How Many Days Should I Work On My Game?

Z

zircher

Guest
Well five hours of design should be good for starting a proof of concept. It you're itching to code, that will give you a metric to run with.
 

Sabnock

Member
can't say that there are any hard or fast rules on time worked on a game. As my old dad used to say "as long as it takes son". it's all to easy to give up on a project and start another or get disheartened and quit.

do what you feel is right for you to be able to get coding.

Personally i write a quick list and game outline and then get straight down to making a proof of concept (some core game mechanic) and build from there. i probably take a lot longer to make my games than i should and i bet my code is far more complicated than it needs to be :D
 

Yal

šŸ§ *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
About 3 times longer than you planned to do, I'd say... that is sort of a reasonable buffer for unforeseen bugs and such. Remember that the last 10% of work tends to take 90% of the effort, especially things like UX polish and bugtesting can take more time than expected.
 
S

seanm

Guest
The only way for you to know how much you need to plan, is to start making your game. You'll figure out pretty quickly if you over/under-planned.
 
if you're making a mobile game where you only have to touch the screen to go up a platform, you'd probably work on the graphics/sounds more because the mechanic is very simple
but the more complexity you put in your game is, the more mechanic you'd have to study/implement
I making a console RPG game. You look up the menus pressing the start button to look up your party's stats and character's info.
 
Z

zircher

Guest
That can get rather hefty. You should have enough notes that you can run it as a pen and paper game for your friends. Yes, that can be hundreds of pages unless your RPG has a very narrow scope and a short plot. You've got combat systems, movement systems, trading, healing, magic, wilderness, cities, dungeons, dozen if not hundreds of creatures. You're not going to do more than write a game pitch in five hours. Of course, that doesn't count script writing, character design, concept art, user interfaces for all the various screens/interactions you'll need. Most folks start with something simpler, like pong or break with a twist.
 
Z

zircher

Guest
You can use Agile sprints if front loading all the design is too much. Create a shorter goal like get a character to move in a fixed scene. Design, code, test. Add another small goal and repeat the cycle. You should still have a larger design to give you overall focus. The pitfall to this style is when you have to go back and redesign something because of what you learned or changed further down the development.
 
Top