I’m starting a big game project and need some management tips. we are in two programmers and one designer. is practically our first project in games. then we don’t know how to divide tasks or where to start. you have any tips that can help us?
Yes. Start smaller. It’s really that easy! I mean I was in the same boat. My first idea for my first game was the next gen MMORPG. Many have been through this. I learned pretty fast that it’s simply not practical to start game dev with a big one. After that I practiced with much smaller games. After doing 7 simple games I do now my first bigger one.
Generally break down a big task in many smaller ones where you can make time estimations. Set milestones for your team - again, small ones.
What I’m doing is a) making game design document including most of the design/creative decisions having been made up-front, with a fair amount of detail, covering everything in the finished product. b) then breaking that down into a fairly extensive list of tasks that actually need to be done to implement it. c) time estimate of each tasks… aim for tasks no shorter than about an hour to avoid too much detail, avoid trying to figure out how code works at this point. d) following the task plan and implementing each part. This is mainly per the indie developers survival guide book.
Build and deploy a small game first. I’m talking a few weeks or a month at most. This will let you experiance the entire project timeline. And it won’t matter too much if you stuff it up.
Then it’s just a matter of repeating the same tasks on a bigger scale.