No matter the medium, making anything creative, with some heart to it, is difficult. Sure, asset flips or "simple" cash-ins are getting released all the time, but they still demand some form of know-how to be made at all. Looking at big AAA projects might hamper that kind of mindset, that any passion went into whatever "product" or "content" being displayed. I myself being a big proponent of rolling my eyes and letting an exhausted and very audible sigh slip by, and while the emotions themselves are real for the most part, I can't deny the possibility of some poor sod working in that coal mine of a AAA studio, being crushed and crunched by their own publishers, existing. A prospect I don't enjoy in the slightest, but someone had to care just enough, otherwise there wouldn't be a product to sell in the end, right? So no matter developer or project size, making things is hard, sometimes gruelling, and that's a part of the process. If you don't like it - well, you might enjoy doing something else. Not that you should accept crunch or being stressed to death, absolutely not, because it's hard enough as is. While working with a team can make the process simpler, or at least more effective, you need to know how to optimize, and sometimes that's really not an option. Many creatives wear way too many hats at any given time, because they need to, and with that comes harsher compromises and more darlings to kill.
In retrospect I can see that large parts of my texture/sprite work is nothing less than underwhelming, going more for the retro aesthetics than how it actually would look with the limitations of software rendering. The idea was always to put the truth of how things would have worked back in the day in the backseat, to leave room for fun and charm. It somewhat worked out, here and there, but I should have looked into how 2.5D and early 3D actually worked, even more than I have. There are some things I turned a blind eye to - like just using one square texture for floors and walls, instead of at least two, preferably four. That meant I had to sacrifice a big part of the illusion of the "convincing" 2.5D-look, but to me this has all been about just finishing something that could be considered "a game", in a style and genre I firmly enjoy myself. On one hand, this could kinda be considered to be a showcase for my very limited graphic design knowledge. I'm not smack talking REVEREND, not at all! This has all been a great excuse and perfect chance to grow as an artist and designer, and with some incredible help from Sam Marshall of DOSMan Games, what was supposed to be a tiny experiment and humbling lesson in game design, managed to reach an audience I couldn’t even dream of. The important part was, and still is, that I (as anyone) had to start somewhere; and thanks to the support of you - dear reader (and hopefully, player) - you have proven that the experiment was somewhat a success; that my work wasn’t in vain.
While parts of the project were misguided from the get go, I'm glad I pulled through, overcame some severe “imposter syndrome”, and “slapped” what I had together into something playable, available for people to actually purchase and play for themselves. Even though the thought of someone playing this and expecting anything but the bare minimum is kinda terrifying, and yet, exhilarating. So I thought that putting together a series of posts in a sort of a “post-mortem/dissection dev diary/retrospective” might help not only curious players or aspiring bedroom devs, but also myself, to put things in perspective and in a more focused and easily digested kind of way of how I approached it all; from knowing second to nothing, to now writing this. Allow me to emphasize again - this will basically be my unfiltered thought process of how I went on about making an easy to pick up and play retro FPS for fans of the technically basic, but deeply passionate, put into a playable form; warts and all. What are some other things (other than those aforementioned or hinted at earlier) I would have loved to featured (and possibly could have with more know-how and some real coding experience), in no specific order and from the top of my head: video cutscenes, greater weapon and enemy variety, bigger boss fights, more complex levels, funnier and more fluid gunplay, interactive environment (i.e. switches, buttons, etc), better storytelling - among a whole bunch of other things. I’ll talk about some (for the time being) scrapped ideas and concepts in upcoming dev diaries/posts, perhaps even touching upon other earlier attempts at game projects. Check out the neat, if I may say so myself (with charming grammatical mistakes and all), digital manual for a shorter and sweeter overview of the entire project.
TL;DR:
The mission statement always was - finish it; make REVEREND into something more than just another idea, bouncing around among the other thousands ideas in my own thick skull.
If a spark of madness lights up a concept bright enough for my brain to take notice - I need to give it my best shot to at least give it a chance to exist, and it can only do that if I create it - either on my own, or by eliciting help from friends or colleagues.
Are you curious about doing anything creative? Give it a shot! The worst thing that could happen is that you fail, and is it really that bad? At least you tried. Good luck!
-E