Glass Bubble Reflection

It's been a little over four months now since I started Glass Bubble. Now that I've missed my deadline, I think it's about time for me to reflect on what I have done and think about what I plan to do.

The beginning of the project was pretty easy for me to keep up with. I was able to finish all of the code that I needed and I was also able to write the scripts for the major characters in the game. However, once I started to get into actually creating the 2D assets, I experienced a drop in optimism and motivation as I didn't feel like my art skills would fulfill my expectations for the game.

This was probably the biggest mistake I made during this project; I should have either tried to do it anyway or got someone on board to do it much earlier in the project. Instead, I procrastinated in deciding whether or not I wanted to do the artwork and I more or less got an artist at the last moment.

I should be more careful about this in the future. It may benefit me, if I decide to do the artwork myself, to do concept art first before doing anything else to prove to myself that I am willing and calpable. If I decide not to do the art, I need to have an artist working with me from the beginning of the project.

After the whole problem with creating 2D assets, the original plan more or less fell apart. I then decided to do other things instead of creating 2D assets by adding polish in other places. I translated all of the scripts to Baskiv, contacted voice actors, and did a little more programming. I should have drawn out a new plan of action as I felt I was largely unproductive during this time since I had no deadlines to meet.

After some productive work on the game, both I, Marlena, and the voice actors became incredibly occupied with school and work. Essentially, since the last update, which was a few weeks ago, no progress has been made on the game.

I would still like to finish the game and I feel the others who are contributing to this project are still interested as well. I am optimistic for this possibility, but I have also worked on many projects that tend to wane off and die after the initial burst of planned activity. For now, Marlena has made plans to finish at least the assets for the farm scene before the end of this year.

I also may have jumped the gun in suggesting to a friend that he could be a writer for the full game. I'm not sure now whether a full game is worth pursuing considering the amount of progress made so far, and I definitely don't feel comfortable promising him a project to work on anymore since there is no demo.

In the future, I'll probably post about Glass Bubble every once in a while as needed. For now, I'll keep working on it and see what happens. Hopefully this doesn't become another game that wastes by the wayside for no good reason.