Chapter 1 - How do you make a game; summary
The development of any type of game could last anywhere between 6 months straight through to 6+ years from the initial idea to the game completion. The development of games breaks down to two sections; pre-production and production. These two sections are important as each other because they are both needed to develop the intial concept idea for the game, the structure of the game and the completed product.
Pre-Production: In this stage the project will move on from the initial concept idea to a well thought out and organised plan. This is crucial as the production stage will derive each step from pre-production. Group discussion, agreement and designs are very important during this stage as they lead the way for preparation of the design documents, which will be passed through onto the production stage.
Production: This is where the action will take place with the development team taking pole position of putting the plan from pre-production into action. The development team will then take on the events on creating the game and also the technology needed in order to produce the product. Only once the technology, tools and concept art have been created and finalisied, is when the production stage will be fully under way. Development of the game does involve different types of stages within the pre-production and production stage; this is why the development team must consist of: concept artists, graphic designers, visual artists, programmers and game design engineers.
There will always be a 'head document' (blueprint) that will be constantly updated throughout the project, normally by the project leader - this is to ensure any changes can be seen straight away. This blueprint will include all of the following:
- Scope of the Game
- Concept Art (At Top-End)
- Game Levels
- Art & Technology
- Design and Construct of the game
- Visual representation of in-game (characters, halls, lighting, surroundings etc)
Designers will be the people who generally try to keep an equillibrum of the game to ensure everything fits together, there always tends to be a lot of designers who work together on this issue because they also have to deal with the placement of events. All of the artists will work together creating the concept art of characters and enviroment which will then lead the programmers in the way to create a game based on their art as a basis. The programmers will also be required in creating the technology and tools (i.e. character movement, abilities, enviroment, level editors etc) which will then be passed back onto the artists to use.
Once all of that has been done, then the production stage will officially start and the 1st step will be in creating some scripting sequences, intergrating all of the visual elements (i.e. textures) and audio together so that there will be some core gameplay to be used as a prototype.
After a prototype has been created (these are sometimes released to the general public for beta testing), debugging (also beta testing) is needed in order to finalise the product before it goes into gold. Gold is when a product has been created, modelled, developed, tested and finalised it goes onto shop shelves. This is where the project will be finished and the development team may be used to a different project, or sometimes a development team is made up of freelance agents.
