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I can only speak for myself here, but I honestly came to this course to build what the title says — a core combat system — more than I came to this course
to dig an entire game out of my subconscious and design it from beginning to end. Something I can refine, hammer at and perhaps apply to one or more action RPG ideas when the time comes. I’m big on reusable code and reusable systems, and I like to build engines that build games instead of just building games directly.
Getting some of my old game idea out of my brain is a nice little side benefit, for sure. And to an extent I get the “holistic” approach you are going for here. But the emphasis that’s been put on the “make your whole game design right now and start making sure all the marketable elements are high on a scale of one to ten, or else” aspect of it is honestly a little daunting. I have no plans whatsoever to build an entire town, or anything close to it, before I make this combat engine. I plan to build a quick countryside scene, mark down where interesting stuff will go, drop in a few enemies to use for the combat element, get that working well, and then worry about the rest. On top of everything, I am not an artist nor do I have dough to shell out for real art right now, from the App Store or otherwise, and the predefined assets so far, as cool as they make your project look, do not fit with mine. Hope this course can accommodate my order of doing things😊
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Its totally up to you how much you dig in to the game design aspect of the course - if you want to follow along with what we are doing and not create your own flavour to the game, that is totally not a problem. Get out of the course what you find valuable and dont worry about the parts you aren’t as interested in.
NP. I definitely have my own flavor planned, but I may do things backwards; Ben’s mechanical stuff first, then take a second pass at your design advice. My ideal is an engine that I can apply to multiple design ideas (I do games for clients as well), but we’ll see how that actually works.
Gotcha, sounds good.