A Good Plan is Half the Battle
After reading “Hold off on proposing solutions” from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality I wanted to put a decent effort into planning. I did this in a couple of steps:
Risk Analysis
Pretty boring, but I’ll put it here for completeness:
Risk: Likelyhood x Impact = Score
Mitigation.
RSI: 2 x 3 = 6
Breaks, limited working hours, reminder to type slowly, physical exercises.
DNF (Did not finish): 2 x 3 = 6
Good planning, reflection, limited scope.
Risk overlooked: 3 x 2 = 6
Look out for possible risks during the week.
Codebase becomes unworkable: 2 x 2 = 4
ECS, good planning, limited scope.
Loose Interest: 2 x 2 = 4
Work on other projects, have endurance, the jam entry is the delayed gratification.
Data loss: 1 x 3 = 3
Online backups.
Illness: 1 x 2 = 2
Stay healthy.
Bad game idea: 1 x 2 = 2
Existing game, good execution.
Cartridge too big: 1 x 1 = 1
I can fall back to the PRO version.
Set up a schedule
I ended up with this:
4 hours each day, 40 hours in total (enough to make a game).
Two hour blocks, with pomodoro breaks.
Write down the goals in the morning, reflect on what worked and what didn’t in the blog post.
Analyse things which need to be done and make a week plan
The things I need to do:
- Design
- Graphics
- Sounds
- Navigation between screens
- Gameplay
- Phases
-
- main menu
-
- tutorial
-
- setup phase
-
- own turn
-
- enemy turn
-
- use terminal card
-
- round won/lost
- Mouse and controller detection
- Cover
- How to play (in text)
And the week schedule:
Day 2: Visual and gameplay design
Day 3: Make graphical assets and sounds
Day 4: List behaviours and data, try to get a good set
Day 5: Implement some the systems and components
Day 6: Rework set of behaviours and data
Day 7: Implement some the systems and components
Day 8: Improve AI
Day 9: Make cover, tutorial, description, itch.io page, tic-80 page
Day 10: buffer
Make a stamina plan
As I have previously failed completing big projects because of stamina, I wanted to make a clear plan to prevent that.
Sleep enough, at regular hours.
Eat enough and healthy.
Exercise, go for walks.
Take regular breaks.
Keep RSI in mind.
Keep up motivation by working on other things as well.
After all of that, I surprisingly still had a lot of time left. I decided to give to create some assets and designs.
Here are the results:
And the unfinished circuit mat (game board):
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