Hey, sorry I ended up being busy today. But i do have a LOT of thoughts about the game. And the more time we arent working, the more time I am analyzing the details, and I end up rethinking a lot of things. Sooo... this could be just me totally going off the rails, but I have some thoughts. Read everything when you get the chance. Cuz its a fucking Novel. Sorry :/

First of all, Im watching a lot of Brackeys youtube videos. He is the weird accent dude, that does like the 4 day game competitions or whatever. He sets himself a challenge and then makes a game out of it. Its actually so interesting the way he thinks and develops. No matter how simple the game is. I found this video form last year about starting out in game development and the kindof "major pillars of development" and there is honestly so much truth to it. You should check it out. Ill link it at the end of my rant.

Something he talks about is developing an idea and following a direction. Both in how you design, and also when it comes to gameplay. Like how the player is involved in the world, and how the game sortof unfolds. And it made me do a lot of thinking about our Desert game. I think at this point it is lacking a lot of direction, and the more i analyze our ideas and go over the google doc, it feels really.... uninspired. I feel like we saw that Desert Skies game, and then did a panic reformatting, and just started pulling ideas out of a hat. It doesnt feel like the real game we set out to make. Infact is so far form it, that I have struggled to come up with any new ideas beyond what we wrote down. Ive stared at the GDD probably 15 times since we last spoke.

But thinking even deeper than that, I realise that this isnt a realistic FIRST GAME. This isnt even really a second game. An open world, endless, anything, is a lot of development, and doesnt really leave any room for real creativity on our end. A game like this, especially as us working as an independant team is gunna leave us washed out and bored with it down the line. and we will just keep recreating, or going back on already completed shit. I feel it in my bones, that making this is just going to become the server and its a task we will never complete. I feel like we should hold back before we get too far. And to be honest, it doesnt seem like ur having a lot of enjoyment out of like making the character and animations working. And we should be having fun at EVERY SINGLE step of this process, to make our ideas flow, and something we want to create. Not just play as if someone else made it. And ive struggled with some things too that have been really discouraging. I mean, dont get me wrong I want to make anything and everything. And the overall process has been pretty enjoyable. Even just the idea generating and shit weve done up to this point has been a great learning experience.

But taking from everything learned, we have major(hoots) scope issues. We always bite off more than we can chew. I think we need something fresh, and absolutely so simple, that we could knock it out in a matter of weeks or months. Not fucking years+
Even look where we started, with the whole raft thing. I guarentee that wasnt made by 2 people. Or made as their first game. Im sure the devs of that started on something so simple and dumb, that we have never even heard of it. But it got them where they are now.

So im gunna make some new ideas. And next time we talk, we need to take about 10 steps back and maybe watch some of these videos together, and just really take such a minor concept and make something small, but well made, interesting, and knock it out and be proud of it. Even if its just to learn other aspects and tools for designing different, bigger and better things later. Like an indie game. Not a fucking survival, or battle royale, or rpg, or any other big genre. And maybe 'Just Deserts' or whatever the fuck were calling it these days, can be a later project. The longer we take with it, the less of our creativity shines in the end result. And i think The server was big proof of that.

Final thoughts - I know schedules are hectic, and thats a big part of this for me too. Were not working often enough to make any real progress. were still on step 5/1000. Which is totally okay! We just need something with much less steps lol
I hope you dont see this as any kind of loss of progress or time spent. Cuz its really more about what weve learned from it and enjoy doing.

Sorry for the novel. Catch you soon homie :)