I was thinking of writing retrospectively about some games I've made. What went right, what went wrong, what I would do differently, overcoming problems, and - most importantly - what I learned from making it. Would you be interested in reading (or writing) something like that? I'm not sure if they still do it, but at Retro Remakes they used to write post-mortems of their games, which I found to be fascinating.
Don't even put the idea into my head! My time needs to go toward making games, not writing about making games!
But yes, as long as they found the right balance between beefiness and brevity, I think I would be quite interested. I always love devlogs and video logs, so it would be like watching a movie conclusion to a tv show.
I don't really have an interest in writing about games as they're being made (i.e. Projects/Previews) because I believe that it dilutes the impact when they're finished. However, I'd like to write a little about games I've already released.
Nim totally go for it, sounds like a great idea, and I would read it for sure! Let us know if/when you start doing this and we will put some links up in a newspost to promote it
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I think it would be best if people were to write their account as they are going along, and in much greater detail than anyone currently does in the projects section - eg. including little snippets of code for some of the more interesting features.
Maybe they could release their development diary the same time as the actual game - or even include it as an unlockable extra in the game itself?
If you write it retrospectively though, you'll probably end up missing a lot of interesting stuff out - still it would be better than nothing
Originally Posted by Watermelon876 They also do this on Gamasutra.
Have there been any good ones? I can only imagine the ones on Gamasutra being by people who are in charge of a legion of people rather than someone who actually crafted the game.
I would read it. It's a great topic for an article. Just make sure there's enough content. Just for fun, here's stuff that I've learned, since I'm too lazy to make an article myself:
- Readability is vital as your project gets bigger. Once you have pages of code, the most tiring thing is reading all of it, and finding where the bugs are. Make sure you comment your code enough to know what it does, so you could find it later, and know when it's not doing what it should.
- If you want to go big, split the game engine into several parts. Test each part to make sure they work individually. If if you're going small, splitting the engine into different blocks make it much easier to debug.
- Plan ahead as far as possible. The biggest blow to a game's development is realizing that you should've coded it a different way when you first started off, and have to redesign the whole thing over.
- If you don't know how to plan ahead, you need more experience. Experience helps you "see" what you should do, and how to design your engines to be more flexible to changes. Make lighter games to get some XP.
- Innovation is what puts indie games ahead of the commercial games. Commercial games are fricking dinosaurs, trapped by having huge risks, and needing to appeal (sell out) to a certain market to cover those risks. Innovation would kill them.
- But if you want to be innovative, take it a few steps at a time. Too many new things make your game hard to balance and hard to understand. You'll attract a few very vocal supporters, but only a few fans.
Edited by Muz
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
Originally Posted by Watermelon876 They also do this on Gamasutra.
Have there been any good ones? I can only imagine the ones on Gamasutra being by people who are in charge of a legion of people rather than someone who actually crafted the game.
Yes, there are. There are also a few from indie developers in the blogs section.
Format usuallly goes:
INtro
5 things that went right
5 things that could be improved.
Shameless plug
Edited by Watermelon876
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Originally Posted by Sketchy I think it would be best if people were to write their account as they are going along, and in much greater detail than anyone currently does in the projects section - eg. including little snippets of code for some of the more interesting features.
Maybe they could release their development diary the same time as the actual game - or even include it as an unlockable extra in the game itself?
The thing about following a klik game as it's being made is that, well, a lot of them never get released. I like reading retrospective design docs in the same way I enjoy watching director's commentaries on movies. I agree that writing it at the time would be the best way to make sure that you don't forget anything. Great idea about it being an unlockable feature in the game.
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Edited by Muz
