Dev Journal: A Little Happiness

You know, it was a funny thing. I’ve been letting these journals slide over to the long side of “one to two weeks apart” between the public and supporter alternations, but after I updated everyone on the Patreon and SubStar last week, I actually felt like writing another one only two days later! I finally had what I felt like was some pretty good news and I wanted to share it. But I figured it’d be a little silly to just jump out with it on the spot, it’d be better to give it some time and let more things accrue so I’m pacing them out at least a bit.

So a week has passed, and I’m ready to… brag? It almost feels silly in how silly it’s been, but it’s certainly been refreshing. Last weekend I sent the coming supporter release of Matchmaker to my proofers. It’s actually looking pretty solid now! We’re on track to ship the advance release, probably tomorrow, so keep an eye out for news on that! But that’s not what I’d been so happy with last week.

In the past, with MVOL, I let it fall into a cycle where I’d focus on writing/development mostly during two weeks at a time leading up to a deadline, with maybe some overflow into the next week, depending. The other weeks in between I’d take care of whatever other business this gig demands of me and try to recharge, maybe get some random writing in on other things to keep it fun and varied, that sort of thing. But I knew that if I’m going to be aiming for new releases “every one to two months” on several different projects, that kind of format wouldn’t really work, and constant “crunch and crash” cycles isn’t very good for you anyway, I expect.

So I wanted to avoid that. I knew what I wanted to tackle for my first side project, and I knew that to avoid an unhealthy cycle, I needed to get started on it as soon as possible, especially since it would take a ton of work just getting the foundation built before I could start adding any meaningful content. While the core engine of Matchmaker was built on commission from a professional programmer, I’ve been using what I learned from working with all that to build the core for this coming project from scratch.

And… it’s been a lot of fun! I actually found myself getting really absorbed in just building all of the most fundamental pieces, figuring out how all the mechanics will mesh together, trying to set up the basics to be flexible and robust for later possible expansion. It’s been a huge learning experience getting this put together, and it was an incredibly satisfying moment when I first playtested it and got this random pile of code I’d scrambled together to actually run successfully! It’s been almost a decade since I first accomplished that with MVOL, and it had all just been incrementally building on it since then.

Of course, by “run sucessfully,” I mean the most incredibly barebones, non-game version of the game’s most basic functions. There’s still tons and tons to do, but I’ve been feeling productive lately working on all this, and I’ve been enjoying the work more than I can remember doing so in some time! I’ve never considered myself a particularly good programmer, and I’m definitely not an experienced or knowledgeable programmer, but when I’m working with tools I can understand, I do find it really engaging to build my own program!

I’ve been thinking some about the why of that, as well. I suspect that starting early is a big part of it– when it’s crunch time, you don’t want to stop and learn all about every concept you come across, you just want the thing that’s broken to work. But here, I’ve had plenty of time and opportunities to pause and learn more about how Unity and C# work while I went, and I often found myself appreciating the tools I discovered and immediately putting them to use, which is arguably the best way to learn about any kind of system.

I’m sure it also helps that I was doing this all “my way” from scratch, so I was sure to understand everything that was in there. A huge part of my frustration with Matchmaker has been just how difficult it is to change things, because there are huge portions of it that I still don’t really understand. I know that the next time I come back to MM, the very first thing I’ll be doing is overhauling a lot of the features to get them working how I want– and more importantly, in ways I can understand. Hopefully my experience building this side project this month will help a lot with that!

I remember saying that this production schedule, starting lots of prototypes to experiment with, would force me to overcome my limitations as a programmer, and at this point it’s definitely been doing the job. I do think I’ll be better at working with MM by the time I’m done building this. If anything, I’m more worried about resisting the temptation to make this side project larger and less, ah, prototypical than it’s supposed to be. It’s a huge change of pace from both MVOL and Matchmaker, and very expandable in its own way.

But if you want to know more about what I’m cooking up currently, you’ll have to wait a little longer! I do plan to write up its fact sheets before long so I can share the info on the Patreon and SubStar and hold some feedback forums and probably a vote, get some input in here on the development once the mechanics are looking more solid, so you’ll be able to get at least a short rundown from its Project Basics page on there when that’s up. I’ll probably talk some more about it when it’s closer to its first release, as well! If I’m very lucky I might get it into a basic, playable state by the end of the month, but I don’t want to promise anything there, as it’s my first time trying to build something this mechanically intensive from scratch. We’ll have to see how it goes!

For now, though, I will at least share my first side project’s working name: Project Wild One. Keep an eye out for more on that soon, that’s my big focus for this coming month!

Project Matchmaker will be starting its release sequence soon, probably tomorrow! That means it’ll go out to mid-tier supporters immediately, then in about two weeks it’ll go out to lower tiers. Finally, it’ll hit public release at the beginning of October! This will be the first time in many years that I’ve gone three months between public releases. Feels weird! But I’ll talk more about Matchmaker when it’s going out there.

For now, I’ve shared my good news. I’m still enjoying putting Project Wild One’s bones together, though it’s gradually getting more complicated as I transition from “barely functional” to “actually doing anything meaningful.” I’m hoping to hold on to this positive momentum, though, and turn it into a fun game I had fun making! Something to treasure in times like these.

I hope you’ve got something special to keep you going as well. And if not, make sure to take care of yourself! We’ve all got to be careful not to fall apart these days. Thanks for reading!