dandouglas, on 11 July 2022 - 12:41 AM, said:
The whole experience is going to be fairly linear, with Half-Life-style progression, targeting around an hour of gameplay for the average player.
I'm aware that 14 map files is extremely ambitious for a solo project, but I'm looking at this in terms of years instead of months. I knew nothing about mapping or modding a year ago and I'm still just really enjoying the learning process, so I'm in no rush to release. I still have no clue about enemy placement, balance or creating interesting combat scenarios so I'm studying a lot of user maps and mods to try and get an idea of what works.
14 maps is exactly the stage my current project is, I've also been doing it solo, am wrapping it up before the end of the year and for reference, the whole process lasted three years. I remember being at your exact stage not so long ago, launching myself with a specific vision but into something I knew would doom my spare time for an eerily unknown number of years, but you get into the groove and end up working exponentially fast as the project keeps materializing, myself I was surprised and eventually it's just so satisfying seeing the pieces come together. One big thing I didn't have to worry about (unlike you) was omnipresent new .art, but the time I would have spent on that I probably did spend on developing other aspects instead so I think the comparison stands although the individual projects are so different. Maybe you'll surprise yourself! Good luck!