Update 123: 08/30/2017 DESOLUS: MANY GAMES, ONE NAMEAs of this week, I started Desolus as a project three years ago.
At this point I have accepted Desolus is more of an evolving concept, rather than a single game.
Desolus has been many different games, created over the course of several years of my life.
If you read through this DevLog, you can see several major transitions in the direction of the project.
I talk more about this in my
Year 2 retrospective. One could argue I started the current version of Desolus in June 2016.
This is when I created the alternate dimension mechanic, which is now the primary focus of the game.
Since then I have eliminated all prior game mechanics which do not contribute to this idea.
This focusing of ideas (I believe) has vastly improved the quality of the overall game.
As such, this year has been the most productive and focused one yet.
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A YEAR OF PROGRESS-June 2016- In the beginning the of last June, I created the prototype implementation of the
alternate dimensions.Almost none of the elements of the previous 'games called Desolus' have survived past this point.
-November 2016-At the beginning of November, I perfected the implementation of the
dimension gates for Desolus.
This involved rewriting every single shader in the game, as well as solving some major rendering problems.
-February 2017-In February, I finished implementing the concept of the
'inverted world' as a means of visualizing the alternate dimensions.
Later this would evolve into the concept of inverted architecture.
Most of early 2017 was also spent fixing miscellaneous bugs and heavily polishing aspects of the game.
All of this work resulted in a polished demo build which I presented at
my first GDC, in March.
-June 2017-In early June, I added architecture into the game of Desolus.
For a long time my level design was lacking, as I was primarily using only terrain as a means for level creation.
Adding architecture opened up a huge amount of creative space which I could explore.
Architecture also has a critical mechanical impact on the game, as the geometry is mirrored between dimensions.
This is now the core puzzle element of much of the game.
Early puzzles are solely navigating through inverted architecture.
Later puzzles involve manipulating and inverting the architecture yourself, which I will talk about in the future.
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GAMES TAKE A LONG TIME TO MAKEI facetiously remarked in a previous post
"This is what happens when you:
-Work alone & part time because of the day job
-Make an ambitious game
-Start with no game development experience
-Throw away 3 'completed' alpha versions for different concepts
-Have ruthless perfectionism"At this point, I have been working on Desolus for 3 years of my life.
I keep track of my hours, and I've spent around ~4200 at my computer developing Desolus.
If you add that time up as 40 hour work weeks, I have essentially been working on this project for 2 full time years.
There are several factors which contributed to the significant amount of time spent on the game.
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EVOLVING CONCEPT-
As I stated at the beginning of this post, Desolus has been more of an evolving concept rather than a single game.
I set out more to reach a certain level of quality, rather than create a specific game.
However, focus has now shifted to a singular game concept. I intend on releasing this iteration of Desolus when finished.
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ABILITY VS AMBITION-
When I started out, I simply did not have the skill set required to match my ambition, and I probably still do not.
Although I began as a competent programmer, I started out with few skills in game design and art.
Naturally, it took a great deal of time to reach my intended goal of quality.
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LACK OF TRUE PROTOTYPES-
Rather than properly prototype and gray box content, I focused on overall presentation.
I was not confident enough in my abilities as a developer to show an unpolished game.
As such, I spent a huge amount of time on preparing for festivals/expos/presentations.
While this was good from a networking and experience standpoint, I believe it adversely affected the game's development in the long term.
I should have been rapidly discarding sketched out content and working towards a greater concept.
However, instead I created many high-fidelity prototypes which ended up being scrapped nearly entirely.
Taking this approach reduced the quality of the game's design and mechanics in much of early development.
Fortunately, I believe the quality of the game's design now matches its presentation and aesthetics.
As of March of this year, I have moved on to a proper game development cycle.
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TIME AND RESOURCES-
For nearly the entirety of the game's development, I have been working a day job at MIT as a Computer Scientist.
I switched to part time for my day job at the beginning of 2016, and now work an even 30hr/30hr split between Desolus and my job.
While this provides me with a stable income, there is only so much time in the day.
Although I have Kyle working on the music for the game, I still am responsible for 99% of the game's development.
(Somewhat paradoxically) I don't believe I will take on additional people to work on Desolus.
As discussed
in my Unity article I wrote last year, much of Desolus has been designed specifically so I can make it myself.
I am a single person. I can only do so much. I try to take solace that I am doing the best I can with the resources I have.
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MOVING FORWARDAt this point in time, Desolus is in a very good state of development.
I have a singular unified concept, and I am confident with moving forward.
Currently I am working on assembling all of my ideas and puzzles I've created into a singular cohesive game.
It's taken me a long time to get this far, but I've made a great deal of progress.