Reflecting on the prototype

The following is my thoughts and reflections about this smol little prototype. I'm putting it here both so I have to write and think about what I've actually just created, but also so people can read it and maybe discover that we are doing the same odd things, and learn something! 

Develöpment

So first off, the develöpment. I started with creating the player and a little grappling gun. It first controlled with the keyboard, but this was very clunky so I changed it to the mouse later. The decision to switch to mouse was honestly terrifying. I'm a person who often over engineers and that makes changing things afterwards quite difficult, since large systems are a pain to change. Thankfully, earlier this week I got an idea about how to deal with this. It can be put like this: "fight the hardest battles first".  The hardest things to do are usually the biggest decisions and they should be made as early on as possible in the prototyping phase. They determine if the prototype is worth continuing on, and you want to know that as quickly as possible. Killing a bad project faster gives time to create more prototypes. That's that tangent done. 

I created a little enemy (inspired by the sentry from Rayman Legends), that would kill you when you stayed in its vision for too long. Then the cookie was added. The cookie is really cool and I love it. The enemy and the cookie were actually cut (another terrifying move) because I felt like the movement was fun on its own, and they didn't fill any function within the game. While I was creating the level I did noticed that there was no clear goal in the game. That's a problem, goals are a good way to get players interacting. So the cookie was brought back, this time with a purpose. Its role is to guide the player and give them small goals to work towards. Also, by showing how many cookies they had picked up, that added another, overarching, goal.

What went well?

First off, the whole prototype was finished within one day. That was my goal, and I achieved it! I'm super happy I managed to make the hard decision to cut the enemy, because if I'd kept it the prototype wouldn't have been done, and it would have been worse too. 

During the development I had to relearn the physics system in Defold, which was great practice! It's really surprising how much you can learn from such short time. I probably spent less than 6 or so hours on the prototype, which is a very good time for me.

This is also the first time I prepare for a gamejam. I have a preset project, with some libraries that I will use for practically every prototype. It saves just a few seconds or minutes, but those will add up eventually.  Anyways, I'll update the preset project file so it will be even more useful based on what I found was missing. I'll also update my stockpile (a library of random scripts and stuff) to contain more for later use.

What can be improved?

Short answer: a lot of things. Most are things to add in the stockpile or preset project. A big one was actually about the jam. The theme was too complex. The way I made the game work with with the theme was initially with the enemy, because it would make you go sneak around it, classical stealth. But I removed it, so I had to fulfill the theme in a new way: "you are climbing your way into a bakery where you will steal cookies or something". It's not very elegant. I want the concept clean and simple, so next theme will be less complex, but hopefully no less specific. I still want it to be an interesting limitation.

Another thing was playtesting. I have no clue how a first time player will play the proto. It might be way to hard. It most likely is. So for next prototype I'll make sure to snatch a friend or sibling and make them play it. All for that sweet feedback. 

Is the game any good?

I'm actually enjoying swinging around in it quite a lot. Every time I start up the project I just can't stop myself from playing a few minutes, it's just so satisfying to get a good swing going. I take that as a good rating from myself. Because I haven't gotten any feedback I'm really not sure if the proto is good, so please, if you have time, drop a line or two of feedback :D.

What can be researched?

See, this is the thing about research; it is very hard to know what you don't know. Thing like looking up a library is easy, but researching how to get faster and improve the development process is really hard, because it's not as clear cut. So the following is a list of things that I want to research until my next prototype, but be aware that I'll do a lot of just random reading for the sake of discovery. 

First off I really want to learn Debeat, an audio library for Defold. The prototype doesn't have any sound, it felt like a too large undertaking for this time. By learning it beforehand, I'll be prepared when I will use it in action. 

Second is setting up typescript for Defold. I'm a typescript enjoyer, and I've used it for a previous project made in Love2D, and it is so nice to have type safety. I'm someone who writes my code and then instantly forgets about it, so having something that I can use to document my code with during development would be nice. I'm not entirely sure if it will actually speed up the process for prototyping though, as I'm likely to start sitting and defining types when in reality I need to write crummy code and just test things. I will try it though, as it could save me some time. 

What now?

This prototype is done for now, I might work on it later. Right now I need to make a lot of crummy prototypes and get a feeling for what works and what doesn't in games, so creating a lot of prototypes will be my priority. 

These two articles were a great help to me, so check them out! 
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/audio/game-a-week-getting-experienced-at-failure
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/disciplines/how-to-prototype-a-game-in-under-7-day...

Anyhows, thanks a ton for reading all the way to here. I appreciate it a lot! See you out there <3