Paperwork and prototypes

Hello readers! It’s a new year and new opportunity to get some thoughts out and onto the digital page. Our aim with this blog is to be a place where we can chat about the various goings on in phloup and celebrate any wins that we have along the way. We’ll be aiming to update at least once a quarter with any news, even if it’s just to say hello and remind the world and ourselves that we’re still getting stuff done.

So what’s happening? The end of 2023 saw us visiting friends and family in Perth and scrambling to submit a grant proposal to Screen NT before the closing date. We applied for the ‘conceptual development’ stream of game development grants; this is the smallest allocation of funds, but it suits where we are in our game development career. It’s aimed at small developers and involves developing two micro-prototypes, and then systematically assessing their marketability and unique mechanics. Out of the two micro prototypes, we would then choose a single one to use and (fingers crossed) progress to the next round of grant funding which is prototype development.

It was quite a hectic period of writing and submitting the grant proposal while also trying to catch up with all our family for early Christmas. Thankfully we had friends in Salty Games and Larrikin Interactive who took us under their wing and gave us a bunch of hints to get it over the line. And now we wait! We expect to hear back sometime in late January/early February as to whether we were successful. Wish us luck, we’re going to need it. 🙂

While we wait, we’ve been working on one of the game concepts that we proposed. Not too much to show yet, we’re still getting our heads around a workflow so that while I go off and work a shift, Louise can continue to work full-time without my absence being an impediment. As someone who works in an industry where systems are key, this is the part of the endeavour where I think taking a little extra time to find the right way of working is going to really help us in the long run. I know it may seem like overkill: why come up with a system of backlog and current work and versioning and testing when you sleep next to the person at night? But I think it’s worthwhile to have methodology you can fall back on when one person isn’t feeling it.

So to that end we’re compiling a very simple kanban board on the gamedev-themed hacknplan, gathering a list of assets, and committing ideas to a design document (we may have to switch to a wiki at some stage as it’s getting kind of long). We ticked off a big milestone in that we think we’ve found a compatible art style that slots right in with the Australiana-type period feel that we’re shooting towards. It’s also a really fun style that Louise will have a lot of artistic license to go pretty out there, I can’t wait to see how wild she goes with it.

As for myself, I’m continuing to learn Godot 4, as that’s the engine that we’re using going forward. We both really enjoyed using it during the game jam, so it made sense to make the switch from Unity as we start up. I’ve been lurking the Godot forums, subreddit, and general scuttlebutt for some time now, and I’m really happy with both the current state of the software and the direction that it’s going. It also helps that the node-based system just seems to make a lot more sense to me, and the interface is super user friendly.

Alright, that’s enough blabber from me, I’ll leave you with the feature image of one of the (many) mascots from our office. They don’t have a name yet, so feel free to suggest one!

phill