RPG Shooter: Starwish

About the Game

The Starwish Project began on Nov 1, 2009. My copy of the most recent version of Flash had arrived, and I was stoked about programming a real game. I had a fair bit of experience with Actionscript 1.0, but I was determined to learn AS3. Except... I had no idea just how amazingly different it was!

After a little bit of research, I found a general lack of Flash games with a long, engaging story. So that was my goal from the start - to make a shooter with a sizeable story. And ultimately, to make a game that could be comparable in scope to a SNES era game.

I finally settled on Kongregate's Shootorial, which was primarily meant for AS2, but they had an AS3 sample, so I used that as my learning base. So the first two or three months was basically me pulling my hair out at trying to figure out what was going on.

I spent much time sketching out how the game would play out. Even on train rides, waiting at the station, I'd whip out a trusty sketch diary to jot down notes and doodle. Whenever I wasn't programming, I was planning/sketching.

Eventually I slowly figured out how to do various things. A lot of the programming I did was just me haphazardly guessing. All the while, I was thinking about how the story would go. I had a basic idea, but nothing written out. Sadly I lost my first sketch book somewhere along the way, but fortuantely I had already implemented everything I needed from there beforehand.

If and when I got burnt out on programming, I would draw. Fortunately I'm fairly quick at that, so I didn't need to spend much time on that. Still, I'd occasionally burn out on that too, which leads me to...

The entire story, which is over 60,000 words long, took about two months to complete. That's just for the writing phase. I had to go back many many times to proofread, and add information such as portraits and backgrounds. I averaged 1500 words a day, at which point I often burnt out. While it may have looked like more time was spent on the story, by far most of the time was spent on the gameplay. I tried not to sacrifice performance, which is why the game may look somewhat minimalistic. If the game didn't slow down for you, I consider that a success!

With the story, programming and artwork 75% done, I had a small handful of people to test the game. Fortunately these folks are even more elite writers than I am, so they caught many things for me.

After a year had gone by, I started asked Wohali and auriplane to write some songs for me. The main theme for Starwish was based on a song auriplane and I wrote back around high school.


The overall design process was as follows:

1. Program the backbone of the game, with minimal graphics. Think about story.

2. Draw some decent looking graphics. Keep thinking about story.

3. Write up occasional story bits.

4. Program some more, preferably finish the entire engine.

5. Draw more concrete graphics to make it look like an actual game.

6. If at any point I got bored with programming, drawing or writing, I switch tasks.

7. Finish the story.

8. Get people to test the game.

9. Finish programming and finish up graphics.

10. Music goes last. This way I wouldn't have to waste resources on songs I might not need.

I had about two months where I was out of commission due to sprain and other ailments, but other than that, most of my time went into the game.

-xdanond