strategy game development process
sideEffect
what things to handle first and what at the end ?
Torben Ægidius Mogensen
> what would be the best process for programming an RTS...
>
> what things to handle first and what at the end ?
First: Decide what will make this game fundamentally different from
the zillions other RTS games out there, and why you would want to
spend a year of your free time to make it with little hope of getting
any monetary returns.
2nd: Design the basic mechanics, i.e., economy, infrastructure,
research, combat system, user interface, AI, etc.
3rd: Make a prototype to test these. Don't worry about graphics, just
use ASCII art or coloured blobs. Don't worry about code efficiency
either, just make it easy to modify.
4th: Design detailed mechanics: Specific economic elements, specific
infrastructure elements, specific technologies and how these are
researched, specific combat units, etc.
5th: Implement and playtest these with the prototype.
6th: Design specific cultures and special abilities.
7th: Implement and playtest these with the prototype.
8th: Design ingame graphics and sound.
9th: Implement and playtest these with the prototype.
10th: Once you are satisfied that it works, recode everything so you
have cleaner and more efficient code.
11th: Thoroughly playtest the new code, let others do blind tests too
(i.e., play only from the written documentation).
12th: Design non-game graphics and sound such as intro sequence,
menus, etc.
At every step, be ready to go back and redo an earlier decision,
repeating all steps from there onwards.
If you don't feel competent or have time to do all parts yourself,
hire people to do the rest. Don't expect free contributions or to pay
people by a fraction of the profits (for in all likelyhood, there will
be none).
Torben
sideEffect
wrote:
thanks a lot Torben :)
if we (3 programmers) make any progress i'll report back..
Edward
sideEffect
> What sort of RTS are you working on?
HUD-less one-button strategy game :>