Schedule

Here is my 7-day plan for creating the first game. I'm going to try an agile, iterative design approach on this game; the design will be informal, and mostly just sketches. Today will be Day 1. I'm going to count each "day" as a 5-hour sitting. The days will not necessarily be consecutive, since I have some school projects and exams coming up, but this first game will most likely be done around 10 days from now. After each day I will post a summary of that day's accomplishments.

Day 1: Preparation, Design

• Set up my working environment.
• Create some concept sketches of the game.
• Create a fast writeup of the general game design.
• Decide on technologies (language, libraries, software, hardware) to use.
• Devote any extra time to fiddle around with the tools I picked, to get used to them and get a small head start.
  
• Write this schedule.

Day 2: Skeleton, Begin first iteration

• Create a basic skeleton of the game.
• Get some basic gameplay elements working.
• Create some placeholder art.

Day 3: Complete first iteration

• Have all gameplay elements implemented to a minimal degree.
• Create more placeholder art.
  

Day 4: Begin second iteration

• Get each gameplay element working more closely towards the second version.
• Begin on final versions of art.
• Start working on sound effects.
  

Day 5: Complete second iteration, Alpha testing

• Refine gameplay.
• Have game in playable state; missing gameplay elements are okay.
• Show game to friends; get their opinion on gameplay.
• Work on art.
  

Day 6: Refinement

• Resolve any standing issues from before.
• Implement suggested changes and fixes from testing.
• Finish art.
• Finish sound effects.
  
• Begin work on music.
  

Day 7: Buffer time

• Finish music.
• Fix anything.
• Distribute!
  

Ideas to Explore

Here are a few different types of games that I want to make in this game-a-week project. Ideally, each item will be it's own game; that's the scale I'm working with.

• A simple 2D block puzzle game.
• A game with online interaction.
• A game with 3D graphics.
• A very basic FPS mod.
• A platformer.
• A game that uses a physics engine.

Additionally, there are some technologies that I want to get more experienced with:

• C#
• XNA
• Scripting languages
• Various graphics libraries (Irrlicht, HGE)
• FPS engines (most likely Source)
• Physics engines
  

Welcome

After working on a very large game project for quite some time, I decided it I should take a break and try something new. In the next few months I will be making a small game every few weeks, each game taking only one week to create.

I have several goals in mind:

• To learn pacing, management, and sacrifice. The difficult part of working on a large game, one with an end date multiple years from now, is knowing how to pace myself. I need to learn how to cut features, make realistic plans, and stick to schedules.
• To test out new ideas. In each of my upcoming weekly games, I plan to try out a specific gameplay idea. I would hate to implement something in my big game and find out too late that it isn't fun.
• Most importantly: to practice! I love coding, but I have little experience with actually completing entire projects, from start to finish. With this week-long-game project, I will experience, among other things, making a GUI and playtesting, two things that I won't get to do in my big project until I'm much farther into it.
  
• To refresh myself. Being in the middle of a huge project, it's hard to see any tangible result, and it's easy to get burnt out working on non-exciting tasks. It will be good to be able to see an end result again.
  

I realize that making a game in a week is a hard goal, but that is the point of this project. My first game will probably be terrible, but I need to learn time management, so I must complete it, whether it results in a good quality or bad quality product. Maybe my 3rd or 4th game will be up to my standards. Hopefully this will be a good learning experience, and that the end results can be enjoyable to everyone.

Inspiration from this project first came from Petri Purho, who created Crayon Physics. He too has a similar format, making a game a week each month. Another inspiration is Sketchable, a similar project by Andrew Russell. His first post is what got me thinking about this project.

It begins

FIRST