devlog

Starting from Scratch – A Retrospective

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I’ve found myself in this situation again. This is just a rant about myself. What was initially a beautiful project, designed to be a lean prototype, has once more spiraled out of control. That means dealing with dozens of assets all intricately connected, expensive plugins, overloaded integrations, and a web of dependencies. Coupled with a switch from URP to Build-In Render Pipeline mid project due to compatibility reasons. The project is fine per se. I have no big problems and it still is maintainable. But it feels bloated with redundant files and piles of stuff I will never use again.

So, here we go again, launching attempt number three – a fresh start. My goal is to bring my vision to life without getting bogged down in micromanagement. That’s why I’ve decided to kick things off with my first devlog. Hi there!

Introduction

I’m Tobias, and this marks the very first devlog of my journey as a solo developer. Over two decades in the game industry have taught me many things… not programming, though. Instead, I’ve learned how to navigate office dynamics and human interactions in that environment. You might be thinking, “Office? Do you mean the room where I keep my gaming rig?” Nope. I’m referring to a place where a diverse group of people must coexist and where 90% of problems are dumped on just 1% of the employees – the IT department. This is where our protagonist, Peter Struggle, comes into play.

Game Concept

Meet Peter, the lone IT employee in a company plagued by mountains of daily main and secondary tasks. His mission: to minimize open tasks by the end of the day. However, every interaction with a fellow employee adds a new task to his list. Players face a choice: take the risky but quick path, potentially piling up tasks, or opt for stealth and diversion to keep interactions, and subsequently tasks, to a minimum. When Peter has zero tasks left, he gains bonuses that can be used to enhance his skills and tools. The gameplay draws inspiration primarily from games like Splinter Cell and Hitman, incorporating casual graphics and humor to fit the scope of a solo developer, mixed with popcultural references to IT Crowd, The Office, Severance, Mr. Robot and Silicon Valley.

Third Person Controller

Ah, the allure of Feature Creep strikes once more. But I started out on the right foot with the versatile, community driven and beautifuly barebones “Etra’s Starter Assets” controller – a free gem that I can’t recommend enough. It’s a straightforward and remarkably efficient controller, complete with some useful extras.

So, I started integrating Peters abilities – crouching, shadow detection, sneaking, interaction UI, and even an extended interaction component. No issues there. Integrating Rewired? Smooth sailing. Implementing Final IK? Mission accomplished. Even integrating movement via behavior trees was a breeze. The true power lies in the asset’s well-structured simplicity. No mysterious scriptables or confusing dependencies. If you need component X, simply add it wherever you want. Need to disable an ability? Just call .enabled=false. Need an extension? Use the event system. The Unity way.

The temptation of the Unity Summer Sale – The sunk cost fallacy strikes back

But then the summer sale came. After buying and trying out “Invector,” I thought I was through with character controllers. I have a strong aversion to bloated assets that weigh down entire projects. However, the highly praised Opsive Third Person Controller caught my eye during the Unity Summer Sale. What could possibly go wrong? After all, it’s the best-selling asset around, and the Opsive Behavior Tree is a seriously awesome asset. So, I took the plunge and made the purchase, despite some lingering doubts – even after watching this video:

“It feels bloated, but also like something is missing.” I cannot agree more.

So, after spending days of reading documentation, watching tutorial videos, and trying to piece everything together, I found myself filled with buyer’s remorse. I was saddened by the fact that I had abandoned my beautiful custom controller for this massive monolith of an asset and lost the speed and traction, that I started with. Integrating it with other packages, even official integration packages, became a real headache. I was overwhelmed. I felt frustrated spending hours on simple tasks like incorporating my sound manager system or getting a feel for the locomotion and camera movement. In the end, I used the old approach, placing function on top without utilizing the built-in functions of the character controller. Unfortunately, it felt like adding a fifth wheel to a car – an awkward and unfitting addition. I always have the feeling that it could break any second.

This is just an example for a general problem I have with some premade assets. The Opsive Character Controller is a very good asset, the developer is awesome and the support is stellar. But in a fast iterating prototyping phase, it just slows me down. Others may find the “completeness” of the asset comforting, but for me its ballast. I just want to have a blank slate that I can hook some components on or remove them, without breaking everything. But this is something I learned the hard way. Keep it specialized. There is no “one size fits all” solution in game dev.

What I definitely will use the Opsive Character Controller for in my prototyping phase is the awesome integration with the Behavior Designer or AI Navigation in general. Its just flawless and setup in under a minute. And thanks to the extended animation system, it just looks good from start.

I have already prepared some Behavior Trees and Character Sheets that I can reuse 1:1. What would a stealth game be without “Wait, who’s there? Oh, it was just the wind”. Only that in my game it will sound more like “Hey Peter! I have a problem with my PC. Can you help me?”

Modular Asset Packs

As the owner of quite a few modular asset packs from Synty and co., I am naturally often tempted to load everything I have directly into the project. That’s obvious. You want to “quickly and easily” click together a few levels. I noticed that using pre-made graphics tempted me to focus on too many details already. Therefore, I decided to work only with prototypes from now until the basic systems are finished. This should help me to concentrate on the essential issues of the development. I will go back to a basic tool for prototyping and level design: Greyboxing with Probuilder. Simple and easy. This way, questions of believability should only arise later, when it comes to the final level design. For now, it’s about “finding the fun”.

The Office Scene I tried to fit in all my mechanics made of prebuild modular Assets.

I found it challenging to find a balance in level design that emphasizes stealth mechanics while providing a believable environment. Normal office buildings consist of long corridors and individual offices with little open space. Many of the stealth game mechanics I want to incorporate require the player to have a good overview and not be constantly surprised by enemies running out of offices or the like. Using premade assets led me to “work around” the mechanics to find solutions for the assets I have. I think that is a big game design mistake I made. But maybe I will go in further detail in a later post about stealth mechanics.

New Beginnings – Have you tried to turn it off and on again?

And so, the first entry of Struggle Peter’s devlog begins with “Embracing the Awkward.” Back to the drawing board. Starting a new project. Salvaging the old one. And before putting in assets, really thinking about “Do I really need this in my folder?”, “Does it serve my vision?”. I’m more motivated than ever to bring my Project to life. It’s a learning project. Not a big one. All the problems I encountered, I encountered countless times before. Maybe this time I learned my lesson. Maybe. Man, I love this.

Notion is a big help to stay organized.

My Plan for the future of the project

  • Stay agile at all costs
    • Stick to the MVP
    • Delivering fast working increments
    • Let people test
    • Reduce Micromanagement
    • Have a playable version ready in one month
      • Post iterations on itch.io
  • Managing expectations
    • I started this project to learn how to develop and release a simple game
    • Even with my experience, I’m still a beginner and nobody expects my first real game to be perfect
  • Keep track of and report the progress, even If I am the only one who will ever read it (this blog)
  • Always try to clean up the mess after a long coding session.
    • Organize so that it is also quickly understandable and readable by others. Even if it is the future self. He kinda forgets everything all the time.
  • Keep Notion as my Game Design Document and Vision Board, its excellent for that
    • Mark MVP Features to keep organized
  • Don‘t buy assets until it‘s clear where the project is going – ignore FOMO
    • Understanding and integrating new and unknown assets take a lot of time. I dont have a lot of time.
  • Assets that I feel comfortable with and will add to the project to boost productivity