Game Development Techniques For A Beginner

Hi everyone,

some friends and I are looking to get into some beginner game development with Unity. I've done some on my own with an artist with my role was programmer. Everything went fairly well since it was just the two of us, and the game came through just fine.

I am now working with 2 programmers and 2 artists. That makes us a 5 person development team.

Do any of you happen to know some best practices to keep the game development process smooth and keep us from doing unnecessary backtracking? I have a few techniques that I have in mind that will work well with the team, but I wanted to reach out to the Unity community and see what you gals and guys have to say. Any advice?

I've done a bit of research and my team and I are definitely going to do version control and mapping(timeline, process trees, etc). I'm looking for recommendations that are along this line. If it helps any, we aim to develop 2D, isometric strategy game for mobile(Android and iOS).

Thank you, and kindest regards.

 

Using progress tracking tools are great also, I'm not too sure what you mean by unnecessary backtracking, you should never go into game development thinking that your idea is perfect.

 

Well, there is necessary backtracking to redefine a game mechanic or player function. Unnecessary is going back and having to switch out components that were needless, but seemed important at the time. Just nit picky.

Do you have any recommendation on progress tracking tools?

 

Look up Base Camp. Task management system.

 

Ultimate Power Technique: make lots of little games. Predicting backtracking as a general piece of advice is pointless, since only experience will help you avoid it. And that changes a lot per game - so, make lots of little games.

 

Ahh ok fair enough, trello is free and it's pretty great, link below:
https://trello.com/

 

Gotcha. I'll delegate to the team that we need to focus more on making a small game with a few mechanics. Our ideas are just so BIG that we run in circles trying to trim the fat off of them. Thanks for the advice on making "little games". That'll take some stress off of our artists and designers.

 

Wow! This looks really promising. I'll dive in and give it a look.

 

Big is really hard, and the main reasons why startups fail. How do you know if you can do big, if you haven't done small? Plus the code and experience from small can be used in each title after, growing toward big.

 

Totally agree with this. I'm aiming the direction towards small, compact projects that we can do in a months. Definitely don't want to start with a large scale project/idea.

 

If you're that nit picky then maybe this isn't the type of thing you should be doing since this is unavoidable and going to happen more times than you can imagine.

 

I agree completely, as much as a game development is planed going back and forth will always happend and with a clean understandable script set is easier.

 

Not the point I was trying to make, my statement was worded improperly.