Making a Game. Quick.
-Part 1
I, like many of you, have been enjoying the passion of turning concepts and ideas into playable game mechanics and fun characters for many years. We all seem to have a love of breathing life into a new world, but so many of us just as quickly turn our backs on it for the next one. I am one of these constant creators and abandoners of new games. Until now!One evening I sat and ate dinner with my girlfriend when she was asked to work late the following day. That meant I would have almost 12 hours to myself, what a great chance to start on a new game! At the time my current project had gone stale and I was itching to start something else, as often happens. While I lay in bed that night I told myself that no matter what I came up with I was going to finish it. Even if it was crap. Even if it wasn't fun at all. I would put it on the android market and get someone to play my game! The next morning I awoke with an idea, a flappy-birdish inspired game of weaving between cars on a crowded highway. Traffic Jam Frenzy (TJF) - And here is how I did it:
K.I.S.S.
An old Army adage, Keep It Simple Stupid, is useful for many things. For a beginning game
developer it is an imperative rule to live by. If you have never published a game before you
need to stick to this saying. Everyone wants to make the next RPG with 100 hours of game
play and a gripping story, but the simple fact of it is that, like any skill, good game making
comes with practice. So start simple. In TJF I decided I wanted a one button control mechanic.
This would be not only easy to play, but pretty flawless to design. It wouldn't matter which device the game was played on, wouldn't need any UI graphics crowding the screen, and would be quickly masterable by any player. I thought back to my youth of those crappy RC Cars that your grandparents would by you that only had one button, they either turned left, or if you hit the button, turned right. They were an absolute pain in the ass to a 7 year old, but that might work for a mobile game. So I implemented a simple control that would cause the car to turn one way when the user was not pressing the screen, and the other when the screen was pressed. Simple enough for even the most novice programmer to code, and the oldest grandparent to play.
Plan Ahead
Now that I had a game mechanic for TJF, I wanted to make sure that it would work on my target devices: phones and tablets. Since I owned both of these it was easy to test, but hard to remember to do so frequently. While it is a pain to constantly compile your game for various platforms, make sure to do it whenever you make any significant changes. I tested the simple control on each device, and then when I had my final sprites and menu items I tested again to make sure there were no issues with resolution or scaling.Other things to plan for are simple things like checking that the name of your game isn't already taken. Spending a few hours on a catchy game logo and icons only to realize your game is already taken will really hurt your moral and waste your time. Just search the stores on which you plan to release, and a general Google search helps too. Also, make sure that you have accurate and complete profiles on whichever market places you are going to use.
Art
Decide on an art style, and stick with it. If you are doing your own graphics and/or modeling choosing an art style ahead of time will save you loads of time. This goes for menus and buttons/icons as well. If you are making a medieval times endless runner, and you notice your art style starts to look a bit futuristic, stop yourself and asses your assets. Changing art around mid development can cost many hours of hard work. Changing it at the end of development will cause you to abandon your game. The two best graphic programs I use are:
Inkscape - Free - Great program for designing vector art, or exporting to raster imaging. Takes a little getting used to if you're unfamiliar but I love it. All TJF art was made in Inkscape.
GIMP- Free - If you're only interested in raster art this is a great free program. Works much like photoshop, or so I'm told, and has a good deal of support and tutorials.
Difference between Vector Art and Raster Art - If you are unsure of which to choose for your game.
Monetization
The dirty word surrounding indie game development. We all would like to make some money from our hard work so that we can afford to spend more time in the future making better games. These days people seem to expect games for free, as if a couple of computer nerds sit around a smart phone and play a snake charmers tunes and BAM there's a game on it! We know that we spend a lot of our free time to craft our passion, and that we should be paid something for that time. We create art, music, stories and seamless interactivity for the masses (we hope) and deserve to be paid for it. So plan ahead for how you will generate some income with your hard work. A few pointers I've learned from other, more successful, developers. If you are new to the scene you need to build a fan base. You could have the best game of the year sitting in the Steam store but if nobody knows who you are they will not likely shell out $15 for your game. It's just too risky for them in a market full of well known developers. So start small and start free. Create a few simple platformers or something to gain an audience. Now don't skimp on content in these early works, these are what build up your name. Be innovative, artistic, memorable, so that when you release your masterpiece in a few years, people will say "Hey I remember these guys, they made that game, it was pretty cool, I'd like to check out thier new game" And it's that simple. In TJF I knew that I was making a verrry simple game and that charging any money for it would be criminal, but that having in game advertising would be fair. So I had do decide where and when in the game to show ads. Luckily for my game the game play lead to an easy decision of when to show ads, but if your game is more complex you may need to put some more thought into it. So with my game I have an ad show after you lose every 5 or 6 times. Keeps it from showing an ad too often and annoying the user.
Promotion
One of the most overlooked aspects of game development from indies like us. Your app store download page will be the deciding factor on getting people to download your game. If you have a poorly written game description, crap screen shots, and no video, you're not going to see any downloads. I think I read on googles developer console somewhere that apps with videos are 60% more likely to get downloaded, something like that. Either way, make a video, it takes a little time and effort but so did your game and if no one is going to download it what was the point? A few useful tools for screen capture:
D3D Gear - Screen recording software - Very easy to use, and best quality capture of all the software I tried. Free for 15 days, so download it when you're ready to start making your video. Then it's only $30 or so to buy.
Lightworks - Video editing program - This program came in handy for a few things that I wanted to do with my video, like cropping and other effects.
Windows Movie Maker - Video Editing program - If you have a PC you probably have this already, it's not bad for an included bit of software.
And I will not pretend you all couldn't tell that this is also a way of promotion, but one which I think also helps the community. Write tutorials and help other developers. It builds up the community, gets people to
like you, gets people who know what they're talking about to review your game, and helps drive
traffic to your product.So in27 hours I implemented the methods listed above, and ended up with
a complete game, on theGoogle Play store, with apromotional video, an online high score leader
board, and something to have a little bit of pride in knowing I finished.
So while it's not a great game, it's mine, and having that under your belt inspires you to finish
your next project. As long as you keep expanding your abilities you will someday finish your
dream game. Starting small isn't bad, in fact it's smart. Keep improving, I know I will and hopefully
I'll be back someday with something amazing. Thanks for reading!
