Staying Productive: Resource, Task and Crew Management in My Project

Welcome to another devlog! Today, I'd like to talk about my experiences in the project so far, specifically, when it comes to managing finances, time and teamwork. Some of you know I'm originally a programmer, but I have to admit, I've spent the majority of my time in the project recruiting people, briefing them on the project, and communicating with them to convey my vision. Not to mention marketing, setting my Steam page up (even writing this post right now!) etc. You're probably thinking a lot of early stage promoting I'm doing is worthless, and honestly, you might be right. But I'm also doing it to experiment and keep myself responsible.

How I Organize My Activities

My most effective technique for staying productive is definitely a checklist. You don't need anything fancy like Miro; I'm only using a Word doc with my remaining (and neverending) list of to-do items. I order them by priority and specifically separate what I want to focus on till the end of the current week. (Sometimes I don't follow the priority order, it's obviously slightly mood dependent.)

On top of this, there's another layer to it: My tasks are categorized by how much attention they require. I highlight low-attention tasks in italic. This might sound weird, but it's a real game changer -- very often, I don't have the mental energy to write code or design a feature. If this is the case but I still want to work on the game, I'll do something that won't require exclusive attention; this mainly means manual labor like interacting via social media, writing a job posting, documenting/timestamping video footage for team communication and so on.

Teamwork & Budgeting

Since I'm still very very early into the project, I had to spend a fair amount of time hiring the right people. Oh, and it does NOT stop after you write the post. Picking staff is probably the harder part, since you may have 10+ applicants, some of which are really skilled. And then there's also your finances to consider, since everyone needs to make money. I have a personal story from years ago when I tried to outsource art for cheap (and I mean, really cheap) money -- based on that and others' journeys, let me tell you, 90% of the time it will be trash. Period. If someone works cheaply, do inspect their portfolio very cautiously because there's a chance they cannot complete your requests sufficiently, especially in the era of AI, where someone might pretend to do art, but they actually just use AI or pre-made online assets to create something mid tier and they don't tell you. It's a really uncomfortable situation, financially as well.

So anyways. This is an early, noticeable time investment for the better fate of the project, I'm really grateful for everyone on board to be working with me. The hiring spree is probably over now that I got people available to do 2D art, 3D art and SFX/Music. My advice is to make sure you pick people with worthy track of work, and obviously, someone you can afford. It's fine to ask for a sketch and pay them a small amount for their effort, even if you decide to not continue with them. It's better than having to pay all their work, go through trouble in communication, and then find someone to do the same thing but in good quality. If you didn't find anyone capable, keep searching. Put your post out again, contact people yourself rather than waiting for them to contact you. Generally, the gameDevClassifieds subreddit is very good for hiring, and I use the official Godot Engine server's job board as well.

However, I unfortunately haven't discovered the infinite money glitch (yet), so everything is in a priority order here too. Since I'm still in demo-scope, it's the most important to get demo assets done, but it wouldn't make sense to start voicing the demo enemy while I don't even have the code (and the visuals) done for it, so I try to pace 3D art such that it's ahead of code and is closely progressing with game design, and once a certain character is done (rigged and animated) for example, SFX can be made.

I don't have to worry about making the Steam page as fancy as possible (I'm actually VERY satisfied with the placeholder art I made), but I wanted to see what price offers I can get for a Steam capsule, the main art piece for marketing. I might park that however if it ends up being too expensive, but a logo would be certainly nice. But I also need to get the basic combat HUD fleshed out. Right now, the demo enemy creature's 3D model is being made, which allows me to still dedicate some funds to the HUD, the logo, possibly a capsule art as well.

To sum up the way I delegate money, 3D art is continuously progressing - as it's the most important piece for now -, and on the side if I can, I either outsource 2D art or SFX. I've yet to account for level design and beautiful VFX for combat.

That's a wrap for today, hopefully this was useful! If you'd like to follow me along, please join my Discord and wishlist the game on Steam!