Ventures of an ex indie game developer

Project planning

  1. Refactor some code to simplify the simple;
  2. Generate roads, estates and vehicles;
  3. Implement game fun: steering, driving, camera, shooting, killing, dying, looting, resource extraction, dumb bots, etc.*;
  4. Simple chat is a must;
  5. Vehicle editor;
  6. Estate editor;
  7. Economy**;
  8. Network infrastructure, security and distribution***;
  9. Managing of user accounts and built stuff;
  10. Keeping and distribution of world data from a master server;
  11. Menus, UX, music;
  12. Port to iOS;
  13. In-app purchase. Limitations, such as time limit per day unless paying;
  14. Testing, refining, polishing, optimizing;
  15. Wait 2 weeks;
  16. Build, deploy, release;
  17. As a gimmick, I'll give away my other games for free. So update, build, release those as well. Peuh!
  18. Go travelling.

* This is where you start to realize that the actual game is only one step of 16, or about 6%. This is also where you make touch controls fun.

** Loot and resources will have to be balanced in an MMO, both to evade inflation and to prevent overly large vehicles. On vehicles and houses/stuff in the yard I'm thinking polynomial cost on dimensions and parts. The dimensions needs to be restricted, or people will build huge, flying penises that will get stuck between skyscrapers, or 10 km tall buildings. The parts would cause bandwidth problems and lag whenever someone decides to put 1M bubbles on the back of their hovercraft.

*** This is the hardest part from a technical standpoint. The other standpoints I don't want to think about (they resemble BDSM to me).

Let's just imagine the vehicle editor. I want to let the player combine any capsule, cuboid or cylinder at any size, angle or distance. Motors, canons, lights, materials. Sky's the limit. Ok, let's not get carried away just yet. But the Lego feel definitely will be there.

Well, I'll start out by treating the above bullets as milestones, and I'll take some time in between each to let it sink in. Nothing has to be perfect, but all parts need to be fun and easy for the user. Even if I epic fail on the Elon Musk part of things, I'm going to feel really proud of myself if I manage to pull this off. But OMG! THAT'S A SHITLOAD OF WORK!!!

And when this game is done, it's not done. There are infinite possibilities: trading, bridges, water, clans, skill system, more weapons, monsters, forests, seasons, day/night cycles... But I still believe that if I make a game that I and a bunch of others will enjoy, it will be pretty fun to build on some more.

About the author

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Gothenburg, Sweden