Before diving headfirst into building Corrupted Virtues, I’m taking time to lay the foundation. After years of failing to build big projects, I’m hoping I’ve learned my lesson. Until the new year actually starts, my focus is all about preparation. I’ve been using ChatGPT to help me plan out the year, the systems I want to use, timelines, unit testing, and listing out tasks.

What I’ve Worked On This Week

This week I’ve been focusing on Godot 4 C# fundamentals and tracking development. I’ve started the Intro to 3D Game Development Masterclass in Godot by Thomas Yanuziello to brush up on Godot fundamentals. I enjoy following beginner classes in GDScript and converting them to C# along the way. Most of it was stuff I already knew, but by the end, it filled in some gaps I had with GridMaps and Mesh Library creation specifically.

I’ve also been debating on whether to start my tracking in Trello or GitHub Projects. I’ll make my decision by next week, but first, I’m trying to see how my tasks will look before I commit to putting them into a tracking system. I’m also going to write up my entire prototype in some form of Game Design Document (GDD).

GDD Outline (First Draft)

Here’s the basic structure I’ll use to shape the GDD for my Corrupted Virtues Prototype. This will evolve over time as the project grows:

1. Game Overview

  • Game Title: Corrupted Virtues
  • Genre: Tactical Turn-Based RPG
  • Target Platform: PC (with controller support)
  • Development Tools: Godot 4 (C#), GitHub, Visual Studio 2022, NUnit, GDUnit

2. Core Mechanics

  • Grid-Based Movement – 3D tactical movement during combat
  • Turn-Based Combat – Speed-based turn order
  • Party System – Multiple controllable units with turn queue
  • Quick Time Events (QTE) – Interactive events during attacks

3. Systems Overview

  • Scene Transitions – Overworld movement and encounter system with transition to combat scene
  • Pathfinding – AStar3D for grid movement
  • Camera Control – Free-fly camera and unit focus, designed for both PC and controller

4. Technical Goals

  • Unit Testing – Incremental tests for movement, pathfinding, and scene transitions
  • Clean Architecture – Modular and reusable code for core systems
  • Scalability – Systems that can expand (inventory, XP, save/load)

5. Milestones

  • Q1 (Jan – Mar) – Grid-based movement, pathfinding, party mechanics, and basic scene transitions
  • Q2 (Apr – Jun) – Turn-based combat, QTE, and basic AI
  • Q3 (Jul – Sep) – Inventory, XP, and simple dialogue interactions
  • Q4 (Oct – Dec) – Save/load functionality and polish

Next Steps

Next week, I’ll create a new GitHub repository for Corrupted Virtues and start implementing the basic grid movement system. The focus will be on laying down the 3D GridMap and setting the groundwork for party mechanics.

By the end of Q1, I aim to have party movement and scene transitions working.

I’m excited to log my progress as I learn and build. I’m really hoping to avoid burnout or getting overwhelmed. This blog will be my accountability, and I’ll still make one post a week, every week, until the prototype is finished. I’m also starting to share some of my progress on Twitter. I share these every week at least!

Thanks for supporting me by reading this, and see you next week!

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