A Change in Direction

I haven't touched Galavant in about two months because I had serious doubts about doing the project. A lack of motivation to work on what I was currently doing kept me away.

I realized that I don't want to make Galavant a game. I want to make a Galavant a simulation. The distinction is important. Games must be "fun", have tutorials, play well, etc. Simulations don't have these constraints.

Rationale

Galavant has always been a project where I focused on pleasure of development, not pleasure of play. Because I never cared about making money releasing the project, it is fine to change the project to make it even less likely to be a product.

The problems I am interested in solving do not revolve around the player's experience, which is absolutely critical when making a successful game. I am more interested in solving problems related to making my agents and the world interesting, which are not necessarily conducive to a good player experience.

Implications

Redefining Galavant as a simulation unties my hands in many ways. I no longer have to sink a seemingly infinite amount of time into creating a good player controller. I can focus on agent behaviors which don't necessarily result in fun gameplay. I can take a more freeform approach to development based more on interest than concrete milestones.

Despite now being a simulation, Galavant will still have a player controller. It will remain interactive in that the user can take over a single agent and do as they please. I will continue to make systems which will make it interesting to play a single agent, but not all systems have to fulfil this requirement.

Conclusion

The most important thing this change accomplishes is keeping Galavant alive. Focusing on the game aspect of it put the project dangerously close to termination. Galavant as a simulation should stay alive for the foreseeable future.