6fps Network

Author: TrueKam

  • Solo Game Dev with Agile

    A year ago I posted a question on BlueSky. I was curious if anyone had a good experience working on a solo game development project using Agile.

    I’m not really convinced that Agile is the right way to go to begin with, but it’s how I originally structured the project on Azure DevOps and at this point it would be difficult and time consuming to change it to something else. Since I have limited time to work on my project between full time employment and household chores, I found that trying to choose a couple tasks to get done in a two-week sprint wasn’t realistic. Some things worked, sure, but when it came to more nebulous tasks like “Make this entire dungeon map.” it just wasn’t possible. I tried breaking the bigger tasks down into smaller tasks like Agile expects, but I quickly found that I was spending more time trying to plan the work than actually working. That’s an alright place to be when you have a planning team at a large company, but when it’s just you doing everything. Without a solution in front of me, I reached out on BlueSky, but I didn’t get any answers. After refining my approach over the last year, I think I have a solution that answers my need.

    Instead of “Sprint 123,” I name my sprints after the version that I’m working on. The screenshot above is for “Version 0.4.2” in my beta development. I set the start date on the sprint to one day after the previous sprint ends and the end date is arbitrarily long. I usually do something like six months or December 31st of the current year.

    At this point, I just do the development that I put together for the sprint period. As a note, I ensure that everything I want to do has a specific design task written and that is a prerequisite before writing or working development tasks. I also ensure there is an administrative tasks story put in each release sprint. This is where I track things like updating social media presence, publishing the build, and (most importantly) building the sprint plan for the next sprint.

    Once all the work is completed, the sprint gets edited. The completion date becomes the last day of the weekend that I’m closing out the final task and the start date of the next sprint is set to the following day. Then the cycle continues.

    The way I’m developing has become less stressful from sprint to sprint since I adopted this methodology. At my day job, it would be unheard of to tie the sprint dates to the tasks within it, but the nature of the solo development caused a lot of stress when I was trying to force my tasks to fit within the more strictly-defined dates. It does make release dates harder to identify until they get closer, but since I’m the only person working on the project it’s not a huge concern.

    I’d love to hear your thoughts about how you’ve approached similar situations or projects. Head over to the Discord server to start a conversation!

  • Weekend Dev Log

    Or should I say: Weekend Test Log?

    Hello again everyone! I don’t want to reward everyone who checks in here with nothing but radio silence, but I don’t really have much to report today. I spent the weekend playing the current test build and documenting the issues I’m identifying. So far, I haven’t found anything game breaking, and everything I’ve seen appears to be graphical. If I determine that the fixes are simple, I may try to fix them before I put the test build out, but if not, I’ll leave them in and fix them after I let the testers start their work.

    I’m not against pushing the release into October if necessary, but the first weekend of October I’m going to be unable to work, so I’d like to get this released prior to then. Go ahead and pencil that in tentatively, but I’ll be sure to update if things change.

    Until next time everyone, thank you all again for stopping in. Keep on gaming! Hopefully in The Cursed Crown very soon!

  • Weekend Dev. Log

    Good afternoon everyone! I don’t have a new build this week as I’m still in the middle of development of new features. But I wanted to give everyone an update on some of the progress I’ve been making in an effort to keep you all as up to date as possible.

    Here is a short preview of the new mini dungeon that I’ve been working on for a bit now. I hope it demonstrates some good progress in my level building skills. I know that the El’Mi Ruins are pretty basic in design compared to this. Building this cave also felt like a smoother process, if that makes sense. Of course, I’ll be revisiting these maps as the game progresses. I’ll add some new additions in and I’ll have to place enemies and pickups as they’re ready for use as well. So expect more in the weeks to come. For now, though, thanks for tuning in and keep on gaming!

  • Cursed Crown 0.4.0 Beta Test Build Available

    Download the 0.4.0 beta test build here: https://www.6fpsnetwork.com/download/cursed-crown-beta-0-4-0-20260215-patreon-download/

    Password: T9t@7BuQF@bLgk#R

  • Cursed Crown 0.4.0 Change Log

    It was exactly one year ago today that I released the 0.3.0 version of The Cursed Crown, marking the end of the tech demo phase and the beginning of the beta phase. Honestly, it’s been a rough journey filled with a lot of progress and just as many setbacks. Today, I’d like to present you with the 0.4.0 beta release. There are a lot of little updates here and there (the git commit was for 11,185 files), but here are the most important changes:

    • General terrain updates. More decorations and foliage added. Specific note: El’Mi Ruins Vicinity with associated fast travel point.

    • Fast travel points at general locations around the overworld island. All currently unlocked for beta testing.

    • First major dungeon added: El’Mi Ruins. The initial blockout is complete. As development progresses, decoration, lighting, pickups, and enemies will be added to the ruins to flesh the dungeon out.

    • Crafting system implemented. Initial crafting ingredients and recipes are added as well as the crafting table where the crafting can be done. Harvest points have been implemented for the first things that can be gathered in game. These are not currently spread around the world, but there is a temporary station near the initial overworld spawn point where you can test the functionality out. Look for the pink crystal! The art for the crafting “table” itself will be updated as development progresses.

    • Updated Unreal to version 5.6.1 and ACFU to version 4.0. This is what took much of my time initially, as quite a few errors popped up and had to be dealt with.

    • Behind the scenes things to keep documentation going smoothly and make sure proper design and planning is being done. As things progress further in development, there’s less and less room for sloppy, unplanned development.

    Known Issues

    • AI enemies have been removed due to issues with upgrading Unreal Engine and ACFU. They will be added back in when they can be fixed.

  • The Roadmap for the Next Build

    Hello everyone! Now that the holidays are over and everything is probably back into their normal rhythm, I wanted to give a new update for the new year. If you’re just looking for the roadmap, skip ahead a bit!

    First, let me say that I’m sorry that the updates have been going slowly. That’s entirely my fault and it comes down to not making the progress that I was originally hoping to make. When I first started implementing things, I was adding them rapidly There wasn’t much in the game yet, so there wasn’t really anything that could break if created or changed other things. But now that the codebase is getting larger, I have to check a lot more to ensure that there are no unintended side effects when adding new things to the game. Also, I’ll just flatly admit that it’s a lot harder building levels in Unreal than it was “back in the day” with id Tech 2 or Build. I’m learning a lot about how to speed up the process as I go, but it’s still going slowly for now.

    That being said, here’s what is currently working in the game: character and movement, bonfire-like save spots, fast travel teleportation, crafting, in-world ingredient harvesting (farming system planned for later, but not confirmed), NPCs, and a mostly-empty world map. There are obviously the othe basics like multiple types of doors, keys for locked versions of the same, item pickups, weapons, etc., but most of them don’t warrant their own mention since they are features that need to be there and aren’t anything special. I’m also around 50% through the base (read: undecorated at this point) level building of the El’Mi Ruins, an old Elven magic research area underground. There may be something worthwhile to find there and additional discoveries for the observant.

    Now, what you’ve really come here for: the roadmap for the next minor version, 0.4.0.

    • Finish El’Mi Ruins blockout. (It’ll be discoverable and explorable, but may not be entirely decorated in its final form.)

    • Update Unreal Engine to 5.7 and ACFU to 4.2. (Final updates. This will lock in the final version of the tools that will be used for the game’s development and release.)

    • Finish implementing the base harvestable crops and add some throughout the overworld. (I won’t just randomly place these. They’ll be hand-placed to ensure there arn’t too many of them and they’re in reasonable places. Different materials will be found in different areas.)

    The biggest variable will be the updates to Unreal Engine and ACFU. I can’t predict how much will break in the update and require fixing. Honestly, that’s my logic behind not updating any more after this set of patches. I only want to grab these in particular for a couple really interesting features. (Specifically, the voxel LODs for foliage. It should do some amazing things for long-distance rendering. Good job, Epic. 😘) Unfortunately, there is a significant chance that the updates to the Unreal Engine and ACFU will come with a lot of breakage in existing blueprints and code, forcing me to expend time and energy just getting back to where we are right now.

    All things considered, I promise that I’m still making progress and I will do my best to make more regular updates for everyone here and on the Discord server. If you’ve got any thoughts, questions, or suggestions on the development of The Cursed Crown, stop by and chat with us. Thank you to everyone for sticking with me on this long road. Have a wonderful weekend, everyone, and I hope this is the start of a glorious and fruitful year for all of you!

  • Cursed Crown 0.3.3 Beta Test Build Available

    Download the 0.3.3 beta test build here: https://www.6fpsnetwork.com/download/cursed-crown-beta-0-3-3-20250719-patreon-download/

    Password: 8Ey^utTtL@oQwSFI

  • Upcoming Work

    To view this content, you must be a member of The Cursed Crown: A Valerath Tale’s Patreon at $1 or more
    Unlock with Patreon
    Already a qualifying Patreon member? Refresh to access this content.

  • Development Update (0.3.2)

    Hello everyone! Sorry for the delay this week, but I had a bunch of things that I wanted to get into the new build.

    When you start the test build this week, you will find that the fast travel system from last time was updated. There is now a more fantasy-style interaction to start it instead of the placeholder robotic mannequin that existed last time.

    I’ve also further expanded on the structures around the starting area. Honestly, this is what took the longest to do. I’m not going to pretend that I’m the best level designer out there. I have a lot to learn and trying to put together what I have here was a slow process. I’m getting better, and I’ll continue to do so. Please stick with me as I grow here.

    I have some things that I need to do in the background, so there might not be a new build with the next update, but I’ll try to post something about what’s going on so nobody is left in the dark. That being said, my full time job has been picking up a bit and causing some new and unusual stress on me. That’s causing me to feel like the constant development work on The Cursed Crown is more than I can handle. Don’t worry, I’m not stopping! But for my mental health, I’ll be taking it a bit slow for a couple weeks and perhaps not keeping so many large tasks in front of me at a time. As the work gets completed, though, you can be sure that I’ll be updating all of you. Look forward to it.

    In the meantime, I hope you can all have a wonderful weekend. Until next time, everyone, keep on gaming!

  • Cursed Crown 0.3.2 Beta Test Build Available

    Download the 0.3.2 beta test build here: https://www.6fpsnetwork.com/download/cursed-crown-beta-0-3-2-20250316-patreon-download/

    Password: PJYvJ@^!vSgBNv5l