Reclamation Project - Part 5.5: Deciding how to move forward

Any time I sit down on a project that I'm interested in, I like to get ahead of myself just a little bit. The process works in a loop: I pull myself ahead a little bit to anticipate what's going on, compare that to the existing work, decide how long it's going to take based on previous steps and experience, and I make a decision. This process has some of the benefits of foresight, hindsight, and analysis baked into the work. There's a lot of value in trying to predict what I'm trying to do.

Sometimes that process runs into a roadblock. For this project, the roadblock was simple: I want to make a game, a platform, future games, artwork, designs, and self-evaluate all of that simultaneously. The roadblock was also far more complicated than I could have anticipated.

Building on top of a project that is a gibbering mesh of experimentation, prototypes, ideas, and eclectic half-built systems is sort of like riding a unicorn on top of a mine cart track in the dark. It's definitely possible to move forward because the unicorn glows in the dark, but it's bumpy, uncomfortable, magical, and I'm sure I could get to the end... but not without getting thrown off and hitting my head somewhere.

I've decided I'm going to take my base project and wrangle it into the one thing it doesn't have currently: plans. There's a lot of digging I've had to do just to get things in order. I've had to uncover ideas that are years old and try to tie them together in a nice bow. Some of the concepts don't work very well together and some of them work too well, so I'm having to segment out the different ideas that are basic and the ones that are game specific.

Essence HUD for Hyper Metroid Remake

I'm currently working on a design document to refine a lot of these ideas. They work pretty well in my head, and a good deal of them are based on working code. Taking the design and turning it into something real should take a lot less time than writing everything from scratch.

I would very much like to take this design and show it to others. If someone has the impetus to actually work with me in the future, it would be very, very valuable to show them a design doc so they can wrap their heads around how the systems are supposed to work and interact with each other on a conceptual level.

Once I have the base project built up I can go into detail on how to dissect and rebuild a level. I can also share artwork and the process of making it for a game with a particular design in mind without stumbling over everything. I'll probably release a working prototype with my avatar as the main character, so stay tuned for that.

Working screenshot of a broken UI image. Circa September 11 2020