Hey Pavel, Thank you so much for the support and the extra tip, that's really kind of you!
So the games development process for me was an interesting one, the game is written in c++ and when I first started I just worked on procedural generation, I love proc gen stuff so when I learned how to do it I just spent all my time making little generators, weapon generators, ship generators, face generators.
I did that for a year or so for fun in some of my spare time, but I was sad that I couldn't use them in a game. I looked into c++ tutorials for game development online and started learning, I made a basic battle simulator in one of them, and then added troop hiring, then an arena, then desertion, then exploration, then mercenary groups, then randomised enemies, and so on and before I knew it I had a really early version of Warsim.
I didn't think much of it but it was turning into a legitimate game. I left the project for a while but when I came back I put it on reddit and here on itch.io and handfuls of people checked it out, many gave their thoughts and tips on what could improve things. Over time I would release updates and try and take on board player feedback as much as I could. After two years of developing it more seriously I decided to put it on steam and after that things really blew up for me.
I've now sold over 24000 copies in the three years it's been on steam, and the game has had 100s of updates and is far better than I ever thought it could be from the constant work.
So for planning I write down in simple .txt files little sections of features I'd like to add, over time as many were suggested by players the list grew massively, 1000s of things on there, I would go through and add and work on anything I wanted. Whatever I was most interested in at the time, or if something would be a quick and easy fix/addition I'd get it out of the way.
After a few years of working through the giant list I realised I'd be in development forever, I'm 5 years in right now and still in early access for example. So I spent a few days going through the entire list and spring cleaning it, I cleared stuff that wasn't really worth adding, categorised suggestions that were for the same area of the game, and I made a new list for stuff that wasn't essential to the game but could be added later as a post-release plan list.
In the end I got the list cut down from about 3000 things to about 500, then worked through that list by doing themed updates clearing whole blocks of stuff.
Honestly for motivation it can be super hard, for me having random generation in the game was nice because some of the content is different each time so at least all the playtesting doesn't get so boring but even that wears thin eventually. The biggest one for me is player feedback, having messages and comments was fuel for development for me and really made me want to keep working on it. I never used to get many but these days across Warsim's steam/discord/reddit etc there are plenty of new comments and feedback which always motivate me.
It also helps that I'm working on a game I like to play, and if I think of something that would make my playtime more fun I just add it, which was always what my dream of game development was.
My advice for starting out is getting feedback, if you can get people who are willing to play your game and give you feedback it can be invaluable, I thought I had good vision for game development, but I was blind to so many things that just didn't occur to me until players mentioned it. No one is perfect and no one considers everything and sometimes working on a game and looking at it so closely we miss the bigger picture and really obvious things that need to be changed/added etc.
If you can get feedback and work on it to keep improving your project it will inevitably be a better game in time, obviously advice varies a bit depending on platform/target market/genre etc
I hope this all helps and once again thank you for your support!
Happy new year and greetings from Wales in the UK
Huw ~