Six months in

It’s been six months since Dev with Dave launched. I really can’t believe how quickly the time has passed!

This landmark does feel like the ideal time to just recap on the project, and to go over some of the highs and lows.

What we’ve learned so far

During the first few months, the main focus was on planning, writing your own Game Design Document, a few example GDDs from games, an introduction to Trello, and access to the Flappy-vaders trello board so you can see for yourselves how it works.

After planning, came programming. Now I deliberately didn’t want to go to deeply into coding on the blog, so instead it was mostly theory based stuff which would be applicable to any language you’re using.

Flappy-vaders

Flappy-vaders has come on a long way in the last six months. From developing the basic systems with place holder art, to adding some of the visual effects, and adding powerups and upgrades. It’s starting to look like a halfway finished game, although there is still a way to go yet.

The bad bits

Now when I originally planned Dev with Dave, one of the things I was hoping to do was to spend time in various coffee shops and cafes (and McDonalds.. 🙄) but unfortunately the global pandemic happened and for large chunks of this year we have been in lockdown and all these places have been closed.

Because I am only working on Dev with Dave in my free time, I have struggled occasionally to keep up. This has shown in delays to the weekly progress update videos, and quiet periods on the social media. I’ve also found keeping the Trello board up to date to be tricky at times.

The good bits

I really enjoyed reading through the old game GDDs in the planning stage, and I have to say that Flappy-vaders has reached the stage where testing something quickly can turn into playing the game for 20 minutes! lol.

I’ve enjoyed the few times I managed to get out with the tablet and get some of the game written whilst having a nice cup of tea.

What’s coming next

I’ll be wrapping up the Programming theme soon, and moving onto promotion, where I’ll be talking about using social media and paid adverts to promote your game.

I’ll also be finishing off the last of the Flappy-vaders systems required for things like powerups and the store before moving on to level design.

I’m also hoping that the lockdown will end soon, and I’ll be able to go out and not only return to the cafes to write the game, but also get my hair cut! 😂

Dave