Day One: Where to start?

In my post yesterday I outlined what I wanted to do with my summer. So this morning I woke up with the full intentions of starting one of the projects but I was hit with the question of where to start and how I am going to start making worth while progress. This was when I released I needed to start planing and breaking down the projects into tasks. For this I used a Mac application called TaskPaper.


In TaskPaper I wrote out my headings of each of the main projects, I then just began writing small tasks I knew I needed to completed. I am hoping this will improve my productivity and help me manage the project with better understanding of what needs to be done. I was able to do some research on driving theory and list the topic I would need to cover. I researched and then listed and bought the items I need for making my binary clock, I then broke down and wrote down some simple steps to get started once the items are delivered.  I then wrote down the next couple of runs I needed for the week and that I needed to do some research what sort of diet I needed and some pre-made training plans to adapt to.


At this point I wanted to start thinking about what I wanted as part of the Mini Adventure game. As the other projects where very easy to break down into task, the game is more of a creative project. I began to understand although I had some great ideas for new functions and features to add to the game like a player bag with usable items or armour and weapon to increase stats. I needed to start thinking about new content as there was only one rat to kill, this this also meant the functions that were working, were not really being tested properly and there was no way to test how the players health and action points hold up in later battles so what good would adding a potion do.


In order to add new enemies I then released I wanted it to be random based on what the level the player was. So the first thing I needed was a level up system for the player, this would then be run each time a mob was killed. I added an XP value to the mob this would then add to the total XP of the player, once this hit the max which I set as 50 the player would level up and a new max XP would be calculated, in the future I am going to add a function to increase the players stats and like some RPGS/adventure games restore health and action points.


Now it was time to add a function where the mob the player is against is dependent on the players level. I have made this very simple to begin with until I think of more mobs and how I can make them challenging to battle in a basic game. So as it stands players level 1 verse the rat and then players who beat the rat (should be all of them) now with the new level system progress to level 2 and verse a new goblin who is more thick skinned than our friend the rat. I think its important for the rat to always be at level one just like every classic RPG but I will need to find a more random way for different mobs as the levels progress and well as randomising their stats. 


So returning the to the question of where to start? For me making the lists helped me to start seeing smaller areas I could focus on rather than aimless looking at big projects I did not know how to start. But, it also helped me get stuck into something because once I started breaking it down into smaller easier to complete tasks, I immediately seen how these smaller task could be implemented this is why I so quickly got engrossed in coding my game today as I was able to focus on the small tasks rather than aimless writing code worrying about the end result because without the small steps there is no end result.


I will finish today with interesting quote about progress and doing easier things first from the co-fonder and CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg:

"I think a simple rule of business is, if you do the things that are easier first, then you can actually make a lot of progress."

The progress I made to day can be found on my GitHub and as always you can follow me on twitter @CDSteer I will be back tomorrow to hopefully share more  progress and adventure but properly just progress.