After a week of very little progress and a long think over the weekend, I've decided to change my plans for YoYoYo.  I'm NOT going to put the RPG elements in right now and instead I'm now aiming for a medium-sized, non-linear and goal-oriented platformer.  I'm been banging my head against a brick wall trying to work out how to get the RPG elements and missions in, worrying about what will actually happen when you've got a crew of 3 or 4 other characters with you, how complex and interacting plot elements will hang together in the face of unpredictable play actions from gamers, and 1001 other questions.  As I've said before I'm really happy with the basic platformer engine (especially now I have the content pipeline in and able to import levels, doors, lights and enemies) and I think that the issue of being weeks (possibly months) away from gameplay which reflects my intentions was really starting to bog me down.  This whole process has really had me thinking about how to keep game ideas at a deliverable scope and scale, so I wanted to jot some thoughts down while I'm chewing over the new level layouts and thinking about subway ticket machines...

Ideas are cheap - really cheap.  There's not a week goes by when someone doesn't say to me "You know what would be a cool game for you to write?"  Most times the idea which follows is insanely complex, or just doesn't sound like "fun", but some times an idea comes my way that makes me think "yea, you know that's not a bad idea at all".  But on reflection, a lot of my own ideas baloon in to insane levels of complexity and YoYoYo is a really good example of this recurring problem.  I avoided it for the Blazin' Balls titles, but long-time readers will know that I backed out of a lot of the original vision for Xenocide and in retrospect I'm glad I did.  It would have taken months to get Xenocide to anything near my original vision and I'm not convinced I could have balanced the gameplay all the way through as well as I'd like.

Basically it runs like this - I'll have an idea for a game with a given basis -  shooter which evolves through the history of classic shooters, or a space trading and combat game, or a platformer with RPG elements - and start thinking about the shape of the game, the kinds of structures I might need in code, the sort of visual feel I'd like and so on. Somewhere between this initial "thinks" period and my sitting down to start coding, my focus seems to shift from getting hold of the basic seed of the idea and polishing it to the next "layer" of features.  What I really need to do with YoYoYo is get a great platformer game going on.  The original idea was just for a fun, funky platformer where the player could use their yoyo as a weapon and a tool (to climb things, or grab things, ro to break things as the game or player requires).  All this RPG stuff is very interesting and I'm not saying I won't revisit the idea very very soon but first thing should be first.  In either its original form OR enlarged form, it's basically a platform game so I need to focus on that and make the best platformer I can.  Space Pirates really suffered because my focus was so widely spread that nothing in the game was really as good as I wanted it to be, and I'd be a fool if I let myself fall in to that trap again.  I do still have plans for a set of wider platform games with RPG elements and at this point I intend to really focus on those AFTER YoYoYo, but right now I want to the this game right and do justice to the excitement I felt when my friend Damon gave me the idea.  So a tight focus is what I intend to maintain for the rest of this project.  With a little luck, it should also mean that I can get YoYoYo out to market in the next month or so, and have the next game (and first platformer/RPG title) in for DBP 2011.  I've not got involved with any of the previous DBP competitions, but fancy having a go, to better judge my work against the best devs on the platform.

Anyway, I now need to go make some progress.  I'm hoping that I can get the subway system working and some serious maps done by the end of today and sitting here typing isn't getting me any closer!  Off I go then, pip pip!

---

Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites