Post Mortem

There's a lot to be said about the post mortem about this one.  I'll be writing all of this free-form, so no formal structure to the post.  I apologize in advance for any incoherence or confusing thoughts.  Here are my basic thoughts that I hope to cover:

• Being the "Producer"
• Being the "Designer" - The importance of Paper Narrative

• Narrative and world design
• Life Circumstances
• Feature Creep and Unsupported Design
• The importance of spreadsheets
• Producer Fail -- Double the Time, Double the Money

Being the Producer

So this was the first project where I really felt a big sense of acting in the producer role -- which is something I feel very strongly about.  The big things that this really meant were:

• Tracking hours
• Setting Objectives

Essentially really it was a sense of enacting a sense of discipline on the project.  In this part I'll cover the good.  Being the Producer really helped me track what was going on.   It's slowly showing me how much time things take, how much time I spend on certain things more than others.

Being the Designer

More than in times past I felt like a "designer" this time.  A lot of prototyping was done on paper to form the core mechanic.  The core mechanic on paper ended up becoming a base builder/ resource manager that was turn - based.  In that regard that would support the development of your characters in what they were ultimately capable of doing in combat.  Essentially having a phase that supported the "main phase" of the game.   This was both important and very fun.  I was able to gauge very quickly what I thought was the "game" element of the project.  In the future I intend to continue doing paper prototypes because of how quickly you can decide on what the system of the project really is.  I also learned that designing systems is absolutely my favorite part of game design.  Working on combat balancing and the relationships between non-combat systems to combat systems is perhaps one of the most engaging parts of the work for me.  That conjoined with how both of these things support the theme of the game -- in this case, the idea of being a scout-captain for a slummy township.

Narrative and world design

This is the first game where I collaborated with my friend Briton/Sonybrash.  I've usually been pretty averse to working together with people but this time we kept it as simple as Briton showing me the world and talking about the mechanics of his world and then me writing a story and a game within that world.   

This was AWESOME.  I really enjoyed working with a world in Purgatory.  It had some interesting rules and inherent themes within them that I really connect to, namely death and what happens when we die.  And perhaps what's important while we live as is demonstrated by Oberon's antagonist, Yevon.  

The narrative was also very interesting in that -- I very unintentionally made Oberon into a villain.  He is, by all means, the good guy.  And yet, as I wrote the script, it just seemed that the way the story would play out given Oberon and the kind of person he was -- he ended up being a very ruthless person -- someone who protected his tribe but also would do anything to do so -- including cheat, bully, and steal -- systemically and procedurally ofcourse, he's above any sort of ruffian schemes.  

I also told Briton that in the future I might be interested in collaborating with narrative.  Narrative took me about 4 - 6 hours I think this time.  And even then I'm missing so much game writing in this game.  I was missing a lot of things like small details in events.  That said, I'm pleased with the nature of the characters and the world I built within Briton's world.  

I also worked in Docs first this time, which is slower but definitely valuable in terms of the quality of the script that I can summon.  I really think of the characters more as "characters" and less as events I'm trying to get through.

Life Circumstances

Something I didn't account for this time was life.  This project happened in the middle of Randy's move into the apartment.  There was one week that was really spent clearing out Randy's apartment and cleaning up.  There was also a week or so spent figuring out the move and organizing things.  All that to say -- life happens and you have to adapt accordingly.  It's worth noting as a producer how that affects time spent.

I also had to have a "come to Jesus" moment of acknowledging and being okay with spending time on the game.  Part of the reason I spent less time on the game than I liked was because I think I felt unjustified in my time spent working on it. "Where is this going" "Is this worth the time/effort spent".  Questions like that -- to which the answer is and always has been yes.  Especially after talking to my brother, I realized -- I do want this to get somewhere.  I don't expect to make Undertale.  But I expect to someday hopefully create an Ara Fell.  Regardless of how much money it makes.  A lot will be learned and accomplished in just creating that.  And that's worth acknowledging and being okay with.

Feature Creep

Ah yes, the fun part of the hot mess.  

Strangely, what ended up happening is that the "supportive phase", the base building, ended up becoming a core unto itself that lead to no where.  This was the main problem by the end of the project.  I was combat balancing to mechanics that were not connected to the base building mechanics.  Practically speaking:

• The base building had food, drugs, components to collect, people to talk to.
• The combat felt totally disconnected from food, drugs, components to collect, people to talk to.

Essentially what I was really trying to do was connect progression to base building instead of leveling and grinding.  And I only now realized that and definitely failed to do so.   In the future, combat prototyping earlier is important.  I can't disacknowledge that combat is a core element of the game only to save it for balancing in the last 8 hours during crunch (what ended up happening).

The importance of spreadsheets

So during this time, I found several talks that emphasized the importance of using spreadsheets to prototype features, namely combat, but any number of things can be prototyped through spreadsheets.  This was incredibly useful for balancing and building the combat system that I had.  I was very pleased with the numbers of the things I prototyped.  I had several things I did not balance -- thinking that would be okay.  It was not and in the end made several skills broken and over powered to which the whole game and the last few hours were build around making sure Finn's abilities worked so that the player had access to them.  Finally, I think having multiple ways of building characters is great -- but all the characters should probably have a similar system -- where that's mp and cooldown, or cooldown and limited use, or components etc.  That or perhaps they have a main set that ties them together but an individual skill set that differs because otherwise it feels incoherent.

Producer Fail

At the beginning of the project I estimated the project at 100 hours.  I was correct.  

Where I failed was not in the size of the container as much as how quickly I could fill it.  In one month I thought I could work 25 hours a week.  The truth is, I got 50 hours in.   A sizeable amount -- but not 100 hours.  And as a result the game is almost exactly half of what I had hoped.  

This is important because it tells me:

• How much time I can actually devote to a project per month.  
• How quickly I am currently working
• Where I'm spending the bulk of my time and where I'm getting hung up.

My answers for now are:

• I really like systems and it's a little easy to go crazy with them.  
• Combat has to be introduced sooner so I balance to combat because I can go crazy with that too.  
• I am working efficiently and can put in more time consistently, but I really don't know that I can sincerely devote more than 50 hours a month.  I need to under budget my time and over deliver.

Conclusion

Overall, this was a really great project.  I'm not the most pleased with the overall product in that it didn't end up supporting combat the way I wanted.  I'd need some more time to really polish that part of it.  Introducing combat sooner would have helped.  

What I am pleased with:

• Narrative and the ease of world integration
• Narrative in terms of how I wrote it
• The overall system and the relationship I was working on -- Paper Narrative Prototyping
• Excel Prototyping
• Size -- there was a lot to this project.  Lots of moving parts and it was very robust.  I got it in -- they're just not all connected the way I would have liked.

This was a really fun project.  I know I said I'd wrap it up in November.  I'm not sure that's still something I wanna do or if I should just let it rest.  Maybe I should polish -- that's a project all on its own to know what that would really require perhaps.  We'll see, but this is probably one of my first projects that I'm a little disappointed to have had to put it away so soon.