Devlog #1: The Journey

Hello! My name is Taylor Feldman, and I'm a middle school English teacher who codes over the summer.  This is the first devlog post in my development journey, and it comes alongside my decision to make that journey public by posting my half finished proof of concept online. I'd like to discuss what led me to start programming over my summer breaks, what my game dev process looks like, and why I decided to take my project public so early in development. Basically, I want to tell you about the past, present, and future of my development journey. 

The Past:

A whole lot of things happened for me in 2023. Within the first five months of the year, I  started substitute teaching, I got married, and I graduated college with a degree in Writing and Rhetoric. Along side all of those massive changes in my life, I started learning C++. This happened sort of on a whim, but ended up having months (years?) of impact. 

I had been working my grueling job as a long term agriculture substitute at a majorly over populated middle school (they were double capacity and split the next year. It was a mess.) and was struck with an idea for a video game in which a player had to play four sub games that were interconnected, one of which being a tower defense and one of which being a match3 style game.  Normally, I would have an idea like this, dwell on it for half a day, and then forget it. For whatever reason, the idea just sort of stuck. It stuck so much that I started investigating code academies courses and began a free course on C++. It just so happened that a major standardized test was scheduled to start right as I started learning C++. Since I was a substitute, I wasn't allowed to proctor exams, so they stuck me in a hallway for several hours a day while the kids were testing. This meant I had several hours a day to sit there learning C++ on my little county issued chrome book. 

Fast forward a few weeks and school lets out. I have all of this time on my hands before I start my actual teaching career in August, and I have completed the free course on C++. I really had no idea how to get started in making a game. I had tried to code before in school and never been successful at it. In fact, I wanted to be a game developer when I was in highschool, but I took a class on web design and hated it so much that I thought I would probably dislike coding as a profession. I began looking into game engines and found Godot. I'm a huge fan of open source tech, and was instantly smitten. It turns out that my leaning towards an open source engine was a good call. Later that year Unity lost their minds and caused a mass exodus from their platform with changes to their monetization system. In this way, I was ahead of the curve in terms of adopting Godot. 

There was definitely an adjustment period, as Godot script (the built in programing language that the Godot engine uses) is more like Python than C++. I plugged along, reading the documentation and learning how the engine worked. Quickly, I realized that game design is waaaaay more than just coding. It is an overwhelming deluge of sub tasks. I began to learn the basics of pixel art. I started learning how to design and organize a project. I figured out that in text documentation was important even as a solo dev, ignored that for a while, and payed the price later. I tried composing my own music, which actually feels pretty hard to do for free (it has my least favorite open source options). I learned a bit about animations (but somehow never bought asprite? Like why haven't I just made my piece with the very low price tag and bought it already?)

By the end of summer in 2023, I had finished slightly more than a fourth of my game (er... the minimum viable product at least...). I had the match3 section working almost exactly how I wanted it, I had the tower defense corner starting to take shape with the basic foundations laid, and I had the four corners properly knitted together into a single window (which took so much more work than it sounds like it should). What I didn't have was time. 

I love teaching, but it is a brutal profession. It demands almost all of your time, and I think that's even more true for your first year(s). I wasn't able to devote any time at all to developing my project throughout the course of the 2023-2024 school year. My progress on this little side project of mine went down the skibidi toilet (as my students would say).  But the school year ended in May of 2024, and that brought me back to my little summer hobby.

The Present:

I was really nervous about starting my project this summer. I had written thousands of lines of code last summer, some of which were quite convoluted and none of which were properly documented with in line comments. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to (or want to) parse all of the mechanics I had developed a year ago. This proved to be a non-issue.

Not only did I parse my old project in less than a day, I fixed problems that I had been stuck on last summer like they were nothing. The tower defense elements had given me a very hard time last year.  My development process is pretty scattered. I default to adding features that are obviously missing. The more obviously missing and the less obviously difficult the feature is to impalement, the higher the feature is on my todo list. In the course of adding those features, I usually notice a few other things that need to be added (or fixed) and write them down. I cross off what I can, flip my notebook to a new page, and rewrite the things I didn't get to on my new page. I do this over, and over, and over again. It isn't well organized. It isn't well prioritized. But it is the system that makes me want to keep coding.

At some point I actually run out of stuff I feel like adding, so I take to playtesting. I don't usually playtest for more than an hour. I hit snags, find bugs, encounter balance issues, or think of needed features, all of which leads me back to coding instead of playtesting.

Some days are dedicated entirely to art. My art sucks, so these are infrequent. I get the feeling that when I have this project closer to finished, nearly all of my time will be spent on creative pursuits like art, animation, and music enhancements. The visuals are certainly not where I want them right now - but the game is far from finished. 

Somehow, stumbling around adding features and fixing bugs, I have managed to finish the tower defense sections basic structure in less than a month. This leads me to the terrifying unknown future of my game. All of the easy things to fix for my tower defense are fixed... all that is left is the very difficult rebalancing, or temporary additions like a game-over screen. I will soon be moving out of the two corners of this game that were so firmly embedded in my original vision, and into the two corners of the game that are more nebulous and conceptual. Somehow, with all of that uncertainty and work ahead of me, that has lead me to make the decision to publish my game early.

The Future:

I have never been fond of early access games. I also worry that instead of driving hype for a game, a premature early access or beta version of the game makes players less incentivized to closely follow the journey. I never envisioned myself posting a public version of my game until it was very nearly done, so what changed? 

Firstly, I talked to some family members. It feels like every time I talk to someone I know, they ask me how the game is coming. This, to their credit, proves that they are exceptional people who love and care for me. They, in part, are why I am publishing this publicly. This will remove some of the barriers to my loved ones easily accessing the project and updates from me about it. 

Secondly, I've realized that I need feedback. I think I have a good concept here. I think I have good ideas to build on that concept. I think I'm making unique and interesting choices available slowly but surely through the gameplay loop. I think all of this, but have no way of confirming it. I would rather get feedback early than late. If it turns out that I am not creating interesting choices for players, then I need to know that now so that I can fix it.  The truth is that I have spent so much time with this project that I can't really see it. I need fresh eyes on my work so that I can get fresh feedback on that work... and I don't want to burden my friends and family with that task. In fact, I don't want to burden any individuals with that task. I think it's better accomplished by a group. So, I'm hoping that if I build it (and publicly publish it), then a group will come. A group that finds the vision appealing and wants to see it come to light. A group that will give me the feedback I need as I make that vision come together.

Finally, more playtesting = more bug finding. I have the pleasure of encountering the big bugs early and often. I get to fix them and smile and think about how clean my game is! Unfortunately, my lack of real playtesting time means I don't hit the edge cases that produce sneaky bugs. I found a sneaky bug today that I could have missed over 100 hours of playtesting. I got lucky (or unlucky?) and stumbled across it without even meaning to. I cannot count on that to find my bugs. I need more people, playing more of the game, in more ways, so that I can find and quash alllll of the bugs :)

So, now that this is public, what happens next? Well, I'm hoping to publish updates and devlogs once a week until the end of summer, at which point this project will likely go dark again until next summer. I doubt that my second year of teaching will be the magnitude of easier that I need it to be in order to keep up with both my job and my side hobby. For now, tell your friends! Get them in here testing the game! Email me and let me know about any bugs you find or feedback you have! Leave comments on the forums attached the site. Give me a reason to keep this project public, and show me and my concept any love you have for us (because every little push to motivation helps!) The game can only get better from here :)