I’m not going to lie, I’m killing time before the compo by posting stuff about my plans.

Before I get into my time schedule, I want to clarify some of my terms.

“Basic design” means a general idea of how the game will work.

“Boilerplate” means things like game physics, world structure, and a way of displaying a Hud.

“Prototype” means a thing I can play with that gives me a good feel of how the game will play.

“Feature-complete” means that there are baddies you can fight and kill,  there are items you can pick up and they work, there is a boss that has an “area” that the player must stay in during the fight, there is a Hud that works, and the level at least features all of the game’s mechanics.

“Basically finished” means that the game is “feature-complete” and the level is finished. It also means that there is a title screen.

“Polished” means that the game is beyond “basically finished” and has music and possibly intro and end cut-scenes.

With those terms defined, here’s how I’ve got the weekend planned out:

Friday evening – Come up with an idea, sketch out basic design

Friday night – Roll the dice and stay up late, boilerplate, begin prototype

Early Saturday morning – Try my hardest to finish prototype

Saturday afternoon – Work on feature-completeness

Saturday evening – Go to bed early, try to wake up early Sunday

Sunday morning – Work toward feature-completeness

Sunday afternoon – Feature-complete (Hopefully!) work on being “basically finished”

Sunday evening – Hopefully “basically finished”, get in what polish I can manage

Sunday night – Compo is over, submit game regardless of current state. Jam begins, go for broke and stay up late.

Late Sunday night / Early Monday morning – Prototype of jam game should hopefully be ready

Monday afternoon – Jam game has been prototyped, move on to feature-completeness

Monday evening – Work down to the wire on feature-completeness

Monday night – Submit jam game regardless of current state.

Tuesday morning/Tuesday afternoon – Sleep in, recover from LD scramble.

Tuesday evening – Write post-mortems.

There. That should be nice and stressful, and will be a good challenge for my ability to develop quickly.