This will be a very extensive report due to the nature of this project’s scope and how it has shifted during the entire development phase. It started off as a month-long game jam project in March, but continued until late June – almost three months longer than expected.
You know how they say the last 10% is 90% of the work. Well, that’s an understatement, I assure you.
BEGINNING
My Background
The only prior experience I had in game creation was creating artwork for others, but never was I involved in the development processes for these games. I was hoping NaNoRenO, the game jam for visual novels, would be a great way to get my feet wet.
The Team
Knowing from the beginning I wanted to participate in NaNoRenO (March 1), I started recruiting partners in January on various forums: LemmaSoft, Deviantart, Voice Acting Alliance, Facebook groups, personal contacts, etc. For issues later outlined, recruiting continued until mid-May. By March, I had a confirmed set of people to help - illustration artists, writers, musicians, pixel artists, voice actors & actresses, and PR. It started off with roughly 13 members and steadily grew into an enormous 30+ member team over time.
The Vision
These were the things that I had in my head going in:
Relationship system
League of Legends based
Hack ‘n slash dungeon adventure
Time system to “save the day”
For a better understanding of what our starting goals were, you can check out the very basic and rough game design docs written in February (for internal purposes).
General GDD: http://bit.ly/generalGDD
GDD for Coders: http://bit.ly/codersGDD
FAQ for Team: http://bit.ly/BigStepsFAQ
During this time, I drafted a lot of deadline sheets and e-mails to ensure that deliverables were provided.
Initial Deadlines: http://bit.ly/BigStepsDeadlines
Asset Checklist: http://bit.ly/BigStepsAssets
Tools
Syncplicity: file uploads
Google Drive: for notes, spreadsheets, etc.
Skype: daily communication and updates
Ren’py: developing the visual novel
PyGame: developing the dungeon
Originally, we had planned to use the Ren’py RPG battle engine made by Eviscerate, but after the first week of development, we believed its features lacked what we needed
Meetings
During the game jam, we had a few in-person and online meetings to solidify our vision, assign appropriate responsibilities, and clear up any confusions. A lot of them were informal, 1-on-1 chats on Skype and Facebook (which were not recorded).
Coders Meeting 2.27 - http://bit.ly/coders227
Coders Meeting 3.3 - http://bit.ly/coders33
Dungeon Meeting 3.4 - http://bit.ly/dungeon34
Writers Meeting 3.5 - http://bit.ly/writers35
Writers Meeting 3.13 - http://bit.ly/writers313
VN Coding Meeting 3.21 - http://bit.ly/vn321
DURING THE GAME JAM
(March 2015) Week 1
We started building out the story and character development. None of the other teams (except art and music) could really do anything until we had the writing down, so it was a big burden for the Writing team. Regardless, everyone was working hard and deadlines were being met. This was when a lot of meetings and back-and-forth conversations happened.
Things that worked:
Meetings made it extremely helpful to keep us on track and not deviating from the overall vision of the game
Skype conversations were plenty and people were very vocal about their issues, concerns, successes, etc.
Deadlines were a great way to keep everything in check and making sure that people were working in a pace that allowed them to deliver.
Things that made it difficult:
Prior assets were nonexistent. Several people were waiting on items from other teams to do their own jobs.
Time zones were a problem because people came from all over the world – USA, Europe, Egypt, Australia, etc. Meetings could be at 4AM for some and 12PM for others.
Tools weren’t always utilized by everyone. Members who did not have access to specific software would instead deliver it to me and I would then upload it on their behalf.
Things that didn’t work:
RPG Battle Engine developed by Eviscerate would no longer work with the scope we outlined for the game. We had to scrap the idea and decide to create our own from scratch.
(March 2015) Week 2~3
Motivation was slowly plummeting after the first week. We had to immediately cut down on scope due to its overly ambitious tasks and requirements. Hopes were too big and we couldn’t deliver what we hoped.
Things that worked:
Emails became little snippets of motivation for people who were starting to lose interest. It gave them a wake-up call saying that we’re still in the game and working hard.
The MVPs are the true stars of this project. Everyone who worked hard worked really, really hard to pump stuff out.
Things that made it difficult:
Scope of the project was impossible for the time frame of 1 month. It became increasingly apparent each day that having all these features was unreasonable. We took out a lot of events, items, and ideas to the point that if we took out any more, there wouldn’t be much left.
Members dropping was a common occurrence during mid-March. Whether it was due to personal reasons, other obligations, or lack of motivation, a concerning amount of people would leave or no longer have time. As a result, recruiting activities was a constant need throughout the entire jam.
Over promising occurred every day. Sometimes we don’t know how much we can handle. We think something can be done, but unknown circumstances can and will prevent us from keeping promises. Part of knowing what we can handle is to prepare for things that may make it difficult to deliver.
Medical emergencies happened. There were a couple of people hauled off to the ER from overworking. Nothing too serious, don’t worry. We had to step back and make sure people weren’t burning out and potentially harming themselves.
Drama is inevitable. No, not the “omg! He cheated on me!” sort of deal. I’m talking about the ones that are related to legalities. There were a few instances that caused tension among members, but thankfully, things were settled after professional discussion and compromise.
Other obligations like work and school interrupted people’s workload and involvement with the project. It’s a given because it was in the middle of school and people had jobs.
Things that didn’t work:
Deadlines for a majority (not all) of people did not produce results, myself included. The things that weren’t addressed in prior weeks had to be addressed the current week, which led to a lot of push-backs and missed goals.
Goal assessment was much too hard to do because it was difficult to accurately understand what was doable and what wasn’t.
Constant badgering of people to turn in their assets was a fruitless endeavor. People were either too busy or unmotivated to deliver, so lots of items were done subpar or not finished at all.
(March 2015) Week 4 – Version 0.5
The final rush of things was definitely one of the hardest times in the game jam. 20% of the team does 80% of the work was definitely portrayed here.
Things that worked:
Recruitment, like I said before, was a recurring process during the game jam. Although exhausting, it allowed us to continue developing and producing assets for the game.
Temporary help was a necessity to produce our version 0.5 that came out on April 1. I asked for assistance from friends and friends of friends. Most of the basic things that were released was only possible because of them.
Hype helped keep the morale up for the remaining team members. When we got e-mails, notes, shout-outs, etc., it made us excited and all the more happy to continue work.
Nearing the end was ecstatic news. It helped us focus on what was absolutely needed to publish our alpha (not even) game. A lot of things were still missing at that point, but we knew the bare minimum to include and hopefully keep gamers interested in an update.
Things that made it difficult:
Emotions were all over the place for a few people, mostly myself. It goes hand-in-hand with pressure. Poor judgments and decisions were made as a result of my inability to handle my emotions at the time.
Pressure comes with deadlines. We wanted to keep the NaNoRenO deadline as much as possible. I was very adamant about it, but that meant an extreme amount of stress for myself and the team.
Scope was still too big. The fact that we wanted to include a dungeon at all (especially from scratch) made this project impossible to be finished in one month. For this reason, we decided on version 0.5.
Things that didn’t work:
Dungeon stuff. Period. Mechanics, organization, coding, etc. Everything was a mess because, well, it’s hard. Many of the graphics were finished, but we didn’t know how to put it in without it being utterly poop. We wanted to give the awesome pixels their justice.
Teamwork at this point was very bare. Only a core group of roughly 4-6 people were working constantly to make the remaining portions of the game.
AFTER THE GAME JAM
Summoner Sweetheart’s version 0.5 came out on April 11, which means we did miss the deadline for NaNoRenO unfortunately. Here are a couple e-mails I sent outlining what to expect for the release:
E-mail about extension (March 30) – http://bit.ly/nanoext
E-mail about timeline (March 30) – http://bit.ly/nanoTimeline
Warning: I sound like an asshat in these e-mails!
When the game was published, we had a celebration night for the local members as a big thank you to everyone who volunteered and sacrificed so much of their time to allow Summoner Sweetheart to get this far.
Afterwards came the hard part. The first thing I had to do was decide whether to continue the game.
Should we go through another 2 weeks of development hell to get this finished or throw away everyone’s hard work to stop development?
That was the question stuck in my head. As you know, I went with the former option, which wasn’t very accurate anyways.
Things that changed going into the extension:
Cut down