It occurred to me as I sat here going through dozens of game sound effects and game graphics that I don’t have the foggiest idea what I am doing. Sure I have played plenty of games and have a clear vision of what this app should look like but beyond that, I have not read one book or one article about good game design. I did stumble across The Hummingbird Manifesto but this is little more than a cheeky bit of pretty intuitive advice. As my game development gets further along though I find that I have made dozens if not hundreds of decisions and all I am going off of is my past game play experience.
Atari Pong Screenshot
I am fairly confident I have limited just how much I can screw this up by keeping the game simple and without too much of a plot as this seems to add another layer of design complexity. This is why I chose to do a game based off of some of the original gaming platforms: these focused on the quality of in game play rather than depth and variety of sound or visual effects (of course there was no choice back then).
After just building what we have, and you guys will get to be the judges of how well we have done soon, I can say I really respect professional game designers. To have the vision to not only create a fully developed plot but then to fold in the complexity of quality sound and graphics really is a huge effort. Especially when you are inventing a new theme or world from scratch. No wonder game budgets are becoming so enormous like Spore’s estimated $35 million and there are tons of Bachelor’s degree programs for game development and design like this one. Read more…
When I started working with the development team abroad, they suggested we use Basecamp to stay in synch. I had heard of the company 37 Signals but had never used any of their products so I was really blown away once we got the project up an running. The service includes a message board, shared task calendar, To Do List, a writeboard, and file sharing service and an easily to manage contacts list.
Basecamp screenshot
The team put all of our milestones into the system so now I can go to Basecamp, review the list of upcoming milestones and leave files and comments that I think are useful for the team. Once you upload or insert a new comment you have the option of notifying specific group members which is great because it avoids spamming those people who are not relevant to the update.
I think this software is really a brilliant way to manage a geographically separated group of people where transparency can obviously be difficult and it is hard to get clarity around what each person is doing. I seriously recommend Basecamp for anyone collaborating on not just software development, but anything that could require getting a group of people on to the same page.
I have had an idea for a while now to create a tank game that would utilize some of the new features of the iPhone such as the accelerometer and tap firing. I had always been fairly certain that it would be a 2D game, as I assumed 3D costs would be much higher (I don’t actually think this is true at this point but I never did really check into it), and I wanted to replicate some of the playability of the games of my childhood without screwing up the game play with unnecessary gimmicky features. My last console was the Sega Genesis and I had owned many of the preceding consoles from the 90’s and 80’s including the N.E.S. and Atari 2600 so I was used to simpler graphics, fewer keypad options, but much better game design.
I decided to develop a basic tanks game that would leverage the 2 player via Wifi as well as accelerometer and tap features of the iPhone, but include little in the way of characters, story line, etc.
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