Devlog 4 - Upgrades People, Upgrades!

I’m running a series of developer logs where I just write down everything I’ve tried to do over the past week, and share a little progress. Largely I’m doing these for my own self-reflection but I hope there’s a little humour and maybe even something useful in there too.

Wow, has it been a month already? A month since I started doing devlogs and adopted the agile methodology for game development. It’s (as is the agile way) time to review!

It started off really bad, overplanning and struggling to get anything in place that actually impacted the game noticeably. I had to tackle the largest part of the changes - the stat system - before anything else could work as it all integrated with that in some way. Learning to plan was the most challenging part of this month. I am a habitual over-planner and over-estimator, so being realistic usually meant taking what I thought I could do and then giving myself twice as much time as I thought I’d need. Somehow it would work out that doubling my estimate still wasn’t enough time, but it was much closer! I’m still getting better at developing under this (for me) new methodology, but I’m pretty positive about my results.

The verdict is in - this works. I’ve managed more work (of a higher quality!) than I ever had before, and the reason is simply because it enables me to stay focused. I’m keeping better track of my git issues, starting my days slower but moving faster once I get started (knowing where I’m going because I start every day reviewing things), and reflecting more. I’m also pushing content out much faster, showing new builds (to my great fellow devs on Discord) much sooner than I have been this year. Which actually brings me to my next topic.

Indev 12 is coming next week!

The success of this month, the implementation of the new upgrade and equipment systems, really changed how the game feels and plays. With just these two new systems (and a couple of bug fixes/game-feel changes) Indev build 12 feels very different to Indev build 11, different enough that I’m going to tidy/polish this week and release it next week. Originally I planned to work for at least another month, but I’ve done basically two month’s work in one month.

Here are some shots of the equipment system and upgrade system in action:

Hot-swap your tower components and pieces whenever you like!

Collect scrap to level up, level up to add new towers and upgrade the old ones!

The Great Train Defence is a tower defence game where you’re often on the move, and it often feels like that’s my life too! Drop a comment below or chat to me on discord, and save me from just having to talk to myself!