Is it just me, or is the production of a game like sitting in waves on a beach. In one moment, everything looks calm and tranquil. Things are moving smoothly and it's easy to enjoy the space and the moment. The next moment, a wave hits you. It looked nice coming in, but the moment it crashes into your body you realize you didn't quite brace or prepare yourself properly for it. That's how I feel with our game. Sometimes, it's not design or technical challenges but life's other things that create a struggle. For instance, this week I was fine for the majority of the week. Had a lighter week of work than the last one so I was looking forward to cranking it out over the weekend in fairly quick succession. That was before I got sick on the weekend. What was an easy week of work suddenly felt next to impossible to accomplish with my head spinning in circles and my body aching to simply lie down. My productivity was unfortunately shot. This is somewhat true even now that I write this post (though compared to Sunday, I feel much better). I realize that it's my fault for putting off the majority of my work till the weekend, but generally speaking that's the best time for me to really focus.
Beyond my own immune system deficiencies the project itself felt like progress and setbacks at the same time. This week, we made great strides in terms of networking, progression systems, and AI in our game. We also were finally able to bring it to QA for the first time in weeks. But now that it's all together in a rough state, it's clear that there is a lot (I do mean A LOT!) that needs to be addressed, fixed, or even changed. The environment is dull looking and needs proper collision, the AI needs to be more difficult for the player, UI is missing almost entirely and needs to be clearer and reworked, and the most glaring issue to me - the guns need to be made clearer in terms of differences to the player. With our game being about guns, this is a glaring flaw in terms of player motivation. Without guns being interesting, the player loses a large reason to keep pushing forward in the game. Worst of all (at least to me as the producer), I'm not sure how to fix this problem with what we have so far, and the amount of time we have left.
I'm going to be bringing up these issues with my team today in our meeting. I don't want to discourage them - they put in a lot of work to get the game where it currently is. I just see a major problem that it simply isn't fun yet. We need to hone in and find that fun. I have a lot of faith in my team to solve these issues, I'm just not sure what we can accomplish in four weeks to address all this. For now, a new week and sprint is coming upon us, each with its own waves of setbacks and progress.