Here's a little walktrough on how to fail at making a complete game. That's parts of my private dev-blog.
Don't mind my bad engrish.
=== DAY 1 (Motivation day)
So i'm just gonna leave some rough idea for a simple game. Only stats on screen. To have a little idea of how will it be played, think of a really really light "Democracy" or a "Galactic Civilisation" based on evolution and development.
- Real time tactical
- 1 or 2 resources max
- tech-tree : choice between one or another direction needed. A critical problem will come at a designed time, player will have to be ready to overpass that problem.
To-do : Define the "critical problem", "designated time", technologies etc.
=== DAY 2 (good feeling day)
Simplest frame for my game with gameplay :
* 1 planet
* starting population : 3
* max population : 10
* growth rate : pop * 1,5 / year
* 1 year = 2sec ingame
* Tech 1 : increase max possible population (x2), 3 times max, cost 10 ,70 , 150 years.
This only consist of populating the planet. I'm starting developing with that in mind now.
=== DAY 4 (concrete day)
I finished making my first goal, but forgot to add any kind of money. using the population isn't enough to build something with any sort of challenge, so I need money in my game.
I'll keep what's done. I'll use that as the phase 1 in-game, a sort of tutorial.
So now I'm thinking of phase 2, here's my actual to-do list :
- Add money
- Researches should cost money and time.
- Research N°2 : colonize a new planet.
- Add a context help on the top.
- Adaptive game window.
Also made the adequate mockup, I like it. Look better than the first one.
Still thinking about new researches. I already have some rough idea on the look of the third phase but there is a lot to do on the game mechanism and that's a long way
=== DAY 5 (sad day)
There's a lot of wrong things in the project and ideas. First making a game without a clear vision of what i'm making is really wrong. I had that vision for my first goal but now that i'm extending that, i'm nearly blind, and I'm going to nowhere except procrastinating. So the code wasn't adapted to accept new concept easily and I needed to restart from scratch to add certain new mechanisms.
Second, i realized that the web browser game ogame.org is pretty similar to what i'm doing, and I don't like that game, it's a lot more time consuming than it deserve.
I learned a lot in python from these errors, i made my game code in MVC pattern, I liked how gameplay mechanism is separated from the rest, i can modify nearly everything in the gameplay code part without messing with anything non related.
Next time i'll start by designing and making the bones of my games first and edit some part after.
Other things : Mockups are a great thing to do, it help to have a clear view on what you're doing.
Also don't get let down by any kind of failure there's always something to be learned.
Words for people wanting to make their first game : Doing really simple -game- like the one on the first mockup is totally the best idea you can have.
Work on maximum 3 mechanism and finish them. After it's finished, move on and make another concept.
And that's it, I think.