Oh well this is awkward.
Effective, um, like 5 days ago, the EverEnding project is going on hiatus. For how long? I’m not sure! I’m pretty confident it’s not permanent, but I’m also pretty confident it’s going to be for at least a month or two, and maybe as much as a couple of years depending on how those next couple months go.
The natural question to ask at this point is: Why? Good question! I’ve been feeling for a while that, while I still feel passionate about this project, I also have it backwards. I really feel that the optimal game development process is about getting a simple version of the game up and running and then iterating on that and navigating by your artistic sense towards the most interesting version of that game. However, with EverEnding, I’m constantly stopping and planning and designing and concepting before I even have part of the system up and running. This is still true even now when, OpenFL port notwithstanding, there’s nothing stopping me from getting the game playable and iterating on that bit by bit and improving it that way, rather than constantly trying to make Big Design Choices and Sweeping Revisions. I keep thinking about the forest that will grow here someday and forgetting to plant the trees.
Which segues naturally into what I’m going to do now: I haven’t decided. Or rather, I’m specifically avoiding deciding anything but the most basic generalities of the project. It is going to be a game, and I’m going to be streaming its creation – I dunno if it’s a stream anyone will be interested in watching (so far it seems not to be, judging from the 4 streams I’ve done already) but these streams are just as much for me as for any hypothetical audience. The streaming is to keep me honest, keep me focused on the task at hand for a couple of hours with no web browsing or procrastinating. It also provides a way to document the history of the project, so I can see exactly how much progress I’ve made in a week or a month or a year from now.
Now, while I’m trying to avoid deciding as much as possible, I know this much about the project: First, it’s a top-down adventure game in the vein of the Zelda series. Second, it takes place in one big area instead of discrete dungeons, probably a mansion, possibly haunted. Third, I want to fill it with secrets and details, most of which I’ll figure out on the fly as I work on it. Right now the working title for the game is The Third Story, as a slight play on words both for a large mansion and for uncovering the stories contained therein, but that’s likely to change any time I think of something better. For the time being I’ve been mostly just laying the foundational code – which is mostly pretty tedious to watch, likely one reason the streams haven’t been popping. However, as the project progresses I want to do all of the scripting and level-building within the game itself – so, once I reach that point, the streams will be a lot more level editing/scripting and a lot less walls of code.
That’s all in the future, though! For now, the game is just blocks that move around and spit text at each other – no graphics, no collision, no sound. I intend to keep up the monthly DevBlogs here, but the contents will be related to the new project. I don’t want to rule out the idea of doing more work on EverEnding, though: Since I’m developing this new thing in OpenFL, I should be accumulating a lot more familiarity with how things work in that API, and this may give me exactly the energy and confidence I need to finish the port and get the project up and running again. Also, just looking at and listening to the materials I’ve created already makes me a bit homesick for the EverEnding project, so I’m not sure how long I want to stay away… But I’m confident this is the right thing to do. For now.
I already feel tremendously better morale-wise, just being able to work on a project where I feel like it’s always moving forward. If nothing else, I’ll be able to apply some of the methodology I’m picking up here – not just in terms of OpenFL and game development, but also in terms of livestreaming and documenting development and using that process to bolster my creative energy.
It feels good to be seen – even when no one’s watching, just to be willing to be seen is worth a lot.