(Okay, I really needed a cover image for this post at the last minute, so this is from my notebook. The cherry showing through from the other side was drawn by a friend – full credit to her for that! :D)
Starting the Journey
Welcome to my first blog post! I guess I should start by introducing myself. My name is Marci (AN is just my online name). I live in Hungary and study game development. I’ve been passionate about it since childhood, and now, at 25, I’ve decided to pursue it more seriously. I’m hoping this will help me make new friends and have amazing experiences I never could have imagined before. And most importantly, I hope to learn a lot of new things!
The Blueprint (Intentions & Plans)
To be honest, I didn’t really have a plan until June 10, when I started developing the game this blog series is all about. Yes, the game I’m working on is brand new.
Up until now, I’ve only managed to finish tiny projects, mostly because I never had a real deadline to keep me accountable.
That’s about to change. From now on, I’ll publish a new blog post every month – I swear on the life of my favorite Pokémon. (If I break that oath, I’ll be forced to release that Pokémon into the wild.)
One year from now, I want to look back at this series and see how far both the project and I have come. Even if things don’t go in a straight line, I hope I’ll be able to see that I kept showing up for it!
The Reality (What Actually Happened)
June was an especially busy month for me, so I didn’t have much time to work on the game. Still, I managed to lay the foundation for the project. I reused some code from an earlier prototype, but since it wasn’t optimized, I ended up having to rewrite most of it anyway.
The game is titled Mystery Drive (though this name is subject to change). My main inspiration was Pokémon Mystery Dungeon. I’ll explain in a later post how my game will differ from it.
For now, I’d like to focus on the technical details.
The game is being developed in Lua, using a fantasy workstation called Picotron. If you’re familiar with PICO-8, this is a similar concept, but newer and not yet officially released.
The following features were completed during this month:
- I’ve set up the overall project structure, so everything now has its proper place and the project is easy to navigate and expand.
- I’ve implemented a random dungeon generation system, which already brings some nice variety and unpredictability to the world. Lazy Devs’ awesome video series was a big help to me with this.
- I’ve also added auto-tiling logic to make everything look more natural and visually appealing, instead of rigid, blocky tiles.
Making Peace with the Space Between
I didn’t set any real plans for the game this time, so it was pretty easy to stay aligned with what I had in mind. Next month, though, I expect things will be a bit more challenging.
About the Journal
I started writing these blog posts because being a solo game developer often feels like trying to navigate a forest without a compass.
It’s just an honest look at what I set out to do versus what reality handed me – and making peace with the space between the two. Mostly, this is for my future self – It’s a way to make the invisible work visible, and to celebrate the messy, slow, beautifully non-linear reality of making things.