Completing a Project
I ran across a thread on the Indiegamer forums entitled Tips for starting, developing and actually completing. Someone with the name of zKing posted what I consider to be the most useful comments in this particular post.
Of particular note:
3. Always have a list of the top 5 or so things that are the most important things you are going to do next to improve your game. Always be working on these items. If you get frustrated or board with one of them feel free to do one of the others since they are all important, but DON’T get off this list.
4. Set goals about 2-5 days out. What is going to better about your game in 2-5 days? Set an exact time and be as concrete as possible about what will be better. These goals should be relatively easy to make. Its is far more important to have constant progress (and not quit) than to try to do as much as possible in the next 3 days.
For Hypno-Joe with #3 I don’t really know 5 things i’ll be doing at any one time, as i’m sort of figuring this out as I go. I have ideas for what I want to do in the game, just I don’t know how they fit into the overall picture. But i have a feeling that once I figure this out, it will be smooth sailing. For #4 this is a bit easier, I know I need to read the instructions to the Scrolling Game Development kit and I know I need to go through the tutorial. And even to start animating the main character walking (or running depending on the case).
For Enchanted Lands it’s a bit easier. At one time I was trying to learn the process of design documents, then I read about the Cerny Method which emphesizes a rapid prototyping model over design documents. Well I was thinking that I should do Hypno-Joe this way, and so I shall, but for Echanted Lands i’m realizing that adventure games need a design before working on the game. Prototyping wouldn’t work for this kind of game. (Yes it would work if I were writing an adventure game engine, thankfully there are already prebuilt ones, of which I’m using the Wintermute Engine.) In any case thinking up 5 important items on EL is easier than Hypno-Joe because I know what I need to start. A Story, characters, etc… #4 is good too because I can break down EL into things I can do in a couple of days. (IE. Finish the backstory which coincidentally i’ll be using for a game to learn c++ with, Finish the character arc for the main character, etc).
Well now i should actually get back to making a little progress on Enchanted Lands instead of typing in this blog.
Keith