This month is starting to get very busy very quickly. This coming week, I'm going to head out to GDC (that's the Game Developer's Conference) in San Francisco. It's my first time going! I'm a little nervous, but I'm also really excited. I don't know exactly what to expect, but I've received a lot of encouragement from fellow developers, suggesting that it'll be a positive experience for me.
At the event, I'm mostly just planning on meeting other people and absorbing as much information as I can to get a taste of what it's like to be in the game development industry. Games are pretty much my thing. It feels like it's what I'm really here to do.
Of course, another thing I plan to do at the event is to show off some of my projects to other people (both for feedback and for potential connections). I will definitely be showing off Polypaint, as it's my most polished project so far and I think it lends itself well to people just picking it up and playing it.
I'd also like to show off Esther's Quest at the convention. Esther's Quest has a lot more content to it than Polypaint did, so it's nowhere near the same level of polish as that project. In this article, I'll give a status update on where I am with my demo of Esther's quest.
I completed laying out all of the individual rooms in the dungeon. Players can now start in the starting room and make their way all the way through to the end by solving puzzles, finding keys and, of course, using the mirror to cooperate with a reflection of the player character.
It was a lot of fun coming up with a plan for the overall pacing, layout, and flow of the level. There are lots of branching paths and optional rooms, but the critical path towards the end (that empty room towards the top) shouldn't be terribly difficult for players to follow.
Music can be a great way to increase the immersion of your experience with a game. I made this little looping song that plays while players navigate their way through the level:
To assist players who might have gotten lost in navigating the dungeon, I added a map feature. Of course, the map isn't given to the player right away, but it's there as a failsafe in case the player is feeling lost. It's easy to stumble upon and it looks like this:
The green rooms are the rooms the player has already visited and the little icon represents the player's current location. This should help players who are feeling lost.
Those are all the major updates I was able to manage during the week. Over the next couple of days I'll probably be mostly packing and preparing for the trip, but I'll try to add a few last minute updates to the game if I can to make it more appealing for people to play at the convention. If not, no big deal. I'm very happy with where the game is now and I'm excited to get this early version into people's hands!
Thanks for reading this week's article. I'll be back next week with more updates (most of which will probably just be a summary of my experiences at GDC). So long for now!
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