I’ve been a software engineer professionally for over 25 years. I’ve always wanted to make a game and even went to college for a degree with a game development focus. The trick is actually doing it. Using a game engine (Godot) will almost undoubtedly make it way easier than building my own engine from scratch, but I’ve had pretty bad luck with that in the past. Since all of this is actually pretty new to me, I’ve been focused on planning instead of making a game right out of the gate.

While I learn I think I need to break the actual development of Fracterebus into several phases. Each a bit more complex than the last so I can sort of ease into it instead of getting overwhelmed and giving up by trying to go for the whole enchilada right away.

  • Phase 00
    • Single Room (In Godot Editor)
    • Generic Dev Art
    • Basic Player Movement
    • Purpose
      • Make a single room directly in the Godot editor.
      • Player should be able to get around with basic walking and jumping.
  • Phase 01
    • Small Map (In Godot Editor)
    • Single Biome Art
    • Purpose
      • How doors between rooms work.
      • Expand the room into a small map in the Godot editor.
      • What sorts of things I need to make a biome look good.
      • Which platform parts and world pieces make rooms interesting.
  • Phase 02
    • Dynamic Map Structures
    • Design map data structures by hard coding some (instead of In-Editor)
    • Random Number Generator (RNG)
    • Purpose
      • Build the framework for getting maps to be data based instead of being hand crafted in the Godot editor.
      • By implementing a RNG myself instead of relying on Godot or language built-in RNG, I can improve the chances that my world generation is deterministic (because no one can change the RNG out from under me).
  • Phase 03
    • Map Generator
    • Simple Room Generators
    • Purpose
      • Map generator for placing rooms in the world.
      • Make a couple of simple room generators that build the rooms that are placed by the map generator.
  • Phase 04
    • More Movement Tech
    • Item Collection
    • Purpose
      • Add more advanced movement tech like double jump and wall grab.
      • Allow the player to collect items that affect their state (like health or ammo count).
  • Phase 05
    • Upgrade Collection
    • Upgrade Implementation
    • Purpose
      • Allow the player to collect upgrade items from the world.
      • Add some upgrades to collect and implement them.
  • Phase 06
    • Simple Enemies
    • Basic Weapon Attack
    • Purpose
      • Implement some simple enemies.
      • Add basic weapons.
      • Make enemies killable.
  • Phase 07
    • Biomes
    • Elemental Enemies
    • Elemental Weapons
    • Purpose
      • Make additional biomes.
      • And the enemies that live in them.
      • And the weapons that hurt them.
  • Phase 08
    • Mini-Bosses
    • Bosses
    • Purpose
      • Implement some mini-bosses.
      • Implement some full bosses.
  • And then…
    • Make another list of phases to do all the things I forgot.

Hopefully this gets a pile of work lined up and helps to keep this project manageable instead of overwhelming.

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