Dev Blog
Hi, this is the Stranded III development blog (see also Forum Thread, Comment Thread).
Entry 76 - Iterative/Incremental Development - February 3, 2018
2018!
Wait! It's February already and there's no Stranded III dev blog entry for this year yet?
Let's change that!
After writing the last entry, CS2D has been released on Steam which is one of the reasons why I didn't manage to work on Stranded III a lot. I do have kind of a New Year's resolution though: I will change the way I work on Stranded III and I'll set a deadline for myself.
Iterative/Incremental Development
I set the wrong focus during the development of Stranded III. I spent too much time with working on UI stuff and 3D models and I didn't work enough on the actual game. Therefore I do not have a game with fun game play yet which is a difficult and demotivating situation. Also there isn't anything playable worth sharing with you.
Therefore my new goal is to develop a very basic playable multiplayer version as soon as possible. I won't care much about the look of it (silly placeholder assets incoming) and I'll focus on functionality.
In case you missed it: I also mentioned this in my Unreal Software 2018 news
Deadline
I already put a lot of work into this project and I do not plan to give up. On the other hand however I can't continue like this (working without playable results) forever. Therefore I'll set a deadline: I will either manage to create basic playable multiplayer alpha this year or I'll cancel the development. No worries, I'll do my best to make Stranded III happen!
What's Next?
The last few weeks I spent a lot of time creating a separate minimalist multiplayer project in Unity which uses my own UDP networking library and which is connected to the U.S.G.N. master server. It's a proof of concept and it's already working. The code and experience I gathered with this will help to improve Stranded III. I will try out a few more things and then merge it with the Stranded III code base.
Here's an awesome picture of the amazing multiplayer test project:
click to enlarge
My next goal after that is to work on a new terrain system and map topology because I'm really unhappy with Unity's limited terrain system.
Wait! It's February already and there's no Stranded III dev blog entry for this year yet?
Let's change that!After writing the last entry, CS2D has been released on Steam which is one of the reasons why I didn't manage to work on Stranded III a lot. I do have kind of a New Year's resolution though: I will change the way I work on Stranded III and I'll set a deadline for myself.
Iterative/Incremental Development
I set the wrong focus during the development of Stranded III. I spent too much time with working on UI stuff and 3D models and I didn't work enough on the actual game. Therefore I do not have a game with fun game play yet which is a difficult and demotivating situation. Also there isn't anything playable worth sharing with you.
Therefore my new goal is to develop a very basic playable multiplayer version as soon as possible. I won't care much about the look of it (silly placeholder assets incoming) and I'll focus on functionality.
In case you missed it: I also mentioned this in my Unreal Software 2018 news
Deadline
I already put a lot of work into this project and I do not plan to give up. On the other hand however I can't continue like this (working without playable results) forever. Therefore I'll set a deadline: I will either manage to create basic playable multiplayer alpha this year or I'll cancel the development. No worries, I'll do my best to make Stranded III happen!
What's Next?
The last few weeks I spent a lot of time creating a separate minimalist multiplayer project in Unity which uses my own UDP networking library and which is connected to the U.S.G.N. master server. It's a proof of concept and it's already working. The code and experience I gathered with this will help to improve Stranded III. I will try out a few more things and then merge it with the Stranded III code base.
Here's an awesome picture of the amazing multiplayer test project:
click to enlargeMy next goal after that is to work on a new terrain system and map topology because I'm really unhappy with Unity's limited terrain system.