Project Roadmap
July 5th, 2009 - filed under Status UpdatesI’ve never created a project roadmap because I didn’t see the point in a single-person project, but now that I’ve tried it, I highly recommend it. I’m sure I didn’t think of everything, but just having clear milestones really makes it easier to see how close you are to your goals. The roadmap I made helped me decide to have 6 milestone releases: Pre-Alpha 1, Pre-Alpha 2, Alpha, Beta, Limited, and Full release. Each release serves as a milestone and each has a different set of work to be accomplished, both on the game and the website. Having a roadmap showed me how surprisingly close I am to the first release – and how most of the work will come after that. While all this is subject to change, the roadmap up to Pre-Alpha release 1 includes:
- [DONE] basic physics: integration with Things (like sprites), collisions, gravity, friction
- control: ability to move an Entity around the world via input, limited by physics
- basic tile behavior: ladders, gem removal, etc
- start adding creatures: rolling ball, spring
- basic AI: possibly 3rd party
- triggered sound effects: probably just using placeholder sounds
- basic menus: nothing fancy, just enough to do basic actions
- game info panels: for displaying status and debugging info
- Pre-Alpha release 1
Pre-Alpha 1 will be a very rough draft but playable, with only the basic elements in place.
Pre-Alpha 2 will add a basic editor, basic web integration, more creatures & tiles.
The Alpha release will have most features of the game in place, and a fully usable editor. The best user-created missions will be chosen for use in the game. Pre-ordering will be available.
The Beta release will have most features of the game completed, and most bug fixing and gameplay tweaking will be done. A lot of mission creation work remains.
The Limited release will be feature complete, but web-only. Most of the website features will be in place.
The Full release will be downloadable and add support for platform specific items like full screen, joysticks, etc. Most of the development will switch to the website.
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July 5th, 2009 at 7:23 am
Yep, a roadmap can be a great thing even for small (and not-so-small) one-person projects. I’ve tried it with my latest game, and it always reminds me of what is really important and has to be done first.
July 5th, 2009 at 7:43 am
It’s always best to have a map – that way you can’t say that you are completely lost.
July 5th, 2009 at 8:12 am
i’m really looking forward to seeing what you’ve done so far when the first release arrives. can’t wait to play an all new jetpack ;D
keep up the good work!
greetings from germany =)
July 5th, 2009 at 9:16 am
Work faster! I’ve been waiting for this all my life!
July 5th, 2009 at 9:32 am
Ha, I’m trying!
BTW sorry for spamming everyone, I added a new plugin for email notifications and the author neglected to mention that it subscribes everyone without telling you. It also didn’t mention it was going to use my personal email by default. Hooray.
You can edit your subscription settings here:
http://www.jetpackhq.com/blog/wp-admin/profile.php?page=subscribe2/subscribe2.php
July 5th, 2009 at 10:02 am
Roadmaps are pretty much the norm in software development and such. It’s nice to know that progress is still being made on this ambitious project.
July 5th, 2009 at 10:25 am
I’m actually glad it sent me an email. I kept checking back here when i first stumbled upon this site, but never saw any new posts for about a month, and so i stopped checking, but it was nice to get an email notification. Keep up the hard work!
I played jetpack when i was a young child (i’m 23 now so you do the math), but about a month ago, started playing it again for fun and reminiscing while i was sick. And i beat all 99 levels! ( never thought i would ). Definitely an amazing game. Thx. Hope the next one is just as fun.
Alex
July 6th, 2009 at 2:59 am
listen: i’m really proud of you
July 6th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
Awesome stuff.
July 7th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Looks like I missed a bit…but it’s great that so much is happening now! I hope that when I get back from camp in 3 weeks I’ll have missed even more! I’m so glad to know that things have been progressing this whole time. Thank you Adam, and thanks for the email; I’ve had so much else on my mind recently I had nearly forgotten about Jetpack, but I’m really happy to hear all of the news about it!
July 11th, 2009 at 2:10 am
Hey Adam, it’s great that the project is going well. I can’t wait to start making levels again, like in the old days.
September 2nd, 2009 at 2:00 am
Looking good; exciting to see how it’ll slowly be coming along down that road! I’m curious what options you plan to have in place for the game (which the first game didn’t actually have, which wasn’t a problem personally). Perhaps different resolution settings (not level/tile dimensions), graphics options, and the like?