Surviving Mid-Development Hell
It’s been a long hiatus on my developer blog as I’ve been stuck in what game developers often refer to as “Mid-Development Hell”.
It’s a phenomenon where the end is just not within sight and each day is a slog, sometimes wasted re-designing or re-coding features which was already implemented (it seemed like a good idea a few weeks ago!).
So let’s start from the beginning. My vision for the next game project would be an RPG, an open world that’s highly dynamic, and would entail a robust crafting system. The setting would be an apocalyptic & dystopian future where the few human survivors must band together to face the harsh new world.
I wanted it to be a combination of games that I really enjoyed growing up, so it would be my take on a apocalyptic Rune Factory (Harvest Moon w/ RPG combat focus) inspired game with lovely pixel art.
I’d imagined the player character building up a settlement, recruiting other survivors to join, trading with various other settlements, fighting wild mutated beasts and raiders to become a force to be reckon with. Eventually form caravan routes to trade in a big way, and leading war parties to expand territory, all the while, the small details, such as tending to crops, animal husbandry & crafting would provide some stress relief.
So it started as such, I designed the gameplay systems and mechanics, databases for items and crafting, start coding on the farm management features and proceeded to commission major pixel art.
After a few months into it, as it dawned on me the scope involved, in particular the quantity of pixel art & animations required, would result in a game that would be massively over-budget and over-time with the little resources I had available. The kind of game that I wanted to make requires a team of artists working full time, at the least, rather than a single part-time commission artist that I could barely afford.
The reality check was quick, I knew this kind of game was beyond my solo ability & resources. The scope had to change to a theme that requires less art assets thereby I could still focus on gameplay and my limited budget could afford to carry it through to completion.
I decided essentially to make a Star Nomad 2 style game (rather, no animation frames!), but down on earth, an apocalyptic sandbox, instead of spaceships, it would involve vehicle combat. It made a lot of sense to me, because I could imagine survivors and settlements in the wasteland, one that’s ruled by whoever had the biggest army of modded and weaponized vehicles. The setting takes care of the plot and dynamic world, as factions fight among each other for crucial resources. Plus, who doesn’t like Mad Max?
Such a setting allows for dynamic trade economies, roaming NPC survivors, raiders, beasts, all kinds of interesting things on the world map.
So I re-started from scratch, entirely new project codebase. I begun by working on the dynamic worldmap, the different factions, the settlements and how they interact with each other.
Because I wanted a dynamic world, little things became very important, example: How raiders spawned, not out of nowhere, but from an unhappy or resentful populace if their living conditions deteriorate forcing desperation.
People generally do not commit evil unless the situation is dire, so I designed a world that tracks each tradegoods from production to consumption. I simulated each “citizen” of this wasteland, whether their needs (food, water, meds, luxuries) are met. If their local settlement is attacked often by mutated beasts or raiders, they would grow restless and resentful of the faction that is supposed to provide their security in exchange for the goods they produce.
Raiders would grow in force over time if the militia forces cannot suppress them, as the chaos they cause, draws more desperate survivors to their side. It was a tremendous delight to watch as the simulation runs, each time different outcomes, unexpected.
Yes, a caravan hauling homebrew moonshine to the mines, if it never arrives due to beast attacks or raider (or player!) ambushes, those miners do indeed go on strike, putting a stop to the flow of crucial resources that has escalating consequences for the factions.
The worldmap as I’d imagine, and put into code works, I was very happy with this aspect of the game. So I started on the next phase, getting the car combat gameplay to work.
I had to code the car physics from scratch due to things that work in space, simply do not work on the ground. Vehicle collision needed to happen, it needs to feel visceral (screen shake!), but physic-accurate. Things like nudging a hostile car from the side rear will indeed cause it to go into an opposite spin, or all kinds of cool collisions and the weapons that enable it (steel bumpers!). It all worked, which was a surprise.
I then added weapon mounts on the cars, fixed weapons, gimbals, turrets (passengers, with RPG stats!), and got into bigger battles… it was a mess. Total chaos, with AI cars colliding everywhere, despite me coding for them to frantically steer to avoid collision (unless they are spec for ramming damage!).
Any battles with more than 4 vehicles per side degenerated into a typical bumper kart-racing at the carnivals. It just didn’t play good.
Did I mention I had already commission a lot of vehicle pixel art? Because they were done and $ spent.
But I could not continue with a real-time vehicle combat system, where cars drive around constantly, evading and attacking, not as a 2D game where the focus is on squad vs squad combat, of as many units as possible. I experimented with waves, such as battle initiates with 4 vehicles per side, and reinforcements would stream in over time. But in the end it just lack that epic feel that an RTS in space achieves in big fleet battles.
If not real-time combat, then why not turn based? Even as a card-based tactical RPG, it could work… especially considering one of the best games I’ve played recently, Thea: The Awakening, had a very simplistic-art card-combat system, but it manages to be tactical and engrossing.
So I experimented with a turn-base system, both as a card combat gameplay and also as a grid-based traditional turn-base RPG (Fire Emblem, Tactics Ogre, games I love).
However, there was just that voice in my head that wouldn’t go away, it kept on saying: “if it’s a turn based RPG with Mad Max style vehicles, it would just lose the biggest appeal, that is the adrenaline fuel-pumped action aspect of this genre”.
Turn base RPGs, especially with a grid, just feels better with characters rather than vehicles. Plus, as a tactical RPG, I and players most likely have a stronger attachment to their characters than a car. One that they can skill up, spec out as they wish, with a personal backstory for each character, it would also serve as an interesting point for side-quests.
To be continued…
This is an awesome post and shows your dedication to your craft. Thanks for sharing. I think your experiences and thought processes will help other game developers be better. Keep going. I can’t wait to play whatever you decide on. Are you still using Construct 2 or 3?
Thanks Manley, I think if anything, my experiences should warn other solo devs, to be very careful and plan the game meticulously before jumping in the deep and start throwing $$ around at commissions. Just use dots and and random shapes and make the game fun first before doing assets, which is what I ended up doing on the 3rd restart. 🙂 It was also why I didn’t blog since posting about dots & shapes isn’t what I thought gamers would want to see.
I still use C2, C3 to me is unnecessary as I don’t need an online workflow, which is actually worse for larger projects.
Hopefully you can use the commissioned art for something else. I can tell you obviously plan your games very well, because you have great insight on what you’ve done and tried and had to redo. Seems like you learned a great lesson, and even though it wasn’t a free lesson, you’ll become an even better developer because of it.
Turn based combat with vehicles can be done well. You should look at board games like “Snow tails”, “Formula 1”, and fantasy flights “X-Wing”. Each game, particularly x-wing, provides intense vehicular action that just “feels right” even in a turn based environment. That being said, all three games sound awesome, so I am on board whichever way you end up going.
Loved reading your post, and my brain was ticking over the whole time, it must be frustrating, the whole time though I was thinking about the plot command and then play, turn based games like steam birds, steam pirates, vandal heasrts FOJ, similar to Power the board game/GOTboard game, where you will plot the moves in, and all units move simultaneously, and the fire is automatic. Shame it was carnage when you tested it out, and not in the good way
Hello Mr Huy! I really love the game Star Nomad 2 and your life story, it is inspirational to me since I am currently at a career fork. I wish you can keep on working on your passion.
For your new project, my opinion is the combat is extremely important and it will decide whether or not you can sell this game. In Nomad 2, I think you created an amazing fighter simulation with the thrill of battle, the grand feeling of epic fleets, the satisfaction of skillful execution, and the simplicity that keep every fights so entertaining to keep me comeback for more! I think you should build upon that special thing you already have, no need to invent a new system. In a scenario of vehicles battle for your new game, we could put in more strategic management like movement follow formation, positioning (no need for everything to move), some support vehicle that can slow down others or tank to absorb gun fires, combination of different vehicles mid-fight (think power ranger!), or some vehicle can take sometimes to set up a fortress for you mid-fight, and we could have everything pack up and go in a kind of train-car after battle? For collision, each vehicle should have a shield that will make them bound off each other if the shield still up, and only crashing when they ran out of shield.
I would love to help you with ideas about your project, just email me. Thanks.
Thank you for the kind words, I am really glad that others enjoy my take on the space combat genre. Definitely an RPG needs a great combat system, its the core of the gameplay so it can make or break the game.
In SN2, the combat system was the first thing I worked on and I did nothing else until I was happy with how the combat plays. Then I added everything around it to complete the game.
In my 3rd restart for this current game, I did something similar, the tactical turn based combat was what I worked on for a long time until it was good and fun then I’ve been building everything else around it. 🙂
I want to do some update blogs on the entire game and how it turned out soon, but there’s just so many things to do that when I get to thinking about blogging, it felt like a distraction from just finishing the game. But it’s 90% done right now. The last 10% is going to be hard, but I have to complete it.
For the last year, I have been planning on making a SN3 sequel, take the fun space combat system and expand it in scope and take the economic system and expand it in depth. So that’s what I will be working on when this current project is completed. I’m thinking the name of this one will be: Nomad Wolves.
I am glad to hear that you complete 90% of it already! That put my mind at ease. Apart from the combat, SN2 have a unique thoughtful feeling and consistent creativity to it that a game with a big team sometime couldn’t achieve. Definitely looking forward to your game and any other projects. Thanks!
Sounds awesome,thx for all your work,the economic sistem is really fun to mess since you change victory campaings of some factions into caos while filling your pockets.
Hoping you can expand it.
Cant wait for this one.
Good luck!