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[grayfox88]

Hello everyone, I'd like to introduce myself. I've been cruisin' the forums for a few weeks while I wrap up my latest web project. I've been working as a web applications developer for nearly 2 years now, with 2 years of school preceding that, and I think I've become pretty sharp with c#. Primarily my focus is on asp.net MVC 3/4 and c# 4.0 but I've had my eyes on making games with XNA for a while now.

I've bought a few books, which are now outdated, and started several projects which fizzle out for one main reason: I don't know what to do next. I can draw stuff on the screen, make bullets shoot, and other basic things like collision...but when do I make my menus, when do I start on making separate levels, load screens, enemies, artificial intelligence?

So I have some questions for all of you indie game developers who have made it to completion...where did you start? What steps did you take or follow to get your game where it is today? I'm not looking for tutorials on how to use gamemaker or write a game from scratch, I'm looking for examples of what order you attempted these challenges, how did you manage to keep the development process from getting overwhelming, etc.

With web development, I try to stay Agile and develop with TDD to give me some form of direction, I write my unit tests, then my model, controller, and finally the views, then polish it off with some css. How does this workflow differ from yours?

I'm looking forward to reading some of your answers, and apologies if a similar thread has been started in the past, I'm looking for answers that are targeted towards an intermediate developer like myself, so discussions about best-practices, design patterns and algorithms aren't beyond my understanding. Thanks for your time!

[Core Xii]

With web development, I try to stay Agile and develop with TDD to give me some form of direction

This is probably why you're lacking in direction. For something as complex as a video game, you can't really just make it bit by bit. I design the whole thing through and through before I even touch a compiler.

Granted, it's slow. In fact, I've yet to release a game. But I certainly have direction.

I also come from a web dev background. Other than that, I just play a lot of games and think about how they're implemented.

[CowBoyDan]

What game do you want to make?  You need to have something in mind before you start development.  Just like you don't sit down and make a web application without some purpose.  When you are working for other people, they define the purpose for you they already have an idea what they want, the details are just left to you.

If you are having trouble with that, I'd suggest playing some games, maybe trying some other creative activities (art, storywriting, maybe make a tabletop game with cardboard cut outs), the quality doesn't matter for this, the only goal is to get some creativity going.

"The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses" by jesse schell might help, I'm about 2/3 of the way done with it, amazon has about the first 4 chapters in their preview, so at the least try reading those free chapters, it might help give you some direction.

[grayfox88]

Thanks for your responses so far, everyone. I'm not looking to apply anything to a specific genre or game, just a general idea of what came first, the chicken or the egg in relation to which game components should come first when developing a game. (menus, maps, actors)

But to keeps things rolling, lets say we're developing a tetris clone with different gametypes, what is the first component you would start on after your 'design' is completed?

I'll definitely check out that book in the mean-time. Here is a link to the chapters CowBoyDan mentioned

[Richard Kain]

The first component I would focus on is the game loop. Many web applications are based on event-driven design. Games, on the whole, tend to be loop-driven, with as many constant iterations as you can squeeze in. Managing the primary update loops are job #1 when I start developing a game.

From there, its just a matter of sorting out the various state machines that I want to be at the core of the experience, and then on to scene management. (to break the game up into logical segments, menu scene, gameplay scene, pause scene, etc...)

[grayfox88]

Thanks Richard Kain, that was exactly the type of answer I was looking for. Useful responses so far, keep them coming!

[CowBoyDan]

As far as the non-programmie game aspects, start with a simple toy-mechanic.  For your tetris example, first I'd make a game area, add 1 block that falls and add control to it.  Then add the next drop, then randomly picking the next shape.  Once thats working move on to line clearing logic, scoring, this would be a time to start working on graphics/sound/music to start getting the feel.  Maybe then go back and add the menu.  Just how I would do it.  The menu needn't be done in one pass either.

Games dont generally have up front business requirements, you never know what will work until you try it, and you may change your mind completely.  Think agile, 1 week iterations.