Week 1 - Getting started

Hi! 

This is the first weekly update for Fish RPG. I started this project with the intention of finishing and releasing a game in two months, and a vital part of that process is setting weekly milestones. With the milestones I've defined, I'm technically ahead. My goal this week was simply to get started, which means setting up this itch.io page along with a project in Visual Studio. Unsurprisingly, neither took very long.

Next week is when things get interesting, with two goals:

1. Prototype mechanics.
2. Create models and rigs for the game's major characters.

As shown above, I've already started on step two (Henry's shell and rough shapes for Princess Sunfish and King Crab). Before the week ends, I'd like to finish those sculpts, including remeshing and rigging. I'm letting myself off the hook a bit by not texturing, weighting, or animating characters this week (I'll save those for the vertical slice). Spot's mesh is one I sculpted a few weeks ago. I'm reasonably confident that I can do all this in a week.

I've also decided to spend additional time with my engine (I'm calling it the Nibble Engine). Currently, the "engine" is a single large project containing both engine and game-specific code (with remnants of several older ideas). Before diving into mechanics for Fish RPG, then, I'm splitting the engine into its own project. Nibble's game loop is multithreaded, but unfortunately prone to a few problems that, while fixable, will likely take significant time. Therefore, in order to better stick to my timeline for Fish RPG, I'm stripping out or otherwise simplifying portions of Nibble during the process of splitting out engine code. Hard to say whether maintaining multithreading will be feasible with the time constraints I've defined.

I'd be lying to say I'm not anxious about the prospect of finishing and releasing a game in two months, particular while working full-time and given my history of partially-finished projects. Hopefully these weekly updates will help keep me on track, even if nobody reads them. Until next week!