Game dev thoughts while making God Machine

I've been posting some stuff in the Game Dev Grit discord as I work away on God Machine-



I realized that Discord server is a walled garden and not googleable so I should post in here as well so that it can be found...

This is a dump of random stuff- from now on I'll also post here in a more organized way-

High Level Game Design

1:27 PM]MdotStrange:

Something I was doing wrong with my enemy design with my big game- I was designing enemies based on "cool enemy ideas" - So, since it was fun I designed all these enemies based on the areas they were in and "cool designs"- I realize now that the enemies should be designed on how they interact with specific player mechanics-

[1:28 PM]MdotStrange:

So in the future I won't design any enemies until all the player mechanics are locked in- and then the enemies will be based on adding risk to certain player mechanics

[1:29 PM]MdotStrange:

Simple example- if your player can fire projectiles- design an enemy that has a shield that can bounce the projectiles back at the player to damage them

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October 31, 2019

[12:15 AM]MdotStrange:

While making music for my level as I was building the level I got to thinking about that Goethe quote "Architecture is frozen music" (have been reading basic architecture books) I started thinking about matching a games visual design with its music in a different way- like my levels are simply built using synthetic materials(metal,stone), it has Japanese influences and 8 bit elements- the music I am making is electronic with tradtional Japanese and chiptune instruments- so the visual level design and music match in a way as if the architecture was the frozen version of the music and vice versa-

[12:16 AM]MdotStrange:

Its like how pixel art and chiptune go together so well- the music is a liquid version of the architecture-

[12:17 AM]MdotStrange:

So I'm going to really make sure the architecture and the music match up in this way

[12:18 AM]MdotStrange:

This book is in no way in depth but I've found it VERY useful when thinking about architecture for level design https://www.amazon.com/101-Things-Learned-Architecture-School/dp/0262062666

Low Level game Design

MdotStrange: Time tracking/management through git commit history or milestones? As I start to finish the early levels of the game I want to know how long it took to complete each level- Since I commit a few times a day and write pretty detailed descriptions I'm going to start using my commit history to track level building time so I can get an idea how long future levels will take... anyone do anything like this? [5:24 PM] MdotStrange: Github milestones seem like a perfect solution but afaik they need tasks/issues attributed to them to use them- somedays I commit a bunch of work that is not an issue/task nor does is close an issue- so that work would not be visible to the milestone... [5:26 PM] MdotStrange: So my current solution is to create a milestone for each level with only two issues/tasks attributed to it "Start X level" and "Finish X level" I'll close those issues on the start and finish of each level- making it easy to see how long each one took- [5:29 PM] MdotStrange: The reason I'm interested in tracking the time is so I can have a reasonable estimated completion date- So I'm documenting the time it takes to finish each levels first pass using a simple spreadsheet

8:13 PM]MdotStrange:

I think hierarchy organization for level design is a bit like refactoring code- if you go quick and dirty its best to go back and clean things up in the hierarchy

[8:13 PM]MdotStrange:

after an hour of work my hierarchy is a mess so I stop and put things into their folders

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October 30, 2019

[8:42 PM]MdotStrange:

Thinking about WHEN to add fine details to a level- fine detals like decals, greebles(tons of small items to add detail) and vertex map painting- Should this be done when the level is "finished" but untested? Should it be done when finished AND tested? Should it only be done when all the levels are done? Just wanted to get some opinions on when to add the final visual polish to a level...