Game 1 February 2016 Progress Update

Honestly, I am no where near where I thought I would be with game 1 at this point in the year. But that is why these kinds of post are important and why I scheduled them into my writing schedule.

Time seems to be flying by so fast these days, it is already over half way through February. I do not have a play testable version of my game yet. I have not yet made an MVP.

Part of the exercise with this first game is building and releasing an Android app. With that in mind I am trying to build it using MeteorJS (which cross compiles to Android) and at the same time using Meteor’s integration with AngularJS.

What Is Done

I have been working on a Meteor-Angular tutorial and have gotten through a good bit of it and learned a lot. Usually with things like this, I take a tutorial and kind of massage it into the app that I actually want to make. So right now I have a basic tutorial app that just needs some massaging.

I also have the basic set of choices and end goals for the game set down. I actually had to stop myself working on that so that I could begin making the minimum version of the game in order to test whether or not it will be fun.

What Needs to Be Done by End of March

Basically, I need to write a choice engine in Meteor-Angular and then fill in the story and the choices. Once that is done, building the actual Android app is as simple as running:
meteor add-platform android
and
meteor run android

I also need to setup a Digital Ocean server to host the game. Although technically it could be hosted for free at meteor.com, it would be really slow and take some time to load up.

Additionally, I need to play test the crap out of it to make sure it works and has at least some element of fun to it.

What Is Not Perfect Yet

I think I am making the mistake I made end of last year by switching languages/frameworks a little and trying to learn one and stick to a schedule. This remains to be seen.

Also I was planning on doing some sketches to bring some visualization into the game, but these might not get done in the interest of keeping a schedule. They might be added later. Or I might see about learning to utilize a service like Fiverr.

Time to Write Code

I have been focused on game design, writing, and psychology improvement lately but now it is time to take some action. It is time to make this game.

Get out there and make what you designed.

I Want to Be a Better Developer