I am working on my first game from scratch as we speak. It’s not much, just a single level with some basic AI and a controllable character that can lay a smack down on a few baddies before he reaches the end. The assets are all custom made and I paid to have them created with nothing in mind other then the basic concept that I basically wanted to make this simple demo. It was decided to make the whole thing modular, so the assets could be used in several different ways to create different basic levels…however I will only be making one for this demo.
What I am curious about here is some of the things I should start to think of when I begin the planning stages of my next demo which I want to actually market as a vision for the full game I intend to release. Things like texture budgets, the platforms it is intended to go on and what that means to the planning of how the game should run. I have not worked in the industry yet, but one of the key things I constantly see is people talking about needing to greatly optimize your game and make sure it runs smoothly across whatever platforms you plan to release to.
So in your own words, or if you know of a really good article I should read, what do you think are some of the most important topics to work out in the planning stages in terms of optimization? Even if some of the features I have or the art style isn’t all that revolutionary, I would very much like the game to run smooth as butter.
Focus on game design and mechanics first, then focus on optimisation last.
You don’t want to be thinking how to optimise mechanics before you know if they will even work in your game.
And before you start touching any development, make sure your game design doc is pretty comprehensive and outlines all the game’s details and mechanics.
Keep prototyping until everything works nicely together, then worry about all the extras.
Well I do understand that prototyping the mechanics and what not are fundamentally important, but there has to be some level of pre determined optimization principles you would want to go through I would think, or maybe I am wrong. I know as a programmer I will be working a lot with a lot of “programmer art”, but I would think a key part of a successful development would be in the planning of how to optimize and target your intended audience. If I am right, I am just looking for some feedback as to what some of you guys do in this regard.
Know your target device and at best have them around at all times to test the performance.
The actual performance optimization is a mixture of knowing the target device capabilities and ways to work around them.
You will find these infos on the internet. Have a look at similar games and study their ways of working, I guess.
I think its kinda hard to give you some pointers, since you already have “final commissioned art assets” which is kinda coming after one has studied the target platforms.
Articles about optimization can also be found online. There’s stuff for programmers and stuff for artists that can help a lot.
Biggest problem for me is, though you outlined the game, I don’t understand what it is. A FPS ? Platformer ? What’s the perspective like ?
There’s on things one has to take into account on different genres and setups. so maybe you can offer more information ?
You bring up some good point Acumen, and I just want to make clear I am not talking about the current project I have assets for. I simply mentioned that project because no planning at all went into optimization and the game isnt necessarily meant to be played by everyone, it was more or less just coding practice for myself.
I was trying to get more into the underlying mindset you get into when trying to plan any type of game and how you will allocate assets. Most of this intended discussion is meant to be geared towards the graphic optimizations you plan ahead of time, as I know coding optimizations may come on the fly. But in terms of things that you think about: texture size budgets, amount of textures, shader optimization, triangle limits…what are the things you wholly might want to take into account before you begin hiring and paying people to do finished work for you.
When I clicked this thread I thought is was somebody asking about the planning stages for making a game, but you’re actually asking about the planning stages of making a business.
Is that a bad thing? Just curious because I dont want to confuse people here. But I guess you are right. I have owned my own business for a while now and I may think of things a bit differently, but all-in-all, I still feel that some of the areas I would like to research in this area will be very useful whether you are looking to seel a game or not. If you want a game to be enjoyable to the mass populous, I would think you would want them to all be able to play a well rounded experience, whether they paid for it or not.
Well, in my opinion one should make a game or any work of art for that matter because they have a vision, not for the sake of capitalizing on something. But that’s just my two cents.
Perhaps sharing some insight into the approach we’re taking on Folk Tale may prove helpful. The project has always been commercially focused. Until now our efforts have been spent building and refining a single-level playable demo to use as a pitch for fundraising. The reasons for investing a huge effort into the making the demo are as follows:
To learn the intricacies of Unity, discover its strengths and weaknesses, and learning to work within those constraints
To optimize game code to identify the range of minimum and recommended specifications; optimization helps increase width and therefore potential market size; but also to discover where time is best spent optimizing
To mitigate technical risk by producing a blueprint for the final product by tackling major areas of complexity up front
To identify an optimal production workflow: only producing what we need in a consistent fashion to the required quality as smoothly and quickly as possible
To provide marketing materials for building community awareness ( screenshots, videos, alpha and beta builds )
To establish credibility that we are able to deliver ( important when going for funding )
To communicate the final scope of the game ( functionally and visually ) to stakeholders ( Gamers, the dev team, potential investors )
To better understand how much effort is involved in delivering every aspect of the planned game, supporting informed decisions on scheduling and feature inclusion
As a commercial project, the most important reason for us in making a comprehensive demo is the mitigation of risk: both technical and commercial. We’re now at the stage where there should be very few technical surprises during the rest of development, and we’ve listened to the gaming community to better understand the product that they would like, prioritizing features based on feedback.
This is all very business like, but it’s also worth mentioning that we are still developing a labor of love, exercising full creative freedom on the project. This is just as important for team morale as having a clear shared vision and knowledge that we are able to deliver.
Hope this info is useful. Good luck with your project.