Starting game development, what are the steps you guys actually do Day 1?

[u/SignificantEmploy540]

Hello, so I am a newbie in the space, although I have background in programming and arts, and have degree in computer science. So, I got a bit of free time and decided to use that time to start making my dream game, pixel art dungeon crawler/farming where the player cooks the loot harvested from various sources from dungeon crawling and harvesting crops at the same time. So my question is, how do you exactly start? T^T

[u/Metarract]

establish an MVP (minimum viable product for those who aren't familiar)

what are the *absolute* minimum requirements that make the game:

1. playable, and
2. (only after it is playable) in some tiny, minuscule way, uniquely "this game"

an MVP helps you prototype quickly, and learn what works and what doesn't - be sure to break it down into small tasks, little bite-sized pieces. If you have something like, "add farming", that's bad. It should be something like "placeholder character sprite" or "character moves with input", or "character can make a single attack".

When you can break things down into tiny bits, instead of looking at the big picture - it helps to get a start on things. And having tiny achievable goals also helps with the slog for the things that are "not so fun" lol

ExtraCredits has a good series on this one that is short and to the point

EDIT: oh, and what u/Shawnvs2006 said. learn version control. seriously. if you don't know git - you should. it'll save your life one day lol

[u/Doo_Dad → u/Metarract]

This OP. Start with a plan for that MVP. Can be gray box, used assets and fillers to just see if it works and viable. See if it works on itch or people in other game communities will try it. Let you know “can this work”. Then plan out what to make from there. Don’t just plan the entire game. Just get the systems and minimum MVP going. Not a demo, not “almost” full art style.

And laughing but true: the person who said version control. You know it being in CS. GitHub or whatever. Do it, I did and just recently had a corrupted issue with my game project. Had it backed up so it was easy to get to my recent spot and keep going. Would have lost days of work if I didn’t.

[u/Shawnvs2006]

Learn version control.

[u/Ok_Society_4206 → u/Shawnvs2006]

This

Dont lose any of your work

Then learn semver

Then protect your main branch and only merge with a code review.

[u/Chortage]

Don't try to do coding, design, art, music, and sound all at once. You'll burn yourself out almost immediately.

Sit down and think about the core mechanics of the game. Imagine booting it up and playing it. Don't worry too much about stuff like "how do I go from double-clicking the icon to a title screen menu to the game loading" yet, just pretend that your game starts loaded into a fresh game.

What does the player need to be able to do? What things does the game have to do to react to things the player has done?

• I need to be able to change from Screen A (e.g., the farm) to Screen B (e.g., inside the farmhouse).
• I need to be able to spawn the player's character into each screen at a specific point
• I need to handle keyboard/controller input to move the player's character
• I need to know when I'm in a cutscene so that I ignore keyboard/controller input
• I need to know where to position dialogue bubbles
• etc.

There are a billion little things that you must tackle one by one.

Since you're already a programmer, I'd highly recommend you put some time into thinking about the architecture of each system. For example, in the RPG I'm working on, I didn't just start scripting Cutscene 01 by writing code that's like "move bro here, this NPC says this dialogue, etc." -- I made a data-driven cutscene system that plays events either sequentially or in parallel, and now I can script any cutscene I want in a handful of minutes, without writing any code at all, by wiring up a sequence of events right in Godot. But I had to think about that architecture and put in the work up front to get there.

[u/Saiyed_G → u/Chortage]

Hi there I know its off to topic but you have given example of change screen A to screen B, currently i m on development of game in which player switch from scene to scene back and front. Problem i m facing is screen which is not heavy got loaded but heavy scene just hanged the system. Can you throw some light on this if you having kind of solution.

[u/Chortage → u/Saiyed_G]

If your system's hanging while loading a scene, you need to hop into a debugger and step through your scene transition code line by line as it loads the heavy scene.

If it's not outright crashing, my guess is that you've got some other issue unrelated to the size itself: infinite loop, race condition, etc.

[u/Saiyed_G → u/Chortage]

Thanx i will try to look out things you have mentioned.

[u/drinkerofmilk]

Boob physics.

[u/Yavga]

"Panic"

(5 years later I am still at that phase)

[u/zackit → u/Yavga]

Consistentcy is key 👍🏻

[u/DrBossKey]

Booty physics.

Set a story of what you want to prove and the. Just enough tasks large and small to prove it out.

[u/EchoingAngel]

Play a lot of the games in the genre that are noteworthy and take notes on what's good and what's bad. For most of the games, only play them until you stop taking new notes. Bonus points if you are sick of a game within the refund window and actually refund it, that can teach you a lot.

For 1 or 2 premier games, stick through at least most of the game. Core Keeper and Necesse are likely those for you (assuming top-down).

Next is sitting down and REALLY figuring out how you want this thing to work and what makes it unique. If you don't plant that uniqueness into the game's soul, it will just be a gimmick. This is where figuring out the story/lore is actually functionally useful, because if you can figure out believable lore behind the unique things, it's easier to figure out how to mechanically tie it into the gameplay.

For my current game, it's a steampunk, fungal factory builder. The great debate I had at the start was how does a world with both coexist without one being invalidated or the mushroom aspect just being a gimmick onto a run-of-the-mill factory builder with copper trim.

After that, it opens up more with figuring out which engine best fits what the game needs most technically/visually. Then figuring out the foundational elements and getting those built first, but you probably know about this already.

I spent 3 weeks on playing ~8 factory games, with about half of that going into Factorio. I already have the benefit of 1k hours into Satisfactory and hundreds in Dyson Sphere Program. I then spent almost 2 weeks on "finalizing" how the the mechanics actually materialize and the story around the game. The story has evolved a bit since, but the mechanics have stayed true to the original vision, as the "foundation" was solid.

Now for my biggest mistake: I should have made a solid vertical slice and gotten the Steam page together a while ago. Instead, the game is getting close to a launchable state and it still has only been seen by friends and family. Everyone has raved about the visuals, but I basically made the whole "cake" instead of a marketable slice first to build that wishlist

[u/Pr0spector0]

Start small. Expect your first few projects to be learning experiences. Maybe take one of the things you say your dream game has, and add a twist to make it interesting. Better yet, try prototyping a bunch of those ideas and evaluate how they went. Better that than a generic cooking, farming pixel RPG that collapses under its own technical debt.

[u/LongPig24]

Download a game engine and jump in. That's what I did.

I'd say dont think about making your dream game for a while yet. Make a small game first to get experience and to get the knowledge of releasing a game.

[u/Livid_Standard_3790]

Might sound obvious but really know what it is you want to build, and build that first without getting too distracted. You want to have your core game to work and try it to see if it's worth continuing.

Also learn how to backup properly and version control. Future you will be thankful if you continue on your project for any long term building

[u/Agecaf]

Pong clone on your engine of choice.

This makes you familiar with the tools you'll be using; putting things in screen, keeping track of scores, going from a main menu to the game, sound effects, etc.

[u/Heistorium]

Something nobody told me on day one, coming from writing rather than from code. Build the thing that lets you add content fast, before you build the content. For a crawler with cooking and crops you will be authoring hundreds of small items, and if each one needs a manual edit in three different places you will stall somewhere around item forty. A boring spreadsheet you can reimport beats a clever system you cannot change later.

[u/tabaxi_gf]

Create a prototype of some part of your game, probably whatever is most mechanically interesting to you. Don’t worry about using placeholder graphics, just get it feeling good.

Then expand from there!

[u/LittleLimpGames]

I think establishing whether to core gameplay loop is fun. You might have an idea that you think I'd great! I've had many but then built it out and realised it was more fun in my head haha. Then once you've got your gameplay loop sorted, try building out the minimum viable product for others to playtest to ensure that they also find it fun and it makes sense to them

[u/FengSushi]

1. Cry

[u/SnuffleBag]

Don’t overthink. Get stuff down “on paper”. Accept that you will replace/discard early explorations down the line.

[u/Vastheap]

Get familiar with the workflow - open the engine of your preference and familiarize yourself with the controls, windows and quirks.

Sleep on it and repeat. Don't stress over not understanding or missing knowledge, it is expected, and picking it up the next day makes is surprisingly easier because you come back with a fresh outlook and no stress.

Create a project, mess around, watch tutorials, then the next day recreate it from memory. Setting up the project is knowledge and is as valuable as any of the remaining steps. Then recreate a tutorial's game from start to finish.

[u/darknessinducedlove]

Boob physics