I'll be posting more detailed development notes later this week, but the current plan -- in a nutshell -- is to work through five iterations of rapid development:
- Phase 1: Proof-of-Concept. This involves checking how objects will move, and whether there is potential in this kind of game. I need to establish this quickly, before putting in any heavy design work, because failure at this stage could kill the project dead.
- Phase 2: Draft Level. This will be a very rough version of a working level, just to establish the playability and identify where any problems are likely to occur.
- Phase 3: Working Level. This will be a proper prototype, allowing alpha testing to be carried out.
- Phase 4: Several working levels. This will be a presentable version of the game, ready for beta testing.
- Phase 5: Release Candidate / General Availability. This will be a final version of the game, able to be played by the general public.
I've been working today on Phase 1: Proof-of-Concept. The main focus is the physics of Weeble movement, which presents a number of problems -- not least the fact that Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down. Which means they don't roll easily, so they have to slide to get from place to place.
I'll reveal the full details in a later post, but I thought it would be a good idea to illustrate the grand overview of the project with some 3D animation footage I produced while testing the rigid-body physics for Weebles:
As you can see, using Weebles gives a very particular mechanic for movement. I'm still working out the specifics of how the player will interact with all this, but the basic idea appears to be sound.