DEV Community: Rekatha

All Game Development Mistakes

Rekatha — Fri, 06 Sep 2019 09:06:50 +0000

Developing games is a dream, and what a time to start your journey in indie game development! There are numerous tools and engines to get you started, countless tutorials online, and platforms like the Switch and Steam filled with players clamouring for next great indie title.

When we start making games, we were wide-eyed, committed, and full of ideas and energy. But we made more than a few mistakes along the way that cost us time, money, and opportunities. Here are 8 mistakes to avoid when making your first game.

1. Making a game for no one.

This isn’t exactly accurate because you should be making your game for at least yourself, meaning making a game where your potential audience is minimal. Before embarking on your game development journey, it would be good to know that you have a potential audience for your game, and what the size of that audience is. To do this, look for sales or install numbers of similar titles. If your game is going to be on Steam, use SteamSpy to see how many people own and play similar titles. If its on Mobile, Check App Annie for competitor data. Another thing you want to do is see if you’re going with or against any trends. You can do this with a simple exercise:

Step 1: Find the top selling titles that are similar to yours

Step 2: Write down the number of owners each one has, as found on SteamSpy

Step 3: Group the titles by release year

Step 4: Analyze - do the top selling titles this year still sell as well as the previous years’ did?

If so, you’re in a trending space! If not, the market for your title may be dwindling.

2. Trying to create an engine

For whatever reasons, a common thing that we’ve noticed with devs starting out with their first game, is a desire to make their own engine. Some developers might just have that inherent need to create things from scratch. Some just might love the thrill of the challenge. Whatever the reason may be - it’s not a good route go down. There are more than enough engines to use, and they’ll all save you time and money. Benefits to using an existing engine are countless, but here are few anyways:

Tutorials.
Engines like Unity and Gamemaker have countless tutorial available online and even in print. The knowledge base for engines likes these is fully developed and easily accessible.

Support.
If you’re going through an issue, you can be sure that your issue is not unique and that someone has probably posted about it a support forum already. And if not, these communities are so vibrant and helpful, you should be able to find someone to answer your questions in a forum.

Assets.
Need ready-made assets for your game? How about a tool to build levels. Or maybe you need a physics engine for more realistic water? Engines like Unity have complete asset stores where you can buy tools and assets to use for your game.

3. Building costly features and tech to support

A huge user base before achieving any sort of success It’s good to have high aspirations but it’s also important to ship! We’ve seen teams work on expensive features because they wanted their game to support huge user bases - they then release, and instead of the millions they were expecting, only hundreds show up. Working on those extra features delayed shipping, and also may have been wasted work. Instead, just focus on creating a minimum viable product, and scale once you have the numbers to prove that it would be a wise investment.

4. Not identifying critical path and having a backup plan

This one is a two-parter. First let's talk about critical path. Critical path is the sequence of events, that if any are delayed, will delay the entire project. It’s important to identify critical path at the very start of your project. Once you have that identified, it’s time to mitigate any risks that you foresee – you need a backup plan. For example, what if that a person crucial to a sequence in the path, gets sick or hit by a meteor. If that happens, the cost of the whole team continues while development effectively stalls. Not having a backup plan for situations like this can end a project.

5. Not planning for certification

Allocating time for certification can often be overlooked. Certification is basically the process that your game goes through when submitting your game to specific platform. For example. If you’re developing for a unique console like the Nintendo Switch, there might be specific guidelines on how your game should interact. With the Joycon alone, one can imagine a number of scenarios that have to be accounted for, like what happens when a joycon is removed mid-game? You need to allot time to read over all of the certification guidelines, and then allot more time to execute on them. It might feel a little tedious, but doing this is only way to get on your desired platform, and on the bright-side it makes you an expert on that platform for future titles.

6. Not reading postmortems.

What is a postmortem? A postmortem is a process, usually performed after a game is released, to determine and analyze elements of the project and document what went wrong, and what went right. Organizations use them as tools to guide follow up projects. A lot of devs have been where you are, some have failed, some have done ok for themselves, and some have captured lighting in a bottle. What’s great is that a lot of them tell their stories. That’s what’s so awesome about the indie community. You have people sharing their mistakes and providing solid advice on what not to do, and you also have other devs sharing their tools and secrets to their success. Read as many post-mortems as you can - a post-mortem from a dev can be more valuable than any lesson in a textbook. This is 1st-hand experience in a market that you’re about to enter. The best place to read indie dev post-mortems is gamasutra.com. A simple search for “post-mortem” yields results from the devs of: Rogue Legacy, Shadow Tactics, Epistory, Costume Quest 2, and more. You can also check out the GDC vault for video post-mortems.

7. Being too secretive during development

One thing that we all have the natural tendency to do is keep our games a secret until we want to show them to the world. Either, we’re holding off because we want to make it perfect, we’re too nervous to show people, or we think people will steal our ideas! The problem is, you can’t just flip a switch, and have the world see your game. Getting people to just even see your game is a struggle. In today’s market, you need to start building an audience from day one, and sharing your progress along the way. Here are a few things you can do to be more public with your development. Get social. Create a social accounts for your game or studio, and get involved in the community. Follow other indies, and spark or join conversation. Use your socials as platform to slowly build awareness and distribute content from your development. Have new concept art? Share it! Toying with new gameplay mechanics, post a video of it! Create a dev blog. Keep track of your progress on a dev blog. Sharing your progress is a great way to keep your followers engaged with your game. Attend meetups. Every major city has meetups for game development. Our city for example has meetups for indie development, vr development, mobile development, and Twitch streaming. Join them, bring your demo, and get feedback from your local community. To find a meetup, just go to meetup.com and search for game development.

8. Not optimizing your store page

It’s not enough to just add your game on a platform, you need to optimize your store page. In a recent video we shared 7 tips on how promote your game on Steam. You can watch the video here, but if you want the gist of it, here are the 7 tips:

- Time your discounts and take advantage of all of Steam’s sale opportunities

- Optimize your visibility and page activity during Steam’s sales

- A/B test your game’s thumbnail to make sure you’re using the one that converts

- Utilize Curator Connect

- Utilize visibility rounds

- Utilize community coupons

- And start building your wishlist numbers early

Usefull Game Engines in 2019

Rekatha — Mon, 26 Aug 2019 09:07:30 +0000

When we were younger all we wanted to do was become video game makers. We'd illustrate characters, write epic stories and design gameplay mechanics. But the next step was to code an actual game and we never really knew where to start and we figured that since we didn't know how to write code .We could never truly become video game makers fast-forward to today and you can almost say that there are too many ways to start making an actual game.
We are gonna look at seven different game engines. Some that require coding knowledge, some that don't and some in between breech engine. We'll be going over what types of games it is best suited for, what makes it unique, how much it costs to use and also showcase some great titles that use it .

Unreal Engine
First up is Unreal Engine by Epic Games. Unreal Engine is the cream of the crop when it comes to performance teams use unreal to make high-end triple-A 3d titles. While it's definitely not a beginner's engine it's the engine you want to use if you have your sights set on creating a triple-A experience. Unreal supports an impressive array of functionality right out of the box and is particularly strong and developing high quality visuals. Unreal also has a huge developer community and an extensive plugin and content marketplace to help you along the way. In terms of pricing Unreal Engine is free to download and use. Epic does charge our royalty for all commercial games released that generate a revenue of over three thousand dollars. You can find details about the agreement on their websites FAQ. Some titles made using Unreal Engine included "Absolver", PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, Snake-Pass and Street Fighter 5.
GameMaker
Number two GameMaker by Yo-Yo games if you're making a 2d title, one great option is game maker. Studio 2 game maker has been around for years and has developed a great community. A simple search on YouTube will yield a ton of game maker tutorials. It also has a great drag-and-drop interface that's perfect for beginners starting out. Once you get the hang of things though you can do much more complex things using their libraries and scripting language. Game maker studio 2 starts at $39 for a basic license and goes all the way up to $1,500 for its Ultimate Edition. A free trial is also available. Some great game maker titles include "Hyper Light Drifter", "Hotline Miami", "DownWell" and the original Spelunky"
Corona
Number three "Corona" by Corona labs. Corona is a good engine to use if you're looking to make 2D games for mobile. In terms of ease of use, Crona uses a simple scripting language called Lua and also has a great community with a lot of tutorials. Corona is very intuitive interface and is great for beginners who want to start learning about game development. One other great thing about Corona is that it has its own market place where you can buy assets and plugins that help you with things like analytics and monetization. Pricing is a highlight for Corona as it is completely free Corona does not charge any fees or royalties for using its core engine. It does however sell licenses for its plugins. Corona titles include Gunman Taco Truck, HoPiKo, and Zip—Zap.
Construct3
Number four Construct3 by Scirra. Another easy-to-use 2d engine is Construct3 with a drag-and-drop interface and a library of built-in behaviors. You can quickly develop your game ideas it's ideal for game makers who don't have deep programming skills given its intuitive drag-and-drop interface. It has an active plugin marketplace and getting support from other developers is relatively easy one. Cool thing about Construct3 is that you can export in html5 meaning once you've created your game you can throw it up on the web and have your friends play it using their browser. Construct3 has a free trial available and licenses start at $99 a year for a personal license. Some construct 3 games include "The Next Penelope", "Airscape", "Cosmochoria" and "CoinOp Story"
Fusion 2.5
Number five Fusion 2.5 by Clickteam. Five Nights at Freddy's is one of the most culturally popular games made in the last five years and that game was made with fusion. Similar to the previous 2d engines mentioned Fusion has an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface that allows for level event and animation creation without needing to write code. This engine has been around for decades and has a robust selection of plugins from the dedicated user community. Fusion is also good for non gaming evelopment including tools and multimedia projects. Fusion 2.5 licenses start and $99.99 with optional add-ons like their Android exporter. One interesting thing about Fusion is that you can buy it on Steam they also have a free Edition on their website. some titles made using Fusion include "Plantera", "The Escapists", "Fort Meow", And as we mentioned Five Nights at Freddy's.
RPG Maker
Number 6 "RPG Maker" if you're looking to make a 2d top-down RPG then look no further RPG Maker is the engine for you . This engine has been around since the mid 90s and has a large online community of developers looking to help you with development. The latest iteration of the engine is RPG Maker MV and out-of-the-box it features a drag-and-drop interface, a character generator, built-in battle systems, inventory systems, and more. More experienced developers can create more complex functions using JavaScript RPG RPG Maker MV is available on Steam for $80. some RPG maker hits include - "The moon", Lisa and Final Fantasy Legend of Balance.
Unity
And finally we get to number seven "Unity". Unity might be the most flexible of the bunch with unity you can create 2D and 3D games you can release games on PC, Mac, mobile, and console including the beloved Nintendo switch. In terms of ease of use unity does have a very user-friendly drag-and-drop interface but it would be wise to learn C sharp to get the most out of the engine. Another great thing is that Unity has its own asset store filled with 3D models, animations, tools, plugins and more we love Unity because it's quick to prototype with and you can get set up very quickly in terms of pricing the best part about unity is that it's personal license is free. Some of the best games of the last few years were made with unity like "Cuphead", "Monument Valley", "Superhot", and "Night in The Woods".

How Professional Company Creates Video Games

Rekatha — Fri, 23 Aug 2019 07:09:18 +0000

In the world of games, each company has a different approach, but most share the same general workflow. It all starts with a game designer. Game designers write the documents that put the process in motion. They design themes, characters, mechanics, even complete worlds that create the foundation of a game. This is all in the game design document.

But before we get into making them, let's talk about what a video game is.

At its core, a game is a player's interaction with a combination of art and sound. So let’s look at art. An art team can consist of: concept artists, 3D modelers, frontend artists, technical artists, and more - all lead by an art director. Now sound - the people responsible for music and sound include composers, sound designers, audio engineers, voice actors, and music supervisors who act as the conductors. Now that makes 2 parts of this combination. The third of course is the player that interacts with the game.

What lets you interact with the game? The answer is code!

The fourth element is software engineers. They come in too many specializations to name, but here’s a few: there's gameplay engineers - they make sure that the characters move and act like you want them to. there's server engineers - they make sure that your scores are saved to the leaderboards. And rendering engineers - they squeeze the most out of your console and PC.

So what does a cycle look like?

Well, a game designer will write a game design document. An artist will read the document and start drawing away. A sound designer will read the document and start creating sounds. A software engineer will also read the document and start programming gameplay. This leaves us with the last piece.

How do the 4 work together so seamlessly?

The person running this show is the producer. The producer organizes, delegates, keeps track of progress, puts out fires, and makes sure the ship keeps going. Now in building modern games, there are multiple people per team in a cycle, and multiple cycles happening at once. The bigger the game, the bigger the bugdet, and of course the bigger the team. And then there’s also upper management, QA, marketing, HR, finance, legal, localization and more.

8 Secrets to Finish Your Game Development - 2019

Rekatha — Mon, 19 Aug 2019 15:59:47 +0000

If you build games you know how hard it can be to complete and ship them. Starting game development is relatively easy given today’s user friendly engine tech, and we all have grand ambitions to build full-featured experiences that will be critically and commercially successful. But somewhere along the road, the unfortunate reality is that most game development projects stall and lose momentum. It’s a statement about how much work needs to go into finishing a game. We almost always underestimate the effort involved. That said, there are some effective steps one can take to minimize the risk of not completing your game.

These are 8 secrets to ensure you finish your video game. I will outline a number of steps you can take to maintain development momentum but please note that none of these considerations are hard rules - there have been lots of successful development cycles that have either observed or ignored these suggestions. Nothing here is prescriptive - just keep in mind that considering each may help you get closer to releasing as planned.

Solid Development Plan
First thing’s first - the single most important thing you can do to improve your chances of shipping your game is to have a solid development plan. There is a lot that goes into a professional project plan, but the core of the process is to list your specific development areas and assign task descriptions and time estimates to the work involved. This process includes thinking about how you will specifically complete each feature – including breaking up development into a number of small tasks and defining the order in which they will be completed. Having a plan is helpful, because otherwise the developer is flying blind towards and uncertain goal. Not knowing how much work will be needed to complete their project is where most failed dev cycles find trouble, as momentum starts to stall when the reality of the workload to completion starts to expose itself. So have a plan! The rigor of defining the work will make you aware of what you are committing to – and help you decide if you have the determination to see it through to completion.
What Matters Most
So now you have a project plan where you have defined the work ahead of you. The next step is to define the “cut line”, or the features you will not support and where you will stop development. We all want to have the broadest feature set we can think of.. but that is often not practical from a time perspective. The important thing is to make sure you spend your valuable time on those features that really drive player satisfaction. How do you define what matters most? Well, if you could reasonably ship a great game that delivers on your core gameplay without that one feature in question.. then it probably isn’t part of what matters most. Game development history is littered with projectsthat have tried to add unnecessary mini games, multiplayer features, or side quests to what was a perfectly satisfying single player experience. Most often these additional features didn’t enhance gameplay, and only slowed down development progress. So be strict about what really matters in your game. Commit only to what matters most and you will save yourself the headache of scope creep.
Start From Fun
The next thing to consider is what features you will target first with your development. luckily, the best choice from a planning perspective is also the choice that will provide the best momentum. That choice is the one feature that will provide the most fun for your user. Too often, developers start working on mechanics that are deemed ‘necessary’ - but don’t truly delight the user. It’s in my experience that most successful games came out of a development cycle that started with a small but fun core game loop. It’s also my experience that those games that don’t start from the fun have a high chance of failure - tacking on mechanic after mechanic without addressing the core question of why someone would actually want to play their game. If it's not fun, it probably not going to resonate. The extra benefit of starting from the fun? If you have something enjoyable, the feedback you will receive during demos will inevitably be encouraging. It’s that encouraging response that can make all the difference to a developer who needs help sustaining momentum. Having a game that doesn’t excite will garner less than enthusiastic feedback - and can make developers question whether they should forge on with what could be a long road of work ahead.
Interim Milestones
The next thing you can do to keep project momentum is to make sure you have interim progress milestones throughout development. Milestones are a fixture in professional software development, but many indie devs work without a solid milestone structure. So why are they important? Interim Milestones break up your work and provide a checkpoint to see if you are meeting your goals as planned. If you are not hitting your milestones, it may be that your time estimates for your tasks were too aggressive, or that you missed tasks in your feature planning that were necessary to meet your goals. Either way, missed milestones are an early indicator of a project that could be going off the rails. These indicators allow the developer to revisit their plan, and ideally make the necessary changes to ensure development progresses through to ship. Additionally, there is a sense of accomplishment from hitting milestones - And that achievement can provide the necessary momentum to finish your game.
Certification Plan
A common area where developers can lose momentum is when they have completed their core feature work and now have to bug fix and prepare the build for platform certification. This is typically not a trivial process. The amount of bugs in a game can be significant, and platform requirements can be numerous - especially if you plan to release on console or on multiple platforms. What is extra challenging about this process is that it typically isn’t the most enjoyable part of development. Certification can require lots of research through platform documentation, and bug fixing can necessitate deep exploration within your code. These tasks can be a stark contrast to building the exciting gameplay mechanics that defined your early development. So dev speed and visible progress can often slow down during this final phase of development. How can you ensure you keep moving? Have a solid plan. Similar to your original project plan, estimate out the tasks involved in bug fixing and certification and give yourself a clear picture of the work involved. Have a good idea of what bugs you plan to address, and which ones you can live with. Additionally - Knowing what certification requirements you need to address is helpful to know up front, so that you can see the path to the finish line. Professional teams can spend up to one third of their full development time finaling the game - so give yourself the necessary time to complete this important phase.
Work With A Team
Another way to reduce your chances of not competing your development is to work with others. While many indie devs like the design control that comes with solo development, the reality is that it can be very challenging to complete a game all by one’s self. Gamedev requires expertise in a lot of different areas - and most devs can’t supply all that knowledge by themselves. Taking on partners in your development can help in two ways. Firstly, the workload gets spread across multiple people and thus doesn’t have as much chance of overwhelming one individual. Secondly, the process of adding additional dev members can instill a feeling of obligation amongst team members - a general sense that no one can give up given that others are committed to seeing development through. But maybe you don’t want to take our advice on this point. Please note that solo dev has been done successfully in the past, and sometimes with great success.
Share Progress
In a similar vein to bringing on additional team members, sometimes going public about your gamedev intentions and progress can aid in building momentum. It’s basic human nature to want to meet expectations. By communicating to friends, family, and colleagues that you are committing to a gamesev journey - you are providing yourself some strong motivation to not quit in the face of challenges. No one wants to tell others that you didn’t finish what you started, or that you failed to reach your goals. You can amplify the effect of this tactic by using social media to communicate your development plans. Telling the world about your game, when you plan to release it, and what features can be expected takes bravery - and makes any future decision to quit all the harder.
Familiar Engine
So here it is, My last tip to help make sure you finish your game. We’re talking engines here, and the best practice is to pick an engine that you are familiar with if you want to ensure getting to the finish line. Far too often we hear of indie developers that adopt a new engine choice for their dev - only to discover that the new engine does things differently than what is familiar, or has a confusing interface, or requires additional software. Engines can vary wildly in their offerings - and some aren’t as intuitive as others. So pick engines wisely! Gamedev is hard enough when you don’t have to learn a whole new framework. If you want to reduce your chances of development frustration leading to quitting - pick an engine that you feel comfortable with. Bonus points if you have shipped a game on that engine before!