How to turn a simple project into unfinished or cutting off all unnecessary

Thanks to the user qnok for the topic for the whole cycle of articles, they are perfect for novice igrodelam who do not like the result of their work, as well as those who want to be more effective.

This series of articles will be about speed, DG, creation of game prototypes, optimization and everything connected with them.

Together with you we will build a powerful foundation for the correct, in my opinion, development team.

The first material is warm-up and written in the spirit of bad advice with caustic comments.

Getting started


I came up with an idea, it is cool and will definitely pay off

Of course everything is so, each idea brings a million abstract dollars and a warm feeling in the chest. Now write down on a piece of paper and read about the focus groups and analysis of the target audience, my young marketer.

I know how best to write a game design document, I don’t need any tutorials and logic, games are art!

Your truth, structuring, organizing and clearly describing the idea, not to mention refs, is evil. The team must intuitively understand what to do. And these masterpieces are born in chaos, absolutely true!

My mechanics are so innovative that people are just crazy about coolness, it will go 100%!

Of course, of course, people need to be surprised! What a state of flow, what the hell take the threshold of entry, we make a game for true fans ... DIFFICULT GAMES. Difficult from the very beginning, even management will be complicated, retro-control and camera as in Dino Crisis 2, and how beautiful the movement system itself is mmm ... The main thing that the author understands his creation, and the players must suffer, that's right.

We need to add cool innovative opponents, where is our coder? And add ..

Of course you need! You need to add something all the time, say the truth! There are no frames and boundaries, game development is an art, and anything can shoot, even the alpha version with holes in the gameplay and code. Not a bug! It is not necessary to bring development to the end at all and the eternal beta is an indicator of developer's coolness. What is the sequence? What adjustments are you talking about at all?

Of course I will use pixel art, do you like pixel art?

Absolutely. No realism, minimalism, cell-shading, noir, neo-noir, hyperrealism, casual style, and others - an empty sound. Only pixels, only hardcore, how can you not love this?

We have already invented, modeled and collected a bunch of locations, what's the difference how to play it? Beautiful, well!

In general, it is time to change the genre for a walker and peepers and add something else, Lech has not worked for a long time and did not do anything useful.

Well, of course we do rouglike, but what about other genres?

Nothing else exists, this is the simplest genre for beginning igrodelov, the most important thing in any case do not systematize and do not describe the mechanics, constantly change everything and success is guaranteed. The most important thing is not to edit the bugs, this is a feature.

Game design is not needed, he just eats our cookies and spends time, but in general Lech, you can be them in combination? what? oh well, you have time to write and debug your code.

Of course you don’t need it, in general you can make games without an idea, on a stream of consciousness. A coder is definitely nothing to do, well, no, really, he sits all day in front of the monitor. I'm going to give away more tasks, and I'll take the bathroom myself, put on slippers with ears and see cartoons.

God, how long is it, why do you work so long, are you idiots?

That's right, any modifications are made in 15 minutes, the encoder is just weak, so he does nothing, and he is late with everything. Or does and does not have time, in short, it is some kind of useless. The artist redrawn the start button only 15 times, and already whines, no patience.

Lech did not cope with the work, I thought here, the coder is also not really needed, there are a lot of scripts for the unit in the network.

Of course, the main thing is stupid to copy-paste and not get into the code, suddenly something breaks. And do not try to teach the C # script, the code is magic and works by itself, do not touch it.

And why use all these complex scripts, can find someone who writes his own engine?

Of course, ready-made solutions for losers, they are absolutely inconvenient and useless. We are so cool, let's show off, everything should be yours. We urgently need a composer, sound designer and mocap system for the cool animations of our 2D pixel artwork.

Pixel art and various graphics are also complete, Maaash, I don’t need you anymore, take your tablet and don’t send me concepts.

Of course, after all, it would not occur to anyone to use these trees in their game, I alone guessed, most importantly for free. The game will look unique!

What is UX \ UI? You can lick the interface from any top project!

The game is innovative, which interface. He is the same in all games, to do from scratch, to think, to develop, the one who does it does not understand anything at all

One I will do it for a long time, we need more people, I just came up with a new innovation!

Of course, before all were useless, but now ...

Now it is not fashionable to make a prototype gameplay, roll out any G to android or app store and get your money! Steam will help too!

100 out of 100, right on target, who the hell needs prototypes, focus groups, alpha tests, any game takes off and brings millions. The main thing is to do everything as cool as possible and redo it 10 times or there won't be a masterpiece!

I have so many ideas, so many, and they all need to be realized!

Absolutely, you need to realize everything, you will never make a cool game if you have a simple gameplay without different levels of complexity, without cool chips and in general without this, this, this, all, this, you understand ...

What did I actually want to do and why?

A cool game with a cool team of cool specialists with no experience, no organization and without understanding each other, the main thing is free, the normal idea is, eh?

But mom tells me that I'm normal ..

It's like that. Close people are never afraid to offend you and give the most objective assessment and criticism! So here it is. Absolute

I tried to make out the most important mistakes of beginners, even experienced developers may encounter them. This is definitely not all, together with you we will continue to increase the information use of materials.

As you must understand, this is a personal experience. Based on the first year of work as a game designer, I was looking for a team to join, I was looking for young teams, somewhere I received money, somewhere I didn’t. Most importantly, I got experience and understanding.

Understanding that 99% of developers do not think how people will play their games and for whom they generally do it.

I hope my experience will help you avoid typical mistakes and bring your ideas to life!
Thanks for reading.

The next article “I’m surrounded by idiots or how to work in a team . ”

We will discuss ways to collect the team, the right interaction and relationships within the team, even if everyone is working on enthusiasm.

PS Thanks to Evgeny Bazhenov and his work for the mood for the material.

A series of articles about monsters:

"Monsters in games or how to create fear"
"Monsters in games or make fear diverse"
"Monsters in games or how to surprise a player"