DevLog: Week 1

Hi everyone

Here a quick and short recap of week number 1 in form of a video devlog. Enjoy:

For those of you who wants some more details, please read on:

Let's first recap what my goals were for this week:

1. What software and hardware will I use all along?
2. Create *this* devlog in a proper way
3. Think about a fitting game for the game jam & create a paper prototype

Without further ado, here are the answers:

1. I will use the same hardware as I already mentioned during my introduction:

• my computer: to create, develop and store
• an iPad: to draw
• an apple iMac: video editing and future apple deployment of the game

And additionally:

• a wired Xbox 360 controller, a wireless Xbox series controller & a ps4 dual-shock controller: all of them needs to work with the game
• a 1080p Logitech webcam: recording for video devlog and making pictures

2. Here is the devlog "week 1". I hope this format of doing is more pleasant to read. I'm still learning, so it'll probably be full of flaws and mistakes but I want to keep getting better. If you have suggestions or feedback, please leave me a comment.

3. For this part, I'm going to show you in the next paragraph all the steps I took.  

1st step:

Looking for inspiration:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance

And wrote down some important keywords from inspiration:

• fortitude
• hardiness
• resist
• withstand
• immunity
• recover
• exert

2nd step:

I built a small story with the keywords:

"It's the story of a black unlucky cat, that want to lose weight, even though he lives in a dense city, packed with lots of dangers. He decided to finally get the exercises (exert) done, for his own good and to recover from all that time lost. He grew mentally strong (hardiness, fortitude) and will resist all urges to give up. He is now immune against anything that might come in its way. Danger or not, he will withstand them, no matter what."

3rd step:

Paper prototype the game:

A quick and dirty paper prototype of the game. All encountered problems were written down for later.

4th step:

Fill the Game Design Canvas

OK, this needs a short explanation:

From my experience, the more "stupid" and basic questions have an answer, the more fluent the development of the game will be. Without it, there is a good risk that I lose interest and motivation when it becomes too difficult to correct errors that I've made.

Here are some examples of such questions:

• What is the aim of the game?
• What do the hero/the enemies look like?
• How do you win/lose?
• How do you progress?
• How do you play?
• etc.

A game design canvas is a nice tool to get most of the important questions answered. I leave a link to some more detailed explanation about it: Introduction to the game design canvas.

5th step:

Creating a simulation

Inspiration for the world:

• pixabay.com/fr/images/search/city/
• maps.google.com/place/New+York
• google.com

Therefor, I created myself an animated GIF, where I can simulate the player's movement with my cursor or:

• Simulation (large gif file!)

6th step:

Defining the game engine(s):

• Unreal Engine 5

7th step:

Creating a basic Game Design Document:

To prevent forgetting things, I write everything down somewhere. Whenever I feel for it and also when I have the time, I fill up the GDD with all the information I have:

• Determination - GDD v0.0.1

That's it for this weeks devlog. Big thanks to you for having arrived to the end.

See ya

-F4lloutFan-