When creating a new game, what is your workflow?

[Melkor99]

For those of you who have done a game, especially renpy, what's your general work flow from start to ideally finish? How do you avoid getting tangled up, confused and wondering how you ended up behind a 7/11 with a nonworking program, being patched by a rabid racoon who is doing a better job than you?

More seriously, if someone asked: how do you minimize wasted time, what would your answer be on how you Make a game.

 

[NeonSelf]

I'm a Typescript\C#\Flash developer of regular games (not adult ones).

First I make a working mockup of a game. Start menu, "game" window with just win\lose buttons, gameover\win screens. At this stage it becomes a complete game, so I can add content in the middle, while showing it to anyone because it already has all the necessary UI.

Text messages\buttons\game logic comes first, everything else later. For example, If I had to make Renpy game: I'd write placeholder text messages briefly explainig what happens on the screen step by step like "<MC talks to his sis>" or "You meet <NPC1> on the street" without any graphics. Later, when the game mechanics are working I can focus on renders and proper storytelling. Its easier to change your game or fix problems, when there is no art. For example, changing a few lines of text to add or remove some character from a scene is easier than rendering this scene again.

When you can play your game in "text mode", you can already tell if you like it or not. For regular games, like RTS\FPS, where you have to see something, usually devs use colored primitives(spheres, boxes) instead of detailed animated 3D models.

Remember about screen aspect ratio and touchscreen limitations if you plan to port your game on different platforms later.

General decisions you should make that make your game easier to support:
1 - use Git or any other version control system. It saves alot of time, when you can undo any changes in your project with just one click, or look back in history for months to see what has changed in a specific file.
2 - Have consistent naming scheme for all your variables, functions and files.
3 - Think about organizing your assets in folders, like if you had 10x more of them. They tend to pile up.

 

[Melkor99]

Thanks much! this is a big help!

 

[Doorknob22]

1. I believe in starting and not just sitting on your ass and collecting ideas. Inspiration will often hit you once you have started. Once the characters begin talking (i.e. you begin to write their dialogs), you'll know them for who they are and what they want.

2. As for actual work, I usually write plot/dialog and leave a place for images and note them with ### which, for me, means "no image created yet".

    scene expression 'manwad garden 32 ' + persistent.fur ### Dropping pants, surprised Manwad

    ka "Here is what you asked me to stuff inside you. Ever seen one from up close?"

    manw "..."

    ka "I'll take it as a 'no'. You'll have to tell me later how a pretty lady like you have never seen a cock. Strip."

    scene expression 'manwad garden 34 ' + persistent.fur ### Manwad and Karder, defiant Manwad

    manw "You first."

    ka "Ha ha. I'm going to fuck the defiance out of you."

    manw "That will require a lot of fucking."

When I have 5-10 of these ###s I will stop writing and begin creating scenes in Daz. Each scene I set will be changed from ### to ##, indicating it's not rendered yet. After I render it and I'm happy with the result, it will change to #. If I decide on a re-render, I will leave it at ## until the rendering results are good.

Hope that helped.

 

[nodeline]

Making my first game and so far:

• Writing down the notes, which are broken down into game mechanics, story, characters, encounters, events, enemies, dialogue snippets.
• Creating quick sketches in blender with grease pencil as a form of storyboarding, in Krita when there's no need of an in depth dive
• Explore the sexual scenes, how to make them more exciting, how to pace them, when to give them out to the player
• Godot engine rapid prototyping - making animated scenes as a 'moodboard' of sorts
• Artwork - this is the trickiest one, since I don't want AI as the thing that just craps out same looking stuff for every asset. So Aseprite, Krita, lots of references and an eye on some coding to automate the animating process without falling into the cesspool of cashgrab dregs.

I'd say the process is chaotic, one where you're making progress but never linearly and never in a structured manner. One day you're implementing the main gameplay loop and the next you're writing 20 page scene that popped in your head.