Gym Empire is now available to add to your Steam Wishlist.
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