Summary: I finished the courses.
I’ve been sick for the last 5 years so I’m sort of starting over with Unreal. I kept up to speed with c++ while I was sick, but unreal and games were beyond what my brain could handle while ill.
Took the courses to try and convince myself I can do this again. Rick is a very energetic individual.
I gauge my health, brain, and experience right now to be about a Game 2 or intermediate level for development. I’ve made 6 games with unreal in school, each in a different genre, just playing with mechanics. I made a larger game, a platformer, but didn’t finish it because my health tanked.
So I’m starting with a simplified RPG Action Adventure game. I’ve decided to call it Dragon Wizards. The art style is going to be cute. I’ve set a release date of Aug 31st for the barebones functional game, early release on steam. I set a 5 week plan for fast fail of features and the feature lock. I did a rough pricing sheets to determine possible prices.
In the section of investing in the project wisely. I’m not a 3d modeler nor am I an artist, so I went ahead and invested in a tile map set, characters, and a dungeon set all from the same artist so they match.
I don’t know if they will be the final set as the artist is not taking commissions, but there’s enough there for me to prototype my idea, and that gives me more time to research in character design. Worst case scenario I have the lowpoly course, and the blender character course, I might be able to learn. I’m dyslexic, 3d modeling is extra hard on the brain. I really wanted to be able to edit the character clothing on the fly, but with these models that’s not possible so I may need to let that go for now, and focus on all the other ideas.
On the topic of sharing my game. I started a twitch channel, and a youtube channel and I’ll stream on those as I make the game “PurpleDragonDev”. I started setting up a discord server for the game, and one for dev. Not sure if we are allowed to post links here.
On the topic of getting help. I asked my friend Melvin if he was interested in helping, and my partner, and they are interested. I have a few other friends I can ask for help with voices for quests, or I’ll do text based interactions. I need to test it out.
My planing and mind map software is obsidian.
I setup a key of emoji’s so I can see at a glance what my progress is. I set up weekly calendar pages and each day has lists of functions from the mind-map linked so I can tell each week/day what I need to work on. As I update the item with it’s status it updates the mind-map and it updates the planner pages.
In terms of office space. I have a list of chores that have to be completed this weekend to improve my space and thereby improving my focus. Well I hope so anyway. 
I think that’s move of the things you asked the class to commit to and share with the world.
I just started the game today, and I’m running through the course [
UE5 Action Adventure: Make Your Own Action Adventure Game In Unreal
](UE5 Action Adventure: Make Your Own Action Adventure Game In Unreal | GameDev.tv) as a refresher course.
Should we post weekly updates here as well as streaming? I’m not sure.
Thanks for the awesome class. I feel a lot clearer and motivated to make my game and finish it. Also less panicky, now that I have the plan worked out. Lot easier to calmly tackle one task at a time off a list, than to dive in randomly. Thanks!
Erica