I mean, I've seen some pretty darn good games popping around lately, with nice detailed sprites, custom engines, all that stuff. But what I'm wondering is... how do you pros out there actually have the time and dedication to finish em all?
According to what I do, making a good sprite takes about half an hour, and an average full animation (with shading) takes another half hour. Then, there's the prob of having several sprites to draw & animate.
And backgrounds... well, I could do em quickly enough, but I usually dedicate to about 1-4 hours per background for a frame.
And then there's the hell of putting it all together. I go at about an average of 4 events every ten minutes, unless I don't need to focus on anything else in the frame.
So, adding everything up, it takes nearly forever to make a good game, unless you make something addictively simple like Zone Runner. So... either you guys work a lot faster than me or you guys are compressing time or something. So please, share your secrets, oh great klik masters.
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.
For one thing, I think many people have someone else do the graphics, which really helps. Also, Maybe if you sell your next game you will have more incentive to finish it?
Probably some have teams that they complete them together. Others have that type of motivation I like to call "spark motivation", in which you do a whole lot in a couple months but if the game takes longer than that the motivation dies out.
The latest game I've "finished" (still in testing) had "necessity motivation", which is less fun than spark motivation. Necessity motivation just gives you the feeling that you have to finish the game no matter what. This leads often to taking the lazy path in games.
And as for graphics, I'm not that good at spriting as a lot of other klikkers. I just do a first draft and edit that (unless it's horrendous. Then I redraw it).
I think the real key to creating a game that you will finish is planning the journey.
Basically you start with you idea, you think yeah cool, I can make this and i'll do this, this and this to make it a bit cooler.
Then you work out how the game is structured, which includes you story and how the levels or whatever work out. You may also wanna do some concept sketches or whatever at this stage too.
After all of the planning and structuring it on paper...you can hop to it, so long as you got a good idea of how everything looks and reacts and there are no coding problems you should go very smoothly.
The usual things that let people down I say would be time consuming spriting and drawing, as well as difficult perfecting of engines.
That's why doing graphics and engines at the beginning of making a game means the rest of putting the pieces together will go smoothly!
My words of advice would be:
- Know where the game is going
- Create as much graphics and engine as possible at the beginning
- Try to find little glitches and bugs after you've put it together and try to fix them before they get out of hand
MUGGUS
Come and annoy me more at
www.muggus69.tk STOUT ANGER!!!
Planning is definately a good idea. You're more likely to finish a game if the project as a whole has a constant direction and momentum. The only sure-fire way I know to finish a game though, is to let it take as long as it must. The game I'm working mostly on at the moment has been in development for about 10 months now, and I've only finished 3 levels (although there'll only be 5 or so in total). I'm still working on it because I haven't got any wild expectations. I want to finish it, I think it'll be quite fun, and I don't mind how long it takes.
Don't think about it in terms of how long you think you're going to take, just get on with it and see the sort of progress you make. If it's moving too slowly then perhaps it's not the right game to be making at all.
Planning a lot doesn't always help. I really put a lot of planning in my early games, only to find out that the extensions I relied on couldn't do what I planned, so I ended up givin up on those projects. As a wise man once said, "Once I get every square inch of the game planned out, I lose the desire to actually code it, because it already exists in its completed state within my head".
And about asking someone else to help... well, it ain't that easy. Most people who do help with sprites and all do so only for a while, then quit, then I'm unable to draw as good as them, so the whole thing just gets messed up.
And Daniel:
I didn't say it took me an hour to draw a good sprite. I meant it took me an hour to draw a sprite. It never happens to be good :|. So, I give up and hire someone. And like I said before, the guys I hire tend to run in some hole and hide till I pretend not to know of their existence.
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.
Holy damn. I whip something out of my ass on the Ministry of Kilk and I get quoted on another forum. Score! Anyway, overplaning is pretty much the kiss-of-death for most projects. You want to have a framework for where you are going, but part of the fun and challenge is improvising on the fly.
LOL. Who knows, your quote might actually end up as a guideline for the klik community...
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.
I'm sure there are DC articles on how to improve the chances of finishing your game. It probably would help to know what exactly you want in the begining stages of the project, and if something doesn't work and you've tried several ways to try to make it work, get rid of it (unless that's the whole point of the project).
I think another thing you could say when starting a game is never start a game you'll never finish!
That happens all of the time, and due to like commitments, like uni, school, work, social life and whatever, alot of people would find it hard to find time to do something like this.
So i reckon it's important to be able to plan time management for finishing games...i mean hell, you could draw up a Gantt chart or some kind of future deadline tool so you can give estimated to when your going to do seperate parts of the game...
Of course, most of all...you need to know your game before you make it
It's important to basically have the idea of your game in your head and/or on paper, and just be able to "copy and paste" it into a game if you know what i mean. It's like a puzzle...you have all of the pieces, you know what it looks like, you basically have to put the pieces together!
No point making a game where you don't know what you are making or where it's going! Do that before hand, and add little bits you feel would go well as you go along!
MUGGUS
Come and annoy me more at
www.muggus69.tk STOUT ANGER!!!
I think the first article I wrote was somehow addressing this problem . Judging from the comments it wasn't very good. But it was written back in the days when you could vote how much you liked an article, and I think it got a 9 or a 10. Kinda inspired me to write as many crappy articles as I do now . But no... didn't help for me. I'm just a hypocrite...
And Muggus, I don't think most of us really check if we can finish a game that we start. Most games take longer than expected. And if we all went by the never start a game you'll never finish idea, I doubt there'd be half as many games as there is today. As my father once said, "Don't look at all the obstacles in your way. Just do it and try to get around the obstacles when you reach them, not before". Well, something like that. Personally, I don't think that idea was very good for his business but I've gotta quote it somewhere.
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.
Start with something simple, how you want to move around the screen and what sort of controll.
Forget the theme of the game at this point, and LEAVE the graphics alone - just do some sketches of a general idea.
Just use blocks with writing on to represent things in the game, this allows you to get an idea up and running quickly, to see if it works or not - this is prototyping.
Then build in your enemies, or whatever - forget the story thus far - and spend time building an engine thats a joy to play - this is a personal preference, its how enjoyable you find switching on the game - is it fluid, does it react quick enough, if a player dies, is it becuase its their own fualt - these things make an engine addictive -
#Then look back at your sketches-can you incorporate these ideas, can you think of a story, can you add scenerios? Take time and dont worry about pinching ideas from other game - it really isnt that important if you use other games sprites, as long as its enjoyable - and your not selling.
The simple idea? Start with a really great engine and work from there, if the game feels great to play, you'll naturally take your time - and remember, """a game doesnt have to last hours and hours to be good, hell, even an hour long game can be enjoyable"""
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