2009/07/09

Phases of the game development process


Dear kids,

I am here again to share some of my knowledge with you. In my last post I briefly introduced all professions you need to have in your team when developing a game and today I am going to write about usual Game Development process.

What is game development process and why should you have a plan?


Game Development process is a long procedure incporporating a lot of stages. If you are developing huge and big game, it may take years. Speaking for myself with my iPhone game I have plan (I will write about it in next posts) that the game development process should take me 3 months. It is not much, but my game will be really small.

And why plan if I am developing the game in my free time? Well, I am very punctual person and I think it is good to have some plan always! This taught me my parents and I taught it my dear husband Antonin and all my kids. I remember when I was young, it was just after my wedding in 1951 when I was 18 or 19, I and my husband made the life plan - find a good job till 20, have at least one baby till 22, have first car till 25, go for the first vacation till 30 and so on... You may be laughing at it, but it really helped me! So having a plan is a must! (At least for me!)

View of the common game development process


As I mentioned above, Game Development has several stages. If you have a plan it is easy to schedule everything and track it. Basic stages of game development process:



Pre-Production phase


1. Analysis phase
If you have with your game some goals (e.g. Make the best selling iPhone game), you should know about your competitors, know the market, trends etc. In this phase you should analyse and plan everything. This phase is really important if you want to success! There's nothing worse than developing X years a game and then get to know that there's practically nobody to play it.

2. Creative phase
Do you know your market, competitors, current trends etc.? Great! Then you can start with creative phase. In this phase you should define your game by prior analysis. Start and create game design concept, then so-called game design document where you can define all game mechanisms and principles.

In this phase the only tool for many developers is paper and pencil. I encourage you to adopt this principle - don't hesitate to make sketches along with your concept and try to prove as early as possible wheter are your concepts really working as a game. You can save a lot of time here!

Production phase


1. Design and Development phase
Hard work is here! With game design document in your hand you can start with real game development, because now is the time when jump in programmers, graphic artists and other members of the team who were relaxing while pre-production phase.

In this phase you have to stick to your game design document and remake the dream to the (game) reality. To have the good supporting data in game design document is crucial when it comes to success of this phase.

2. Testing
Testing is a need. There should be circle between Design and Development phase and Testing phase - you should test every piece of code you made on your game. This is the way how you can get to know if your game is working and bug free. In the later phases of the development process is good to invite external people (for example your friends) to test your game - it is always beneficial to get opinion on the game from somebody who is not involved in the process.

Release


It is done! Your game is ready and you can publish it on your website, or sell it on CD or DVD. Do not forget to communicate with your fans and support your game!

Next time I will write something about my own game, so stay tuned!

Love,

Granny

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