[gameprogrammer] Re: I need advice for our maiden game

On Thursday 08 November 2007, ®£$ǖ"v@M$Ħ ¢© $........... wrote:
> Me and my friends are already into making a game and are planning to
> finish by april.....i need some advice about how we should go about
> the whole process

Well... Unless it's a small game and/or you're a bunch of experienced, 
highly motivated developers, that's not much time. Of course, I don't 
know what you're up to, or how much work you've already done. :-)

Anyway, one thing you'll learn is that it's the last 10% that takes 
90% of the time. Testing, tuning, polishing, tweaking... Be prepared 
for lots of boring, repetitive work, once you're past the initial 
design and implementation stages. *Finishing* is the hard part!

A few general suggestions (applies to software development in general, 
I think):
        * Try to keep features to a minimum. No "nice to
          have" stuff, except in the (unlikely) case that
          you find yourself out of stuff to do, with time
          to spare. :-)

        * Focus on getting required functionality to work
          properly and reliably *first*.

        * Don't optimize code until you have a properly
          working implementation.

        * Don't optimize *at all* until you've actually
          found that it's required. If it's required,
          profile and analyze properly first, so you
          don't waste time optimizing the wrong code.

        * Every now and then, step back and see the whole
          picture, to avoid getting stuck on irrelevant
          details while missing major design issues.

        * Avoid doing major code refactoring that leaves
          your code broken for extended periods of time.
          There is nothing that kills motivation like
          having to hack around the clock for weeks on
          end without even being able to compile!


Can't really be more specific, as I have no idea what kind of game 
you're working on. :-)


//David Olofson - Programmer, Composer, Open Source Advocate

.-------  http://olofson.net - Games, SDL examples  -------.
|        http://zeespace.net - 2.5D rendering engine       |
|       http://audiality.org - Music/audio engine          |
|     http://eel.olofson.net - Real time scripting         |
'--  http://www.reologica.se - Rheology instrumentation  --'

---------------------
To unsubscribe go to http://gameprogrammer.com/mailinglist.html

Other related posts: