Issue #3 - Development Roadmap

Hey there! In the last newsletter, I went into the process of how starting with worldbuilding set up the tone, ideas, and structure of the rest of Barty's Adventure. I figured now that we're a few issues in, it may be interesting to give a few more details as to my planning process, where development has been so far, and what the next couple of years will bring. As you can tell from the Kanban board below, this may be a little more process-oriented than the previous newsletters, but I promise we'll get back to the silly details of the game soon enough.

Managing Progress

One of the biggest challenges I have had with the development process is organizing something this big. As I have explained in previous issues, it's not in my personality to settle for something smaller than my biggest ambition, even if it's not the most sound strategy out there. So to ensure that I stay on track, I knew that I had to plan out my goals and tasks for each day, week, month, and even year (obligatory link).

The first thing I tried was an Excel sheet where I could track progress, deadlines, and weekly tasks. From there I could plan my daily activities, building towards the weekly task, building towards the monthly goals, and so on. It actually worked well for awhile! I started at the beginning of 2022, when I decided I needed structure if I was ever going to finish this game. And I kept this sheet updated until around this time last year. While it was cumbersome and definitely took effort to upkeep, I am happy I started with Excel since it forced me to get organized. But it was time to upgrade to something a little more professional in order to keep track of everything.

RIP BartysAdventureManagementPlan.xlsx and your terrible, terrible highlights.

I then went on a spree of trying what felt like a thousand different management programs, including monday, Trello, even Github itself. But I settled on Notion mainly due to their flexibility in how I can manage several different charts at once. Or maybe it was just fear of the thought of reentering the development timeline into another system. Who can say? I've been using Notion for about a year now, and it's been great in planning tasks, tracking marketing metrics, and keeping tabs on my budget.

Not a Marathon...

With the switch to Notion, I gained a better understanding of exactly how much effort I'll need to get to the quality of game I'm looking to make. And it turned out that I needed a lot more time than I originally planned for. While I originally figured I'd be finished around mid-2024, re-baselining my schedule in Notion showed that realistically I was looking at a late-2025 release, if not later. While this was disheartening, it did feel good to be more realistic about the project rather than trying to rush through it.

It was around this time where I structured "Sprints" into my process. I first heard the term in the Double Fine "Psychodessey" documentary (which is amazing!), and I'm probably using it incorrectly, but I felt like it was time to structure the remaining couple of years in large chunks that are more flexible rather than the rigid week-by-week schedule. I still have weekly tasks, but I now have several larger milestone deadlines rather than one small one every single week.

The Sprints that I came up with were:

1 - NPC Schedules and Movement (due Sept. 3, 2023)
2 - Enemy Logic and Combat (Dec. 3, 2023)
3 - Collectables and Powerups (Mar. 10, 2024)
4 - Unique Area Features (July 28, 2024)
5 - Old Toy Bin Customization (Sept. 1, 2024)
6 - Dialogues and Cutscenes (Jan. 19, 2025)
7 - UI, Accessibility, Menus (Mar. 16, 2025)
8 - Music and Sounds (Sept. 7, 2025)

As I've found with most deadlines, this is probably over-ambitious! But I at least have a larger date to shoot towards while still taking into consideration the craziness of everyday life. And it seems to be working! I assume that I'll have to push my goal of a 2025 release at least one more time, but as long as I'm making progress towards something I'm happy with, then that's okay. It will get finished one day, and when it does I want to be able to have no regrets about the finished project. No matter how long that takes.

Talk to you soon! 😄

This newsletter is an update series for the development of the game Barty's Adventure. If you are interested in continuing the conversation, please join the community Discord server: https://discord.gg/M7p2Mtgkyx. Your input in these early stages of the game are invaluable and much appreciated. Thanks!