Stage Division of small Team game development

At present, the development of mobile game manufacturers like springing up, there are big small, even a few friends together can save a small company, to develop. Each company, also have "have their own characteristics" of the development process, better, directly apply the traditional theory of software engineering, poor, but also only to work hard. What I want to talk about here is an efficient development approach and stage Division for small teams to develop games.

The stage division of Game Development, which I think can be divided into 5 stages, is described as follows:


Phase I: Proposal


This stage to do the main work is to make clear what kind of game, the name of the game, what kind of expression (2d,2.5d,3d, etc.), the game's selling point (features), the realization of what kind of platform, how people match.


Whether a company or a small team to play the ultimate goal is to profit, so as the game designers should be targeted at the market to design games, but not for personal preferences and design games. A game that can be accepted by most people is a good game to make a better profit. So before deciding what to play the game to determine the main target for what kind of player to do this game, is a boy or a girl, is suitable for all ages or more than 20-year-old young people, this goal has been established in order to better explore the psychology of such players, so that the game design more fully meet the psychological and spiritual needs of such players, This way the game can be accepted by more players and the team can make a better profit.


According to the selected player group, it is suitable for this player group of game theme, a game theme selection is also very important, a good theme to help designers to show the characteristics of the game, so that players quickly understand the game background, the game can be easy to use, better to be accepted by the player. There are three categories of game subjects that are more easily accepted by the player: 1 of the history or religion that has been published in the region; 2 is related to common sense; 3 is related to a famous story or movie. In summary, playing on subjects that are familiar to most players in the selected player group will be easier to play and accept.


Then there is the concept of the game design, you need to determine the type of game (for example: RPG, strategy, fighting, etc.), the way the game behaves (for example: 2D, 2.5D or 3D), on what platform to implement and the characteristics of the game. These problems should be based on the team's technical strength, the urgency of market demand, development costs and other factors to determine. After determining the type of game, the way of expression and implementation of the platform, it is necessary under these three conditions to play as far as possible the creative creativity, in the game features as far as possible, and write two documents: a game planning case outline and a proposal for the project. In the outline of the plan to let the technical staff can see what the game needs to have the function. In the project proposal to write clear the game against the crowd, game type, game performance, game implementation platform, game selling points, the approximate time required to achieve, as well as personnel arrangements.


After the completion of the market, technology, art and other personnel for the collective assessment, according to the proposal, the objective evaluation of technical strength, development cycle, market effects and other issues, and ultimately decide whether to do this game.


The goal of this phase is to determine what will be done in a game that is widely accepted by the market and to ensure the viability of the game. A game that cannot be accepted by the market, or a game design that cannot be implemented at all, will be negated at this stage, or be designed to modify or give up the game. Minimize the risk to be assumed after the project is implemented.


Phase II: Design


Game design process needs planning, procedures, art, market co-operation to complete, a game to do good or bad, this stage played a decisive role, the following will be the work of the four responsibilities of the contents are elaborated:


Planning:


Detailed design of the game according to the outline of the planning case. For example: What kind of props, various items, the name of the role, the size of the game, the size of the figure, the characters of various behaviors, attributes, maps or the design of the scene, you can not use the specific game diagram, with some simple graphical representation can be. Planning should not consider the limitations of the platform, as far as possible to play the creativity to design the game, when the game design and then based on the limitations of the platform to modify the game plan to achieve a feasible final planning case.


Program:


According to the planning outline, complete the design of the physics engine, design or modify the game engine for game type and performance (if there are already available engines, you can save this step) and the tools needed for game development, such as: script parser design, map editor design, etc. and complete the code, test pass, the program does not have a catastrophic bug.


Art:


Art personnel need to communicate with the planning often, according to the description of the plan to start the design of the game's various characters, objects, scenes of the prototype and make the original painting design. Art personnel should play a leading role in the design of the art part of the game, not just as the workers plan how to say.


Market:


Market personnel to communicate with the outside, need to do two things: 1. Regular communication with the planning, the collection of resources related to project development; 2. Focus on the market effect of similar games. In the game development is not necessarily all the part of the development of their own, some places can also use some others have done things, such as: In the program section, if you can find the basic source code to meet the needs of the Internet, can be taken over to change, which can greatly improve the development efficiency; in art, For the game is not very important elements can find some others do a good diagram to change, this can also improve the development efficiency. Focus on the market has issued similar themes of the game, find out the selling characteristics of each game and its marketing strategy, careful analysis of these games where to do well, where the problem is not good. And to complete a market research report, from the perspective of the market to examine our game planning and original design, as far as possible to avoid the mistakes of previous mistakes.


At this stage of the work, to the planning as the center, four kinds of roles to communicate frequently in order to achieve high-quality tasks. If the conditions allow, should be the planning to host a daily meeting, all personnel in the project team to participate, solve the problems encountered in the work and the new ideas and design to discuss the evaluation.


The objectives of this phase of work are: 1. The game engine is basically finished; 2. Stand in the perspective of the program to see the planning case, confirm that the plan is feasible; 3 stand on the player's point of view to see the planning case and art design, confirm the game design in line with the thinking logic, the content is rich enough, fine art design is fine; 4. In the market, compared To have a certain degree of competitiveness. If the game is not fun or quality is not enough at this stage will be modified to improve, according to the strength of the team to determine the ultimate game to achieve a quality, in the next stage will be based on such quality to make the game.


Phase III: achieving


The task at this stage is to implement the game according to the plan, the workload of this phase is the most difficult to control the biggest time in the whole development cycle. In the game development process, there is a strong dependence, the timing of the work is very strong, if not a good development plan, the team will often appear in the phenomenon of such work, wasting time. Therefore, before beginning to work all project related personnel must first open a meeting, in the day as the unit to make a detailed development plan, in the development plan for these four kinds of responsibilities to quantify the work content separately. The timing of the work should be properly arranged so as to avoid the occurrence of such works. The following is a description of the work of these four responsibilities:


Planning:


Planning the most important job at this stage is to do the project management. Project management work includes: 1 constantly motivate the developers, so that the team has a high morale and maintain a harmonious development atmosphere; 2 often communicate with each part of the staff, coordinate each person's daily work, control the progress of development; 3 schedule daily data backups to avoid team effort in vain as a result of force majeure ; 4 strictly audit the art staff to make the pictures and sound, to ensure that the quality of the game requirements; 5 assist the team to do some practical work (for example: drawing a map with a map editor, writing a game script based on the story, making a game screenshot animation, etc.).


Planning not only to do a good project management also to do two things very important: 1 with the game development Progress constantly review the game, timely discovery of the game design deficiencies, modify the plan but do not change the development plans still have to follow the original plan to continue to develop the game, the revised plan in the next stage with ; 2 Write a numerical setting for the initial scenario and implement this scenario in the game.


Program:


According to the plan, design game-related algorithms (e.g. AI, collisions, trading systems, etc.). Do the game version control. In the initial design process may not be a good picture of art, but it does not matter, the programmer can first use some similar graphics instead, and so on after the artist to make a diagram and then replace it, which can save a lot of time. Do not write too many technical questions during the development process, the main purpose of technical documents is to facilitate communication between developers, in a small team, each project is basically a programmer, so there is no need to write the technical documents too cumbersome. As far as possible, the technical documentation as an annotation in the program, which saves time and facilitates the reading of the program. Programmers in the process of development may think of some of the game design constructive comments, this time should be timely and planning discussions, decide whether to modify the plan.


In the whole development process, the programmer should play a leading role in technology, in addition to writing procedures should also guide the artists according to the needs of the program to do diagrams, guide the planning or other personnel with the game development tools.


Art:


According to the requirements of the art demand list of the plan to do the drawings and animations, according to the requirements of the sound matrix to produce sound files, according to the requirements of market personnel design posters and other promotional materials. In order to improve the game quality and development efficiency, it is recommended that the game animation and sound to the professional outsourcing team to do, by the art and planning personnel acceptance, this depends on the team's technical strength and economic strength to decide.


Market:


Make the marketing propaganda plan, put forward the list of the propaganda materials that need to be designed, by the procedure and the fine arts production. Often with planning communication, more understanding of game content and game development progress, in order to decide when to start doing propaganda, how much publicity effort. If it is a more competitive game in the market, when the game finished Alpha version can immediately do a demo, contact some customers to see, this time can listen to the customer's opinion, from the customer's point of view the shortcomings of the game, and then the team meeting to decide whether to modify the proposal according to the customer's opinion. Perhaps this time will be a customer decided to book the game, this time to write a cooperative proposal, contract preparation draft, and maintain good relations with customers.


The most workload in this phase of work is planning and procedures. Planning should be the overall development of the game to grasp, control the development progress. Programmers have to play a leading role in solving technical problems, as much as possible for a large number of repetitive labor production tools, simplifying game resource replacement and numerical adjustment, and directing others to do the work. Art should play a leading role in the artistic performance of the game, at the beginning of this phase did not trade unions are very busy, to the latter figure basically finished the work of the artwork is patronagejob down, at this time to assist the planning and programmer to do some of the work. Market personnel do not participate in the development of the game, the role of the team to the external interface, to do a good game publicity and sales work.


The team meets at least once a week, each part of the meeting to summarize the work of the previous week, and according to the actual situation to adjust the work plan, make the next week's work task. The problems encountered at work can be raised at the meeting, and we will discuss the solution together.


This phase of the work Objective: 1 game Bata version completed, the program requires no fatal BUG;2 game propaganda design completed.


Stage four: Review


Review the game, review the quality of the game, whether it needs to be modified, consider the game's playability and market effect again.


Consider whether a re-development is needed to improve the quality of the game. For example: the balance of the game, the value is reasonable, whether the game diagram needs to be modified, whether it is necessary to add or subtract certain functions.


To put it simply, the gameplay is further improved, but it is important to consider the development cycles and staffing that are needed for re-development.


If two development is confirmed, repeat the previous stage of work to meet the requirements of the modification until satisfactory results are achieved.


If you do not need or have a condition for re-development, proceed to the next stage.


Fifth stage: Completion


The final numerical adjustment, after each adjustment needs to be tested, to achieve the elimination of all bugs, while the production of product manuals and related documents. According to market demand, the production of some promotional supplies, as well as some peripheral products, such as demo (this demo is for marketing purposes), cell phone screensavers, PC Screensavers, and marketing. Products to market.


Here are the related documents, including the final planning documents, game charts and game diagrams, as well as the introduction, user manuals and other peripheral documents. The detailed design documentation for the recommended program is organized at this stage. In traditional software engineering, it is necessary to write detailed design documents in the early stages, in order to develop large-scale projects, because in large-scale project development, many people need to collaborate to develop a system to determine the final solution and avoid the catastrophic error of the project due to the lack of unification of the developers ' ideas. In the case of small and medium-sized projects, you can fully integrate the detailed design document into the code's comments (require the program's comments must be written in very detailed), because in the detailed design phase, but also involved in part of the code, so from the point of view of agile development, can not write the detailed design documents at the beginning, and in the fifth Use annotations to organize detailed design documentation to improve development efficiency.


These are the 5 stages that I have summed up in the development of small team games. I'm just proposing a framework, not every project to do exactly that, each project has to be based on the circumstances of the flexibility to determine what should be done in each stage.