The deed is done. Version 1.0 has finally arrived. In the end, I didn’t complete my original version plan, but this was necessary. The last three versions I had planned were just to implement animations, SFX (mainly lighting and night/day effects) and small UI improvements. I decided to make a dash to the finish line and only put in the things that would actually add to the game. This ended up being additional content (a couple more events and building types), and a lot of bug fixing and UI improvements. I will be writing a full post-mortem in the coming weeks because there are a LOT of lessons that I learned, and want to make sure that I post-process this experience to the fullest.

Today marks a little over 3 full years since my first post. It has been a rather crazy ride developing this. Since I began developing this game, I have had 2 kids, lost loved ones, changed jobs, learned several other programming languages, and grown so much as a developer. I really tried to take the advice of other roguelike developers, by not creating a game that is too big or ambitious, but I secretly thought to myself “I can be different by just being more disciplined!” How foolish…

It became apparent eventually that I would not be able to do everything I wanted to. But I set some goals for myself:

  • I wanted to finish. I desperately did not want to consign this project to the graveyard.
  • I wanted to use this project as an opportunity to create a “creative routine,” whereby simply forming a habit of working on this, I would be able to make progress even on days that I did not feel “inspired.”
  • I wanted to use this project as an opportunity to practice planning and execution, as opposed to just developing when the muse struck.
  • I wanted to produce a game i.e., something that you could win and lose, and that felt like a “roguelike” and contained the essence of my original vision.

I am proud to say that I met all of those goals! I think most important to me was wanting to “finish.” All too often roguelike developers never finish their projects, and I did not want to start off my own journey of making these kinds of games by not finishing.

Anyways, I will cover more on that topic in the post-mortem. Here are the changes!

  • Added a “gang war” event where gang’s spawn around the city and attempt to take each other out
  • Added a “lost child” event, where the player must find and rescue children that become lost
  • I added a Warehouse building type
  • Tweaked the “justice” system so that it works as expected. This is what makes the game “winnable” and “losable”
  • Core game setting tweaks; reduced the size and original population of the city to make completing events less tedious
  • Added name character screen
  • Added world gen seed functionality (can now enter the RNG seed at menu screen)
  • Messages now persist instead of disappearing after one turn
  • Many, many, many bug fixes, performance fixes, and UI improvements that are too numerous and boring to call out individually

What’s Next

A post-mortem will be coming next and then…off to a new project. You may have noticed that I removed the “Version Plan” page; this is because I moved the things that I didn’t do (animations, sfx, etc.) to the “Rainy Day Features” page, which is how development of this game will continue in the future. I do not plan on doing anything major with this game (more on that in the post-mortem), but may pick at things here and there as the urge hits.

I think for now though, this is the end of my journey on this particular project. I want to apply everything I’ve learned on my next game! Which is still TBD :D