August 9, 2024 || Weeks 1 + 2
Project: FIRST GAME || Time remaining: 349 days
Goal: Finish a very small scope, simple game in one year and then release it to Steam.
How?
- Creative Exploration & Learning - 3 months <-- We are here
- Primary Development - 6 months
- Test and Bugfix - 3 months
- Release - Research and schedule a time for release plus additional testing and feedback.
Why did I write this? To keep myself accountable and have something to look back on for progress as well as reference point and resource for anyone on a similar journey.
Work Log 1 + 2
Time spent: ~20 hours
Progress: Simple ball score game
Morale: Medium well
1. Procedural Content Generation
Started messing around with procedural content generation, surprisingly not that difficult. Like almost everything with Unreal it's a big unknown and question of how you even do something simple to making sense. Everything seems to be a little more fiddly and exact than I expected, but there are tons of powerful tools lying around once you learn how to use them.
2. Make a video update
Spent a few hours getting an update video out and scheduling an update window on Twitch
3. Grab items
First off I wanted to create some sort of inventory or the ability to grab objects. The original goal was to add a quick inventory of some kind, but I got a bit off track and after grabbing objects I thought it would be more fun to make a game out of getting the sphere through the rings I already created.
4. Make a soccer game
So after grabbing items, I got excited--I found it fun to try to shoot spheres through the rings I had populated around the level. So I decided to set up a little arena and count score.
5. Blueprint widgets (UI)
Character by character text on screen, health bar with a little heart icon, score