Architecture - How to design a game engine in an object-oriented language. #1GAM: How to Succeed at Making One Game a Month. You can make a dozen games this year. Sound impossible? It's not. Try this simple game development methodology from someone who has pulled it off and see for yourself that 12-in-12 is a reasonable goal. The McFunkypants Method I'm going to share with you my personal game development methodology. I don't claim to have invented the world's only system for reaching the finish line - far from it. You see, in 2012 I achieved the lofty goal of creating 12 games in 12 months. So what was the difference? I'd like to share some of my tricks and tips with you here. Join us! Try using these tips in your next game project.
Reach the Finish Line More Often 90% of game projects never see the light of day. Why? The wall is the point in a software development project where it is no longer fun. Finishing a game could be thought of as analogous to climbing a mountain. How? Imagine having to finish an entire game without a single game save. Start to Finish Let's dive in. 1. Brainstorming is the best. 2. 3. Building Buzz for Indie Games. [In this in-depth feature, Mode 7 Games (Determinance, Frozen Synapse) co-head Paul Taylor discusses key steps to getting your independent game known, from careful initial announcements to pre-orders, talking to bloggers, and setting up blogs yourself.]
When Mode 7 Games was founded, I was still flailing around at university and knew precisely nothing about the games industry. I wish someone had sidled up to me in a dark alley and given me a quick breakdown of all of the things I was going to encounter in the next few years, as well as a gentle slap to the face followed by a chocolate-chip biscuit. This flaccid and convoluted multi-faceted metaphor is exactly what I'm attempting to embody here. Wish me luck. This article is going to focus on what you can do to market an indie game pre-release, as this is an area a lot of first-time developers neglect.
One Very Important Thought "Obscurity is a greater threat than piracy" - Tim O'Reilly Marketing anything takes a lot of time and effort. Designing around a core mechanic. In our wild wild game design world every designer is likely to have their own shade of design methodology, lack thereof being a kind of methodology of its own. I’d like to share a bit of mine. When I was still a game design student in Vancouver, I was taught this life-changing design tool by Wil Mozell - I don’t mean to name drop, I just owe a lot to this guy – over lunch at a White Spot. At least one mind was blown in that generic family-style restaurant that day. I’ve been whipping this tool out to evaluate every bit of game design I do ever since.
In this model, the core mechanic is at the very center and forms a nucleus for your game. Theory-crafting game designers love to define words, as do I, so let’s not skip that bit! But still, it’s probably not very clear what exactly is a ‘Core’ mechanic in a game. The core mechanic in a game will usually be the purposeful interaction that occurs the most frequently.
The answers are: A. Let’s play guess the game again! Make Games - Finishing a Game. Visiting the Village: The Mode 7 Games Blog and Podcast » Blog Archive » How to Be an Indie Game Developer. I got an email a while back from someone who was effectively asking, “How do I become an indie game developer?” I replied to them and did my best, but I wasn’t entirely sure exactly what they were looking for in terms of advice. We get asked similar questions quite a bit, so I thought I would write a post to which I can refer people in the future; a kind of miscellany of advice that might be useful. Two notes: this is aimed at relative beginners who know a bit about games and will probably have a PC bias. Who We Are As one person commented – somewhat ominously – on a previous article I wrote for Gamesbrief: the future success of the guest poster will solely affect the validity of these ‘tips’. let the games begin.
Mode 7 is an indie development studio based in Oxford, UK. After that, we moved on to Frozen Synapse, which was released in 2011. I always feel a bit “my apartment smells of rich mahogany” when I talk about this stuff… Here’s FS’s rap sheet: Who I Am The Question The Basics Game Design.