It has been a month since I started working on QuestQuest. A lot has happened in this time and it is a good moment to present a short summary of what has been achieved.
Plan vs Reality
As you remember, the plan for QuestQuest is to develop and publish a working game within 3 months. Initially the first month was planned to be spent mainly on software framework. In reality, May was both month of software framework development as well as building online presence.
Programming - Framework
I didn’t have any previous code for Android development, so QuestQuest was started from level 0. What has been created:
- display framework - a simple set of classes to display 2D sprites using GLES
- animation framework - set of classes that allow time-based animation (i.e. movement) of sprites on screen
- gui and gadgets - basic gadgets and interaction elements - window, button, label and click/touch event handling
- level map handling - classes that allow defining game level’s 2D map composed from tiles and then move player character on it
- plumbing for connecting player movement, map handling and rendering - display the area in which player is currently located
Programming - Gameplay
There was a limited amount of work on non-framework programming. Basically it boils down to two views:
- main menu view representing all the main functions - screen shots of this have already been posted
- game level display - showing a player on the map and moving it - this has not yet been posted as it uses placeholder textures and looks plain ugly
Assets - Graphics
Work here mainly involved creation of logos and banners
- GrayGambitGames and QuestQuest logos and banners
- Main menu buttons and background
Online Presence
I initially planned to start working on this in June, however, many posts from other developers underlined importance of early web presence building. Following this, I decide to speed things up. Generally I think it was a good decision, although it was probably taking about 50% of the total time I spent on QuestQuest in May. Honestly coding is sooooo easy compared to building online presence! That’s what I achieved so far:
- Main site, graygambitgames.com - a modified Tumblr blog - is a center of GGG’s activities
- Twitter account: @GrayGambitGames
- IndieDB entry for both company and game
- TIGSource DevLog
- Posted an article on Reddit
Analytics show that graygambitgames.com has been viewed around 400 times by around 100 users.
Plans for June
The main objective for June is building the core gameplay logic, so if all goes well, in one month I should be able to release betas. In parallel I will also be working on growing my online presence, hopefully by posting more in-game material! Stay tuned!
For more information check out graygambitgames.com
