I had a great thought the other day: I should combine a post for my currently derelict blog and work on my side project at the same time - essentially killing two giant procrastinating birds with one stone. Which project you may ask? Well, over the past few months I’ve been working on something pretty intensely in my spare time. If I’ve seen you in person, I’ve probably mentioned it at least once or twice (or every day if you’re my wife), but if I haven’t... well then this blog post is definitely for you. Even if I have told you what I’ve been up to, I’ll be going into detail on a few different things you might enjoy - my current progress, resources, and my future path forward.

In my free time I’ve been working on a video game idea for the past few months and I’d like to bring it from idea to fruition. The project is currently untitled, but the core gameplay would be similar to Final Fantasy Tactics or Fire Emblem but incorporates basketball rules and aesthetics. Essentially, I want to create a turn based basketball RPG for PC/iOS. I would say that the following is a good summary of what the main gameplay, mechanics, and hooks are for the game:

Turn-based Tactical RPG Basketball gameplay.
Offense and defense contain different types of gameplay.
Combining moves creates plays that grant bonuses on offense.
New player characters can be collected by purchasing of trading card packs.
Player characters and gameplay can be improved through out of match management system.
In terms of aesthetics, the game has pixel graphics, 8-bit sounds, and somewhat 90’s themed.

I’m excited for the idea as I think there is some interesting overlap between RPGs and Basketball that’s yet to be discovered. I’d be coding and designing the game myself. The art portion will probably be outsourced to a competent designer. As for a reason why I’m going into detail on my project when I’m not done yet, somewhat naively I originally wanted to keep everything a secret until completion. However, being the eternal blabbermouth that I am, I started to talk a bit about the game in small sections and snippets. Rather than being secretive, why don’t I open source my thinking and progress? Ideas are cheap, but hard work is not - as long as I follow up with the project, why be secretive? I’ve got nothing to lose.

Now, let’s dive into the first section.

Current Progress

I had a rough go at starting the project at first, due to not knowing exactly where to start or what to do, but I think I’ve finally gotten a good cadence down. I’m taking a class (which I’ll go more into in the “resources” section) about twice a week that’s helped a ton from the coding perspective. I’m learning C# to build the game. I’d say at the point I am at right now, I am on the verge of putting code down. In fact, I plan on starting the first section of actual game code tomorrow. We'll see if I can actually write something that resembles anything useful. Anyway, this section is on my current progress. Here’s a few things I can show you.

The glorious GDD. It's been helpful at organizing my thoughts.

I’ve written about 10 pages of a Game Design Document that you can find here. A Game Design Document is essentially a scope of work for a game - what it involves, breakdowns of each section, ideas for implementation, etc. Feel free to read through it at your leisure.

Besides uniting two disparate ideas - RPGs and basketball - I also think the mechanics of the game will set it apart. Since I know excel better than the C# language at this time, I created a version of the battle mechanics in Google Sheets.

A quick shot of the mechanics document I've created.

How the game mechanics work is that you control 5 offensive players at once, moving them around the court on offense, and you string together moves into basketball plays that improve you chances to score. What the current version of the mechanics builder does is calculate the chances of scoring is based on:

The actions taken during the turn
The offensive players on the court
The defensive players on the court
The distance from the basket
Other various stats

Anyway, there’s more to it, but that’s it for now.

Resources

That's it for now. I'll post again with progress. Let's hope this is a reoccurring type of post! Next time I'll dive into my roadmap a bit more.

Embarking on a New Side Quest

Embarking on a New Side Quest

Current Progress

Resources

Classes I’ve purchased or am currently taking:

Books I’m reading or have read:

Online resources:

Things I’m currently drawing inspiration from: