Planning... in a Jam... madness

Welcome to the first development log for "Project Return" (Not its final title). As today has been code heavy but without much tangible progress to show for it I will today focus this into my plans and planning techniques I have used.

Why Plan?

Well firstly unlike my last jam this jam is quite long as such a more pre-planned approach should help manage the time especially if I start small and build to it in layers.

How I planned.

Firstly I started carrying around a notebook with me, when on walks or at work. Whenever I would have a Game Idea or an idea on my intended structure I would scrawl it into this book. Admittedly for this jam it did help that the Primary theme (GameBoy) was publicly known for some time. The Night before the Jam I created a Git Repo and a Trello Board to help me plot out the work and keep track of it, this is made doubly important as there will be times when I am only working on it in the evening and thus will need aids to keep me on track.

For the Trello Board I followed a MoSCoW style (Must have, Should have, Could have and Won't have) to prioritise the various packages and ideas to enhance the game as I go. Again with the plan being to bolt these on as time goes by means that most of these packages are somewhat independent of each other but some may mean revisiting others e.g. adding powerups like double jump will require me to revisit level design to make sure there are sufficient challenges for the double jump to be used in.

Whats the Plan

The Plan is to Start off by building a MVP (Minimum Viable Product) this weekend, before expanding it out with additional maps, tilesets, enemy designs (and maybe logics) as well as better sprites and music depending on timings. I also have a few additional mechanics planned which might get incorporated as time goes by.

Did the plan survive contact with the enemy?

Well Yes... but No.

I didn't intend to spend as long as I did fighting compiler errors (3 and a half or 4 hours... I lost track) but I am still on track to have my MVP ready this weekend, so that I can build on it over the bank Holiday Monday and in the evenings of the work days. So I am quite happy with where I am.