I got started on some proper development work. I went down to Cork city and spent three full days working on a game prototype at the Workbench open work space.
I really enjoyed sitting in there and working, it was very nice and quiet and there was a kitchenette to get free tea and coffee there.
I got quite far with my simplified idea for my sidescrolling RPG. What I'm trying to go for is a game where it is just fun to do a simple combat flow, similar to the Batman Arkham games or the first Witcher game, where you have to time your attacks to keep a combo going. If the prototype for that is fun when it's a bit further along I think it's a pretty safe project to make a small hack 'n slash mobile RPG where you just go through little quests defeating enemies and collecting loot. My plan would be for the game to take 2-3 months to finish, but I'll need to actually see the prototype completed first before I'm sure I want to proceed.
Last weekend I went up to Dublin to take part of a weekend long game jam. It was a really good jam experience. I worked with a few guys I've met before and had a great time, I almost only did 3D-modeling for this game jam. Here is a collection of what I manged to put together, as you can see, the quality went up and down a bit based on my stress level (everything is set up in an eevee render here).
The game itself was a VR game for the Oculus Quest and ended up working quite well, it took so long to get builds working on the Quest, that we didn't have as much time as we would have liked to flesh out the gameplay. but the basic idea worked.
Here is a video of me playing a bit of it.
Now unfortunately the beginning of next week has ended up a bit overbooked, so I'm not sure how much time I'll be able to put into the game, but Thursday and Friday are wide open, so I hope to spend those at the Workbench working on my prototype. My plan for this week is to finish the prototype and send it off to some friends to get feedback on the idea.
