ClassicRPG

My habit when working on personal projects has always been to rush the fun part. Prove the mechanics. Get an ugly prototype working. Run out of steam. Move on to the next project. This wasn’t enough. Over a decade later, I had nothing left behind me except for the projects I finish at my actual job. Because I had to. And a lot of dead personal projects. Probably close to a hundred.

Nothing shipped with my name on it.

Nothing I can show somebody when they ask what I like to make.

And that wasn’t my only concern. I’ve written hundreds of character controllers for 2D/3D, event busses, input system wrappers, level generators, complex mechanical systems, experimental architectures. I learned a lot. I still had a problem.

What about the rest of the game?

All the boring parts just never got made. The settings menu? The title screen? Adaptable input indicators? A credits screen? Multi-resolution support? Localization? IAP support? A debug menu? A build pipeline? The types of things that don’t really get done until you’re ready to show off a project or ship it.

I just had never gotten that far on a project (at home).

Shipping an entire game, front to back, is daunting. I don’t have a team. I don’t like to kit-bash assets either. So… how can I make this realistic?

What if I didn’t flesh out the game? What if I had things barebones in terms of content, yet all the supporting systems are fleshed out and polished? And my engineer brain has a quirk. I like to solve problems. Once. So my natural next thought made this even better:

What if I could take all these supporting systems with me to the next project?

It’s hard to disentangle this project with my budding core library (aptly named (CodiushMaximush)). Because it isn’t meant to stand on its own or be sold on a store. It’s a proving ground. A shiny appetizer that ultimately is just the first node on a graph that I hope will span many, many shipped projects. This pattern isn’t new. Youtubers will tell you the same thing if they’ve shipped enough projects. Every package you buy probably has a .Core namespace or package associated with it. Even at my job, we have multiple of these stable core libraries to keep things centralized across game projects.

Why don’t I have one?

That’s what the project is. Something that is fleshed out, end to end. While also being intentionally kept miniscule in scope, while still adhering to a genre I actually respect. Adventure games. Something I can install on my Retroid Pocket Flip 2, and present with both hands and a smile on my face when someone asks me about what I like to make.

The scope

I’m currently targeting these goals in terms of content:

• Title Screen
• Opening Cutscene
• Basic Overworld Level
• Dungeon Level
  • Puzzles
  • Keys/Locks
  • Realtime Combat (Basic, Mid-Boss, Final Boss enemy types)
  • Top Down, Multi-room navigation
• Ending Cutscene
• Credits

Plus all the supporting systems you would expect from the game itself. Like persisted save files and a settings menu with all the things most people don’t think about.

It isn’t a lot. Most people could throw something together that works in a month or two. Except I’ve been working on this for much longer. And I suspect I won’t be done for several months. Why?

Because it has to be perfect.

I want this thing to be rock solid. A corner piece in the foundation of all my future projects. A beautiful cabinet where I even painted the bottom and the side that gets nailed to the wall. Not because I want it to be successful. Because it’s a reflection of me.

What does that mean? That means every pixel has to be exactly where it needs to be. Players should have several moments where they think “He didn’t have to do that, and he did it anyway.” Multiple rounds of playtests. Harsh architectural iteration. Nailing down edge cases on every supported platform. There will be a cutoff of course. I have other projects I want to work on. The litmus test is basically:

If this game had hours of content instead of minutes, would I ship this to a store?

Then. Once it’s done. I host a build for free on itch.io, link it here, and move on to the next project. With most of my momentum preserved.

Where it stands

I just finished the second and final puzzle room. All that is left content-wise for the first pass is a room dedicated to a token story beat, and the final boss. After that? Here’s the list:

• Hold a real end to end playtest
• Integrate playtest feedback
• Systems refactor
• Another playtest
• Integrate playtest #2 feedback
• Final system refactor
• Final playtest
• Final polish
• Deploy

Screenshots

From the devlog

When modularity and Animators don't mix — how a cutscene bug led to designing the framework's animation arbiter.