Hi everyone!
As this project winds to a close, I thought now would be a good time to go back through the entire project, and bring it all together with what I’ve done.
Let’s start with the proposal: https://sldesignfmp.game.blog/2019/03/14/project-proposal/
Looking back, my initial proposal was incredily non-specific, lacking any mention of narrative or specific gameplay features. It basically said “I’m making a JRPG”. Whilst that’s not bad in-and-of itself, it doesn’t really do anything to anchor down what I’m ACTUALLY making. JRPG is quite a broad genre, and although I narrowed it down by using the words Final Fantasy, that still doesn’t do much to describe my project.
Next up is the project plan: https://sldesignfmp.game.blog/2019/03/14/project-plan/
Ah, the project plan. That didn’t go as expected. It started out fine, but by the end of week 3, it had pretty much gone straight out of the window. the one thing that killed was the story framework. It took me so long to come up with one that it ate most of the time that I’d allocated elsewhere, knocking back my progress until eventually, it became useless. To be fair though; I’ve never been good at sticking to plans. Ever. I guess it’s just something I’m gonna have to learn eventually.
I started by designing characters, to see if that would spark up my inspiration to get the story outline sorted: https://sldesignfmp.game.blog/2019/03/15/medieval-armour-research/, https://sldesignfmp.game.blog/2019/03/20/character-designs/.
Whilst this didn’t kickstart my story, it did give me some ideas on gameplay, so I guess that’s something. It was also very good fun! Seriously, getting your mates to dress up in silly costumes while you take test shots is quite fun to do! This did lead on to my character sprites: https://sldesignfmp.game.blog/2019/04/25/character-sprites/, https://sldesignfmp.game.blog/2019/05/23/character-sprites-completed/, so that part worked perfectly!
Whilst researching for that ever elusive story thread, I looked at all manner of sources to try and get some inspiration:
- https://sldesignfmp.game.blog/2019/03/28/character-research/
- https://sldesignfmp.game.blog/2019/04/03/character-research-joan-of-arc/
- https://sldesignfmp.game.blog/2019/03/21/creative-issues-and-possible-solutions/
- https://sldesignfmp.game.blog/2019/04/01/story-research-record-of-lodoss-war/
- https://sldesignfmp.game.blog/2019/03/31/game-research-golden-sun/
I looked at all of this, and still nothing was quite leaping out at me. It was if my head just didn’t wanna know. I managed to filter some of this into my gameplay, such as the elemental magic of Golden Sun, and some of the aspects of Jeanné d’Arc. All in all though, it seemed like I was going nowhere. Then suddenly I remembered a project that I’d made a few years ago, which I’d left on a bit of a cliffhanger. I thought I could build on that, and wrote about it here: https://sldesignfmp.game.blog/2019/04/03/story-outline-potential-inspiration-and-other-ideas/
To be brutally honest, I felt as if I was just jumping all over the place. Every week came with a jumble of new and reused ideas. I even went a bit off-piece and looked at Tactical Battle Systems and Plot Relevant Music: https://sldesignfmp.game.blog/2019/04/04/mechanical-ideas-tactical-battle-rpgs/, https://sldesignfmp.game.blog/2019/04/25/music-as-a-plot-device/.
Neither of these really came to anything, but it was interesting to explore none-the-less. I mean, if I had the time, I probably would have used a Tactical Battle System, and the music wasn’t all in vain either. It made me appreciate the importance of audio in gaming.
Luckily for me, as the project continued, I finally managed to get the core aspects of my project sorted out:
- https://sldesignfmp.game.blog/2019/04/26/inspiration/
- https://sldesignfmp.game.blog/2019/05/01/prologue-storyboard/
- https://sldesignfmp.game.blog/2019/05/01/character-development-systems/
I managed to FINALLY get the story ironed out, at least at a basic level. The gameplay started to come together. It was all looking so promising. And it was.
Gradually, I managed to start putting together a very basic construct of my game, as I’d managed to get hold of some playtesters. But that turned out to be not worth that much. I sent it around, and I got one response. ONE RESPONSE!!! With only one response, it wasn’t really worth anything. You see, when doing primary research, you need a decent sample size otherwise the research is generally considered invalid. It’s just how it works.
With three weeks to go, I started production, as I’ve recorded here:
- https://sldesignfmp.game.blog/2019/05/09/dev-log-0/
- https://sldesignfmp.game.blog/2019/05/10/dev-log-1/
- https://sldesignfmp.game.blog/2019/05/11/dev-log-2/
- https://sldesignfmp.game.blog/2019/05/15/dev-log-3/
- https://sldesignfmp.game.blog/2019/05/15/dev-log-4/
- https://sldesignfmp.game.blog/2019/05/16/dev-log-5/
- https://sldesignfmp.game.blog/2019/05/16/dev-log-6/
- https://sldesignfmp.game.blog/2019/05/16/dev-log-7/
- https://sldesignfmp.game.blog/2019/05/20/dev-log-8/
- https://sldesignfmp.game.blog/2019/05/22/dev-log-9/
- https://sldesignfmp.game.blog/2019/05/22/dev-log-10/
- https://sldesignfmp.game.blog/2019/05/23/dev-log-11/
- https://sldesignfmp.game.blog/2019/05/24/dev-log-12/
- https://sldesignfmp.game.blog/2019/05/24/dev-log-13/
- https://sldesignfmp.game.blog/2019/05/24/dev-log-14/
There’s quite a lot here, and I eventually managed to produce a technical demonstration of what I was hoping would be at least a full demo. I suppose that I should have managed my time better.
Overall, I feel as if I could have done SO MUCH BETTER. I haven’t really been on it as much as I should have been with this entire project. Maybe next time I do anything like this, I should come up with some kind of Game Design Document to work from. Even if it’s just two or three pages on a word document, I honestly think it would have helped.
I’m probably my own worst critic though. I’ll let you make up your own minds about how I’ve done. So there we have it. One project.
SLGameDesign FMP 