Devlog 1.3:Day 27<ish> Alpha Relase

Devlog 1.3: Alpha Release and Postmortem

Video link: 

Final Alpha Features included  in this release.

Features:

6 levels each with 1 "Trophy" to collect (these trophies are not collected permeantly) 

These levels are - Parking Lot, Lobby, Restaurant, Practice Field, Tiger Woods (wink), and Crab Crab Beach. 

a "re-set" and "unstuck" on each level, players can restart the level or reset their position, you can see these in the video. For total, this makes around 10 minutes of gameplay. 

next I will explain what features I originally planned that didn't make it into the game and why, the challenges faced and lessons learned, while I don't expect these to be big industry revelations I think it is beneficial to write it all out here, and would love to hear others opinions. 

First, a general statement about why the game is being "cut" - mostly I have lost the motivation for the game, since this is a Hobby game, it important for me to enjoy the process. It became difficult to work on and I lost faith on the core premise. While getting it to Alpha I did find some renewed enjoyment for it, and solved a lot of issues holding the game back. I am not against returning to the game later.

13 levels - 7 missing -

 The Bad: ultimately the levels became far to large and too much work to complete. I DRASTICALLY underestimated how much work filling out landscapes is, creating the correct valley's and peaks, allowing for a kart to comfortably rest. Filling out trees bushes and leaving open space or unplayable but filled space was difficult too.  Water was surprisingly easy however.

I am usure how realistic it was but i also began to fear how well large levels would play in the market, large levels filled with hundreds or more trees and grass, moving creatures and the like. Kartgolf was meant to be a low cost easy to play game. As the levels grew my worry did as well. I also struggled to buy/find assists to fill spaces out,  quickly I found myself repeating the same object and colors, and struggled to get many assets to work. This was of course, an experience issue, one day I will figure out materials.

The Good: I learned a lot about landscapes as this was my first time implementing them. Landscapes were easy to work with, but i often found myself creating them too large to manage easily. I also had quite a few issues with the Kart "falling" below the landscape, it turned out to be a mesh collision issue, but it was one that vexed the project until its final day on alpha release or as I call it, Today. I am glad to know about that now as well. 

I always thought level design would be my favorite part, this has shaken that believe somewhat, however some of the most fun was early on in the project before i knew about landscapes, using lots of cubes to build out complex structures. I know there has to be an easier way but this worked for me.

KartSwap - This was a tough one, I had plans to include several Karts and Kart like objects, i was able to get a model Swap to a Bike, but I could not get it to function properly. Since it was difficult I eventually cut it. Since i was pretty excited about it, i think if i was to return to the project i would do this first. 

Kart "Powers" - This idea seemed fun, but i never even attempted to flesh it out, since i never started i wasn't worried about it. However thinking on it now, i would absolutely add some variety to the game, "Super Hit", "Double Hit", Wall spawn. With more levels these might be critical to the game.

I think KartGolf was a lot of fun, As a short game it might be something to just show off, or give people 20 minutes of fun - maybe. Since it took 30+ hours to make that feels a little sad to say, but i learned a lot about game design on the journey. Here are a few summaries of those lessons:

"keep the scale and Scope in mind:" - while my design document helped with this, i bit more then i could chew off on the levels, then i committed so much time to them i didn't want to scrap them. It also helps to be intentional about when i work on what, I found jumping from task to task kept it interesting, but probably added more time to the project, having to constantly remember how things worked to start reworking them - origination and documentation would help a lot too. 

"Always plan for it to take 30 more hours(or day) then you think" - yeah, i thought this would be quick, maybe one day i could turn out small silly games quickly for now even small ideas like Kartgolf take a while.

"just do it" - this final day of alpha development really helped me, once i got over the dread of the project i was quickly able to solve some major issues and once those roadblocks cleared i was ready to keep working!

What comes next?

If you've made it this far, your both and fan and a friend, or maybe just crazy. Either way thank you!

Next up is a "defense" Game - i already have some work done on it which you can see below. The game will be set in a Sci-Fi setting, - I think aboard a large abandoned space ship. Game play will involve searching the ship and killing endless enemies for resources, then using those resources to upgrade items and a base. Most notably i want to include "rescue" missions, where hordes of enemies keep NPC's hostage. Once rescued you will be bale to assign them as gathers, or as defenders for you base.