You can send this guide as the game development process improvement of reference
We will cover all you need to know about the success of the studio development factors and process of the game, including the secret of success, best practices and necessary tools,
game development overview
The game development process includes three main stages:
Preparation:
The concept of the whole game is formed during the preparation period, also is in this stage, you need to put the needs of the development and design outline enumerate, planning the resources required and how to make games, some of the game design prototype and other things is also in this period of time, usually comprehensive the above points, to do a good job in this period of time will need to be a good project management,
Production time:
Main design and development will be focused on the game at this stage, is also the longest in the process of game development phase, developers, designers, artists, the project manager to cooperate together to complete the following every milestone:
The game prototype
The original game
A vertical slice
Quasi Alpha
Alpha
Beta version
The final version
Game production success or not depends on the collaboration between the teams,
Operational period:
This phase is committed to repair the game bug fixes and new features development,
advice to the novice
Just beginning to develop games can be very difficult, no matter you are in the form of game studios or self-developed games,
There is too much to consider:
Where to start? What are the things you need to know? What languages and tools to use? Source of funds? How to put the game in the market to sell?
Raise money
This is probably one of the most difficult part of the game development, of course, there are several methods of raising money, including cooperation with the vendor, the raise slowly do save money or part-time,
Can also be used to free resources to assist in the production of the game, natural, free to make the game may have other unexpected expenses, but the important thing is not to save money and sacrifice quality,
game design and development of necessary tools
The success of the game design and development need to use suitable tools, the following lists the necessary in the process of five types of tools:
Project management
Game development project management tools to ensure the smooth completion of the game development, like Hansoft tools can be from different dimensions to help:
Manage your "generation do tasks" (Backlog)
Procedure/process visualization
Agile game development
The game engine
Game Engine is very important for game production, is currently the most popular game engines including the Unreal Engine, Unity and the Lumberyard, many at the beginning of the game Engine is free, but many of the studio will make your own Engine,
Game engines and other game design and development tools usually integration to speed up work efficiency, these tools have an IDE, graphical tools, version control tool, such as
IDE
IDE is a place where game developers put code, Microsoft Visual Studio is one of the most popular tools,
Graphical tools
Graphical tools is essential for designers and artists, like Photoshop, 3 ds Max, Maya and Blender is the mainstream of graphical tools,
And is similar to the game engine, graphics tools are frequently and other tool integration of game development, one of them is a version control,
Version control
Version control for game development have a vital role, whether you are a person to develop alone or together with a team of 1000 people will need to do, because the game will generate a lot of all kinds of documents, such as: binaries, digital asset class, code, etc., all want to pipe up is difficult,
For independent developers, it is important to choose an extensible version control tool, such as the Helix Core. Although it is only in a single work on a project, but happen one day will have the team cooperation in the future,
For each team, developers, designers and artists collaboration is critical for successful developed game, use the appropriate version control tool can be made more efficient,
Another point to consider is deployed in local or on the cloud, for example, in the AWS is a very popular way,
best practices of successful game development and design
The best practice game developers
The worst game developers are the title, there is a reason, they know which tool is best for making games, which best practices for them are the most efficient,
For example, Epic, CD PROJEKT RED, The Chinese Room and Cloud Imperium Games with Helix Core (Perforce version control tool), they are an eBook to share its about game development version control tool in best practices,
Another example, branch development is a very important part of the game development, is another form of version control of best practice, the seminar in the video below, you will see the Sumo Digital this company how to use Perforce Streams (Helix branch of the Core functionality) make popular games,
Manage the game development team are also important, with suitable project management tools will make the whole management get twice the result with half the effort, for example, EA, No Brakes Games, Frontier, just Studios and inVRsion use Hansoft as agile project management, they also Shared their professional advice in the eBook,
Best practices of other Perforce
Perforce with different dimension for decades, there are all kinds of cooperation game development team, here are we collect part of the practice for years,
The game as a Service (Gaming as a Service, GaaS)
Many studios are game as a service (GaaS), if you consider to use this model, many important factors need to be taken into account, following a variety of best practice,
Collaborative
Cooperation is so important in the game development, but if there are more and more different teams, the cooperative mode will have what change?
Game production project management
Successful game project management means to achieve specific indicators, but the problem is that these indicators refer to?
You should answer is similar to the following questions need to be able to:
In different stages of the project can finish on time? Every stage of the specific project task is what? Overall quality?
game development how to combine with Perforce tool
Perforce provide loved by the best game personnel 2 solutions:
Helix Core version control software
Hansoft agile management software
The game development solutions to assist the team with the increase of scale management project and version management,
For example, the giant network with Helix Core and Hansoft to manage the following contents:
Generation to do the task list (Backlog)
Project each milestone
To better manage the version of the file
With the Helix Core and Hansoft later, they can solve the problem of rapid expansion team, better cooperation, more efficient,