Planning Your Game

English Is Not My Main Language ! Sorry For Any Misspelling Or Crammer Issues

Hello Ive been working recently on a project of a low graphic styled MMORPG (Friendly) Game ! , and before i do all my planning i wanted to see if anyone before me asked this question !
How do i plan ?
What do i include ?
Where do i plan ?
etc

So i already found my self a way to plan my game before i start developing but i want to see how people did theirs ! did you use notepad ? Did you use diagrams and graphs ? Did you have a team of people to do all the planning for you while you focus on getting the requirements ?

If you Have Done any planning in the past then share it here and lets see ways and types of pre planning for game development

 

I hate to see threads go unanswered, so I wanted to stop back in here to throw my input out there for you.

I'm just a hobbyist, but I do almost all of my planning on PostIt notes and scraps of paper. Occasionally I get things more organized in a Google spreadsheet. That's about the most I'll do, though. I tried using this great tool one of our community members created called Hack n' Plan, but for me as a solo developer working in my spare time, it turned out to be too much of a time investment to just get the administrative side of things set up properly, and I was spending more time creating the "plan" than doing the "doing."

The correct answer, though, of course, is to always do what works for you and your team. If you have a preference for how things are done, and that doesn't impede your ability to get work done in a timely and efficient manner, by all means do that.

 

Thanks for the answer

 

Been trying Kanban style agile app called Trello.

 

Look up the term "game design document."


There isn't one right way to do it, but read lots of different peoples opinions to get plenty of idea's.

Organizing a game is like anything else. If you know how to organize the socks and underwear in your closet, its the same thing.

Well, a little more complicated. But you'll learn best by making mistakes as you get started actually working on your project. Keep notes and lessons learned, and be sure to take time to review what you have learned and think of better ways to do things in the future.

 

I use a mix of post-it notes and a planning app. I use Zenkit which is similar to Trello except it also has a checklist feature which works out to be quite useful with task planning.

Writing down notes is much easier with pen and paper, however, using an app helps with keeping a record of everything. It's too easy to accidentally throw a piece of paper in the trash.

 

It's always funny to me when I see a thread near the top of the feed where the subject grabs my attention and I think "Man, I should really reply to this one." Only when I open the thread, I see that I already replied nearly a year ago.

I would wager that the majority of users on the forum fall into the "hobbyist" category. Whether you have a day job and are trying to make games on the side, are a student considering game development as a career, or just someone who likes playing games and is curious what it would take to make one, the key factor is that making games isn't your primary life task.

With that in mind, using scrap paper and PostIt notes is perfect for planning a game, and here's why: because they're so easy to throw away!

It's so tempting as a hobbyist to plan an amazing game. You come up with all the stats your character would develop, story elements, how you're going to monetize it, all the different costume configurations you could offer... but you don't spend time actually making the game. I should know; I've fallen into this trap plenty of times myself.

When you log all your planning notes in an app or design document, it feels... official. Like you've kinda done it already. It scratches that itch of accomplishment, and actually demotivates you to do the hard part and make that thing actually exist.

It also suggests a degree more permanence. Granted, digital documents are easier to change than physical ones, but having this 30 page Word document detailing everything in your game feels like that's what your game needs to be in order to be considered complete.

When you're a hobbyist, you need to get to the prototyping stage as quickly as possible. Don't overplan or hash out every detail, design every system you may need, or even think about how to monetize. Just figure out the core loop of your game and make it exist. Find out if it's fun before spending 2 years or more on it.

If something starts looking like it won't work out, maybe because it's too difficult for your current skill level, or because it's just a copycat of something that exists and doesn't interest you, or because it just doesn't play the way you envisioned it, you need to be able to throw it away. Your time is far too precious to be wasting on something that isn't going anywhere, or worse, occupying your productive time with idle planning in lieu of actually working.

If you have an amazing next-big-thing idea that you write down on some scrap paper, and it sits around long enough to be accidentally thrown into the trash, that idea wasn't ever going to come around to reality anyway. Better that it be lost and gone from your mind entirely, freeing you to pursue efforts more worth your while.

Don't plan out a whole game. Jot down an idea. Boil it down to its core essence, and create that the very next occasion you have some free time in front of the keyboard. When you're brainstorming ideas for the next phase, jot those down and get to them as soon as you can. If you find yourself perpetually putting that task off, do some honest evaluation as to whether the project is worth continuing.

The one thing I'm sure of after several times of stalling on and abandoning my magnum opus(es?) is that as a hobbyist, I can't afford to plan. I need to just do. The time I'll lose rewriting things I didn't plan properly the first time is nothing compared to the time I've lost creating the perfect plan that doesn't have a chance at execution.

 

So everyone told you to write stuff down, and I'm going to tell you to write stuff down. Mainly because you need to write stuff down. I get one idea or concept, write it down, and mull on it passively for days or weeks until it rises or flops. It would be super cool if you could just know everything about your game, and log it down chronologically based on order of importance and build time all at once, in one go, but you can't. Ideas come sporadically, at random times all throughout the day and night. You need to be able to write down little single sentences and tiny ideas when they come to you because they aren't going to come again. Good ideas come piece by piece, if you miss too many of them, you have no idea what the picture is supposed to be.