- Oct 11, 2018
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Diary of Morn #03 | The Road Ahead
Last week I hit the first big milestone in the development of Children of Morn, I completed every single character for the game. Time to talk about the road leading to the release of version 0.1, what is already done and what is still ahead of us. Also, the first little glimpses at some of the new characters.
In the first image of this post you can see a detailed overview of all the different parts that are needed for the release of V0.1. Credit goes to the devs off "What a Legend", from which I stole this nifty little idea. As you can tell from the graphic, I'm estimating that I've completed about 25% of the total work. But that number might not be the most accurate and in fact, things might pick up in pace from here on out. Let's talk about why.
The planning:
One problem of game development is that all the parts needed for the complete game are deeply intertwined. To develop the characters I need to have a good idea of my plot, to have an idea of my plot I need to know what kinds of gameplay mechanics the game will have, for that I'll need to know how to code those mechanics. Every decision naturally can't be made without triggering a whole chain of other decisions. That is the very reason why the initial planning phase takes a lot of time. As I've mentioned in the last post, that phase has been ongoing for more than a year at this point. That's why I, luckily, didn't have to spend much time on it after completing MIST. Allowing me to immediately start with the actual production, almost at least. After the planning came an immediate roadblock.
The characters:
When I developed MIST, I was making the character models when the characters themselves showed up in the game. That meant I had several months in between each new character design. Something that wouldn't be feasible for Children of Morn, as I already knew that I needed all of them early on, to start introducing their plots. That means, before I could work on any other graphics, code or anything, I needed to get the characters done. Otherwise I couldn't start working on the UI, the environments, the sounds, the writing etc.
And that is exactly what I did since November. I went into a creative frenzy that I haven't experienced in quite a while and pumped out character after character, all delivered to a new quality standard when it comes to their looks, as well as the technical execution that you can't see, but that will save me a ton of time in the future. I was planning to work on the characters until the end of January, meaning that I've been able to save several weeks of development time, without dropping the quality for even a single character. They are all different, unique and handcrafted with care.
The sound and the music:
As you can tell from the graphic, both the sound and the music are actually already quite far in their development. That is, because I've hired someone for the music quite a while ago and it's nearly done and I've been using my recording equipment to gather a whole bunch of sounds, ranging from footsteps on different grounds, to ambiances, to everyday foley sounds like opening a door or putting on clothes. I'm not nearly done yet or satisfied with the library of sounds I've gathered, but it's growing and I have a very clear image of how I want the sound design for the game to be. I don't really see any real roadblocks coming my way regarding the sound or music.
The stars align... slowly:
The planning is done and I know what I want. The characters are finished so I can start building my 3D scenes, I have a concept for the music and sounds and they are on their way to completion. That means nothing is in the way of the actual development anymore.
The writing, the environments and animations, as well as the sound and music are all very closely intertwined. I can't write a scene without knowing how to make it in 3D and I can't make an animation or images in general without knowing what'll happen in the story. The same way I can't implement any sounds without any writing. I'll need to work on all of them at the same time. But even then, they wouldn't make a real game.
Because none of it will work without also thinking about the code and the UI. It literally won't run and you won't be able to do anything. So why am I not putting all my focus on these two next? The answer is, that I want some playable minutes of the game so I can really feel how the UI looks and how the underlying code performs. As soon as I have the pieces roughly in place it becomes a lot easier for me to assess how they fit together. But that doesn't mean I can just ignore them while I start finalizing the graphics.
Again, the problem I outlined in the beginning becomes apparent, I need to slowly work on everything at once. But it honestly isn't really a "problem", it's more just a fact. Just how it is. And honestly, I'm pretty excited about it. While, in future updates it might look like the other loading bars are filling out slowly, it actually just means that the first playable seconds and minutes of Children of Morn are being constructed. The stars might be aligning slowly, but they are aligning and from now on in the development the game will start coming to life, there is still quite the stretch of road in front of us, but It's paved nicely and the car has a full tank : D
And that's all for this week. As always you'll hear from me soon and I'll be pushing those pieces in place so you can get your hands on the game! Have a nice week!
