Development process has been rather quick, forcing myself to a tight schedule in order to meet the deadline. I have begun to work during the days, from 7am to 9pm, and then writing these development diaries during the night. My project will revolve around the schedule stacking day, which I have opted to call “A Day Well Spent.”
After meeting with my tutors (Dr David King) and discussing both the issue and a manner to solve it, we decided to cast away the stacking tower theme from Tricky Towers, and instead go for something far more manageable that can be developed in a few days.
“A Day Well Spent” s key goal is to meet your player’s daily needs, by slotting ‘activities’ into a cup. The shape and size of these activities makes it difficult to place them without a bit thought or intuition. Each activity fills up the player’s needs by a set amount, which differs from +1 work/sleep/wellbeing to +3 work/sleep/wellbeing. The strength of each activity is dependent on their shape. A simple square is easy to slot, and thus provides little benefits, but a triangle, or a circle, is far more difficult.
I immediately began drawing out a Trello board on which all the things discussed with my tutor were drafted. Needless to say there was a lot to design & develop. My process was mostly iterative. I set myself tasks to carry and took them as they came. When I had sufficiently done so, I built the game and had it play tested whilst I continued working on the immediate troubles and evident bugs present. When new issues arose, I added it to the board, and took care of it whence my current task was complete.
Of my original, stressful intent for “A Day Well Spent”, – trying to balance out needs and time constraints by stacking activities on top of one another – nothing remained. Instead, what came about naturally was a far more wholesome puzzle game, where players could only spawn a maximum of 10 activities. They could select what kinds of activities these were using the mouse wheel, and then drag and drop them into the cup, filling the needs of the player according to what benefits each activity granted. Instead of being a stressful balancing act, it became rather mellow and soothing, something to pass the time rather than engage in actively.
After the activity slots (those shapes you drag and drop) worked properly, and could be moved around without ejecting themselves off screen, making sure they could only be spawned outside the cup, and not dragged and dropped from inside it became the follow part, alongside getting the needs bars to work, and finally some more feedback for the player to understand which icon he was going to spawn.
After some time polishing the UI, the game was rendered clearer. The game gives more feedback such as a clear cap for activities, the name of each activtiy by its side, what activity was being spawned on a right click, and even text that displays depending on how many activities of a same kind you have in the cup.