Wroking with an engine

I really shouldn't have spent some much time working on the prototype this weekend. But it was quite a lot of fun. The biggest thing that I saw through using an engine was that we need more artists. An engine is made by programmers so that non programmers could make a game (not the whole thing but most of it). For example an artist or designer could make the particle system of the energy ball that the user fires. Without an engine a programmer would need to make that particle effect in code, but with the engine it is all buttons and values. The big thing that made me notice it was that i suck at making things look good. I was able to make everything mechanically work, but balancing and the visuals are not things I am very good at.
Since we don't have many artists and are going to make a game. The producers really need to learn to use the engine and be able to do basic things in it (like change values, change the map, and add in game objects). This isn't just because of our lack of artists even, if the producers want to be game designers they need to be able to use an engine anyway.

a late post-mortem

This last project was the most successful in terms of development. We had a more defined process for development that mimicked the stages of development of a full game. Our pre-development stage lasted three days. it started with us talking out ideas on Monday. Then on Wednesday we talked some more and had a physical prototype (or whiteboard prototype). The difference was the physical prototype which was extremely helpful. It helped with two problems. One was it solved some simple problems we had with our development ideas that we did not notice until we saw them. With that it more fully developed the ideas out and gave us what the actual game would do. So instead of saying you can have a conversation with an npc, we decided one buttons for the answers. Also that the npc has his/her response show over their head and you have a certain amount of time to click one of the response buttons. The other problem that the prototype helped with was everyone being on the same page. A problem I have had in other groups was someone develops a feature and it isn't what I was expecting, or the other way around. This problem wasn't solved, but overall being able to see the game run and go through all the player options in front of the whole group gave everyone a good understanding of the game.
The other good thing about this prototype was that we decided from the start to have a working game at the start of the third week. This gave us a chance to look at the game and see what was fun and what wasn't. At this point we decided what needed to be in and what didn't. Also what would make the game more fun. Then we spent that last week doing that one iteration off of our initial game.

man i don't like blogging

we finally did a bit of playtesting (kinda since it wasn't with anyone else) and I think it went fairly well. I have learned a lot from doing the prototypes, the biggest thing being that we need to work and plan together. Doing the physical prototype at the start of the project i think helped everyone get on the same page about how the game will play and how the components will work together. And this first iteration I thnk was also helpful to do. It took a lot of time and could have been more useful, but I still think it was worth it.
It allowed us as a group to see the game and comment on what we need done. I feel like we probably spent a bit too much time on specifics of what we want in the game and less on the fun of the game. We did talk about how we think we can make the game fun a bit. So we do have an idea on what to iterate to find the fun, but I felt it was more vague than I had hoped. So maybe we could have spent more of that time on what would make this fun and less on specific components to implement. Although we needed to discuss those things I think they could have been discussed offline between just the programmer of it and the designer. Although this would take out the rest of the group from the design of that component.
Overall I am happy I have finally iterated on a game at least once (or in the process of the first iteration after the creation of the game). I also feel like we could do this iteration process better, and that even just this one try will allow us to do better the next time.