At last week’s game developer meetup, I got to talking about Tinselfly, and once again had to say that I just had an environment right now; there was no gameplay.

So I set myself the goal of having some gameplay by the next meetup, which is in two and a half weeks.

So far, there are these alien robot things, which are supposed to look, like, otherworldly and menacing and stuff. And I’d like you to be able to swing your sword at them, and I’d like them to fight back.

I can probably get the basic swordfighting mechanic ported over from my sandbox game tonight or this weekend. And then I just want to keep revising it and iterating over it, the same way I’d obsess over a model. Thing is, I’ve hardly ever done this before. And when I’ve done it, it’s been within the context of a game jam, so I’ve spent no more than a day trying to fix mechanics once dropped into a project.

Two weeks just working on mechanics is unheard of for me.

Hopefully, if I can get myself to give this the same attention to tiny detail that I give my models, I’ll have gameplay that’s on its way to being as fun as my environment is pretty. 😉

* * *

I am, of course, trying new things to keep Tinselfly on track. But it’s also more than that. At game dev meetups, I am frequently motivated by seeing other people’s stuff; or even just knowing that other people are making progress. I want to return the favor, and make sure I’m not inadvertently making people lose faith in this whole going indie thing. I don’t want people to look at my stuff and think oh, there’s no gameplay here; you’re either a graphics person or a programmer or a game designer.

I’m frequently hesitant to break out my laptop at meetups, but It’s not so much about showing off what I can do. It’s about showing myself what I can do, and showing other people what they can do, too.